I have two special needs cats - brothers - who both frequently suffer bouts of cystitis. If you've never come across it before (humans can suffer from it too), it's where the bladder becomes infected and/or inflamed, leading to burning or stinging sensations when passing urine.
Sufferers may also need to urinate frequently and urgently while only passing small amounts of urine.
Dealing With The Condition
To help control the condition, my cats are on a special diet and occasional painkillers. They both have access to the backyard so they can come and go from the house as they please. Sometimes they prefer to go to the toilet outside, especially when taking a dump.
As per vet recommendation, I have four litter trays scattered throughout the house. The cats don't like pissing in the same litter box twice.
One cat, Ripley, suffers most and he always uses a litter tray for urination.
His brother, Mocha, is a bit more of a wildcard. He started developing a habit of pissing up against vertical surfaces - walls, sofas, beds.
Needless to say, the house started to stink of cat piss. It took me a while, but I finally found an enzyme cleaner that completely breaks down the constituents of cat pee and removes all odor and staining. But I needed gallons of the stuff.
Almost as fast as I cleaned up one stain, he'd find a new spot to piss in.
Stress in Cats
Stress is a leading cause of this behavior in cats, though what the stressor is has never been identified. It could be anything - another cat in the neighborhood or that some wind-blown bubble wrap was perceived as a threat. And having an uber-sensitive bladder that makes normal squatting during urination uncomfortable also leads a cat to urinate on vertical surfaces.
Mining Rig
I have (had) an Ethereum miner in the TV room. It started life as a Litecoin miner back in 2013 and had an AMD Sapphire Toxic R9-280X 3gb card running as a GPU miner.
After mining Litecoin stopped being profitable, it was re-tasked as a gaming PC.
That is, until a couple of months ago when I heard that Ethereum was taking off and mining it would turn a profit.
The problem, of course, is that mining rigs need lots of ventilation to keep the temperature down.
So, I took the side off the PC during a mining run.
I don't like leaving a rig running unwatched overnight, so I'd turn the rig off before heading to bed.
The Reveal & Consequences
One morning I fired up the rig as normal, set things in motion and then after about 5 minutes, weird artifacts started to appear on the screen. I shut the PC down immediately.
Figuring the video card might have become unseated somewhat, I pressed it back into position. However, when I released it, there was water on my index finger.
Pungent water.
No, it was cat piss.
Some further investigation revealed a lot more cat piss in the PC. None had hit the motherboard but it looked like Mocha had taken aim at the video card and firehosed it.
So, how to clean it and would it recover?
First thing I did was disassemble the card. Then I could see how much of it was affected. I sprayed all the affected areas with the enzyme cleaner. Let it sit for a couple of hours as all that broke down the cat piss and evaporated.
I reassembled the card and tested it out. Nope. Blank display.
I'd heard that if you bake a video card in the oven, it will melt solder so any broken electrical connections will reform. It can extend the life of a dodgy card.
After that little experiment, the card did come back to life. Somewhat. I had a working desktop apart from the four thick alternating vertical red and white bands running through it.
Well, it was progress. I started up the ethereum miner and the screen went black.
And thus didst my video card finally go quietly into that dark night.
RIP Ethereum miner.
If you've tried building your own rig in the last month or two, you'll know that there isn't an RX 470/480/570/580 to be had on the planet. I could get an nVidia GTX 1070 but they're almost twice as expensive as the AMD cards and give the same MH/s.
So thanks Mocha for killing my Ethereum miner.
What Happened Next?
You might like to know that while I thought about strangling the little fucker and kicking the shit out of him, I resisted that impulse. I did restrict him to the kitchen only, for a couple of weeks. Some TLC and prodigious use of a synthetic hormone that calms and de-stresses cats saw his cystitis condition improve. And his urinary habits improved too.
It took about a month, but he no longer pisses on vertical surfaces.
He accomplished his mission though. And he owes me. Big time! This is him: