By Dr. Daniel Eubanks
A number of years ago a client of mine, a local clergyman, presented me with a cat, which was causing a unique disturbance in his home. The reverend had multiple house cats and it seemed that all of them, except for one named Max, were avoiding using the litter pan. Fact was that Max frequented the litter pan with so much urine volume that he literally soaked the litter as fast as the reverend could replace it. The other cats couldn’t go into the pan because it was constantly flooded. A few questions from me regarding Max’s history revealed that he had an insatiable thirst, constantly drank way too much water and subsequently kept soaking the litter pan.
I explained that a diagnosis for this problem would require some blood tests, so we admitted Max for a work-up. The usual causes for something like this — diabetes mellitus, renal failure, liver disease — were quickly ruled out. The search went on and on for more obscure possibilities.
Ultimately the diagnosis of diabetes insipidus was confirmed. This is a rare disorder of the pituitary gland and is in no way related to the more common and familiar diabetes mellitus. The similarity is that patients with either type of diabetes drink lots of water and urinate too much. Diabetes mellitus (“sugar diabetes”) requires daily insulin injection(s) whereas diabetes insipidus requires daily injections of a pituitary extract called vasopressin.
Well, the reverend couldn’t possibly deal with this problem with his other cats. Max was a cute, affectionate, very likeable orange tabby male cat. He and I had developed a sort of rapport after all this while so I offered to keep him as a “hospital cat.” Max could stay at the clinic as his home. Thus began my life with Max the cat.
Max was an experience — and a test! He had a sense of humor and never took life too seriously. We all could have learned something from Max.
The every morning ritual was for Max to jump up onto the exam tablet to willingly, almost eagerly, receive his injection of vasopressin (which cost me, by the way, about $500 per year). He would then be given his breakfast and his Pet Tab vitamin, which he adored. He was then free to roam the clinic all day, looking for trouble and usually succeeding in finding it.
More than once I would arrive at the office in the morning to find that Max had raided the storage area and helped himself to the Pet Tab samples. These were individually wrapped and hermetically sealed in plastic. I would find literally dozens of opened or otherwise mutilated Pet Tab wrappers all over the clinic. It certainly was a selling point as to the palatability of the product.
In our waiting room we had a lovely aquarium upon which I invested a significant amount of both time and money. But fish had a way of mysteriously disappearing from our tank. Not floating on top or laying on the bottom — just disappearing! Cat paw prints were usually observed on the tank top cover.
The daily injections of vasopressin controlled Max’s urine volume but not his urinary indiscretions. Max was a sprayer and this had nothing to do with his diabetes.
One day a lady was as at the front desk speaking with the receptionist. Her cat was in the carrier on the floor by her feet. I saw her cat cautiously peering out of the caddy door at Max, who was wandering around the carrier. I didn’t think much of it at the time. We went into the exam room and as we extracted her kitty from the box I noticed the cat squinting her right eye. “Well,” I asked, “just when did this eye problem begin?” “What eye problem!” the client exclaimed. “She’s just here for her shots!” More careful inspection revealed a wet substance that smelled suspiciously like cat urine on the right side of her cat’s face.
Clients used to think it was so quaint to have a hospital cat wandering around, greeting everyone, and rubbing up against them in the waiting room. All except the lady standing at the exam table while I examined her Schnauzer, thinking that Max was entwining his tail around her ankles, when in fact he was in the process of spraying on her leg!
And then there was the rainy day when a client left his raincoat on the bench in the waiting room while we examined his pet. Upon retrieving the coat when ready to leave, he discovered that there was a puddle of “water” pooled on the coat. He looked up at the ceiling as if expecting to see a leaky roof as the source of the liquid. My reflex reaction was to seize upon the opportunity to escape responsibility and agree that there must be a leak up there somewhere. But the coincidence of Max sitting on the bench and the subtle but unmistakable odor of cat urine assured me that Max had struck again. I apologized and offered to pick-up the dry cleaning tab for the coat.
Max lived a nice, long life and was loved and well cared for. In return, he provided companionship, affection and endless challenging but amusing adventures. At times he tried my patience, certainly cost me more than a few bucks and might have even cost me a few clients. But I’ll never regret having lived with and cared for Max the Cat. He was quite memorable.

