Sorry so long...
Our beautiful and charming 6-year-old has started to develop some pretty frustrating issues, and I wanted to see if anyone else would weigh in with their personal stories on this.
She has not been to the vet in her life until this year-- except once, when she was diagnosed with bladder stones, which were able to be cleared using a urinary diet. About 6 months ago, she again developed stones (my boyfriend, her original adoptive dad, had been supplementing her urinary diet with non-urinary food, which he didn't know he wasn't supposed to do)-- this time, she went in for surgery and had a ton of them removed, like 30 of them. She healed up fine, and everything seemed normal until a couple months ago, when she started peeing on everything.
We took her to the vet, and they told us that this was a behavioral symptom. Over time, however, we realized that she wasn't seemingly "marking", because she had started peeing in her sleep, and when she was relaxing. Once, she started peeing while she was just standing there near her food bowl, which seems like very un-catlike behavior.
So we took her to a different vet-- this one listened and prescribed phenylpropanolamine (Proin), which she has been taking for about a week, and which she hates, but at least isn't throwing up afterwards anymore... but last night she peed 4 times in the span of just a couple hours. We have pee pads all over the place, currently.
I have been researching post-surgery cat incontinence issues and coming up with very little. Yesterday, I was talking to a friend whose cat has recently passed away, and looked up Manx cat lifespan. In great big bold letters, AI informed me of Manx Syndrome, something I had not heard of before. One site said that she would be unlikely to develop symptoms later in life, as they would have diagnosed her as a kitten. But, again, my boyfriend had a very "no vets unless necessary, they don't even need to be vaccinated because they're indoor cats" approach to the care of his 2 cats (the other one is a DSH; also, he has now changed his tune and they are both up to date on their vax), so I don't know if she would have been diagnosed. He has had her since she was a very small kitten, and her tail was not amputated, she was adopted from the local Humane Society, and I have no idea how thorough her clinicians were throughout her adoption process.
The other option I can think of for her incontinence is bladder atony, caused by blockages from the stones. I think it's at least as likely that the incontinence is caused by atony as it is by Manx Syndrome.
2 questions for people with incontinent Manxes: did any of your cats start showing symptoms of Manx Syndrome at her age? And, she's been to 4 different vets now, between the bladder surgery and the incontinence: why do you think none of them have mentioned Manx Syndrome to us yet?
TL:DR, Stone-prone Manx pees everywhere-- Manx syndrome or bladder atony? I'd love to hear your experiences.