OP - I’ve heard independence animal hospital has good prices. It’s a bit out of the way for me distance wise so I can’t speak to it personally, just what I’ve heard. I’m in the Kc area, if you can’t get a payment plan I could chip in some cash to a cashapp or gofundme if needed.

If you incur a large debt, I will most certainly donate to a crowd funding type thing! A lot of places seem to offer payment plans and stuff like that. That would at least give you a chance to come up with the money instead of having to dash once you get your cat back.

My cat used to get diaherria pretty often. Most common cause would probably be a parasite of some kind. Those usually cost less than $100 dollars to clear up - they might just be able to give you the anti-parasite medication without doing a stool test.

It looks like there's a BluePearl Pet Hospital in your city that takes emergency walk-ins 24 hours a day. I've had good experiences with the BluePearl in my city. There is a walk-in fee (I think around $80 to $100), but you may be able to negotiate a payment plan with them—I found the location in my city to be staffed with very empathetic people. At any rate it's worth calling them to ask. Good luck <3

For litter boxes for our cats, we’ve started modifying big Rubbermaid containers: just get a box cutter and cut out a section on the front (you cut out kind of a wide-ish U with a flat bottom) for your cat to walk through. You can decide how low to the ground you want this entrance to be (leaving it low for older cars who don’t want to hop or whatever).

I don’t remember why we started doing this, I think mobility concerns and a cat shitting on the floor. It won’t solve all problems, for sure, but it’s at least probably cheaper than some litter boxes (and the higher walls kinda keeps litter contained if your cats like to fling litter around as much as mine do).

I dunno, just wanted to throw it out there. Good luck with cats and everything else, friend