Ask Dr K

Dear Elizabeth, I cant help feeling envious of the absolutely beautiful photos that have been taken of you. You are clearly a stunning cat of exquisite beauty, but I wonder how the photographers at the Feline Health Center have been able to capture your soul in their photos. I would dearly love to have some similar photos of my equally beautiful cats, but all I get are fuzzy, out-of-focus shots of their tails as they flee the room, or photos where their eyes are red and they look devilish. Do you have any tips that you could share?

It all started innocently enough, when he started feeding the strays in the neighborhood and took in a pregnant cat, which soon gave birth to six kittens. Then the neighbors started coming to him with stray kittens they found. He meant to find them all homes of their own, but good homes were hard to find. Now, he has so many cats that he cant afford to have them neutered (which means the population has been growing astronomically). Theyre not receiving any medical care, so some of them are sick, and its all he can do just to feed them each day. The neighbors are trying to have him evicted and I cant say I blame them. I dont know how to help him, but I do know something needs to be done!

Dear Elizabeth: My vet tells me that my indoor-only cat, Izzy, needs to be vaccinated for rabies. We live in an apartment in New York City and Izzy is never outside, so why does she need a rabies vaccine?

Pearls pupil shape is unique to the family Felidae and is meant to maximize vision in low light. Did you know that cats can see at eight times dimmer illumination than humans? This gift is part of our heritage as nocturnal, carnivorous mammals. Our ancestors success in the wild depended on being able to hunt at dusk and dawn, times of day when many potential dinner species are most active. Adaptations to the eye improved our wild relatives night vision. For house-cats like me, these adaptations enable me to hunt wild bugs in the closet at night, allow me to startle people with glow-in-the-dark reflective eyes and are part of what make me uniquely feline.

You may not be aware of this, but I, too, struggle with my weight! I arrived at the Feline Health Center slightly chubby, but healthy. Unfortunately, like many indoor cats, my energy expenditure each day was more than matched by my caloric intake. As is true for you humans, my furry body is just like a machine: If fuel input in a day exceeds energy output, the remainder is stored - as fat, which is unsightly around my middle - and unhealthy, too. My obese friends have a higher incidence of diseases such as diabetes mellitus and suffer more from conditions like arthritis.

We are enormously saddened to report an immeasurable loss to the feline community. James R. Richards, DVM, the author of this column, editor-in-chief of...

But the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, widely held to be the cause of the Black Death of antiquity is alive and well, causing roughly 1,000 to 2,000 human cases of plague every year, primarily in rural areas of developing countries. Requisites for the diseases persistence are the availability of rodent (or sometimes rabbit) "reservoirs" with the ability to reproduce to high numbers, the year-round feeding of appropriate flea "vectors" and the proper environmental conditions. In the United States, the majority of cases in reservoir rodents - usually rock squirrels, ground squirrels and prairie dogs - occurs in the Southwest, but infected animals may be seen anywhere west of the Rockies. During heavy outbreaks in these animals, cases have been detected as far east as Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Most human cases of plague in the U.S. arise from two areas: one in the region encompassing southern Colorado and northern New Mexico and Arizona, and the other encompassing western Nevada, California and southern Oregon.

I have two cats, both five years old. Both eat dry and canned food and live exclusively indoors. My male cat has cervical line lesions of his teeth. Hes had two teeth removed already, and my veterinarian told me his problem could get worse. Can you tell me about this condition and what I can do to slow it down? My veterinarian said my cat should be examined every six months, but what else can I do for him?

My dear friend, Dr. Jean Holzworth, a lifelong devotee of cats and a veterinarian of immeasurable importance to feline medicine, passed away this January. She would have been 92 years old had she survived until March 26 of this year. Dr. Holzworth received her bachelors degree, Masters degree and PhD in Latin from Bryn Mawr College, but after a beloved cats death in 1943 from feline panleukopenia (for which no vaccine then existed), she turned from teaching at Mount Holyoke College to veterinary college at Cornell University, from which she received her DVM degree in 1950.

Domestic cats are seasonally polyestrous, meaning their reproductive cycles occur multiple times during certain seasons of the year. The timing of the cycles is largely dependent on the amount of daylight. As the hours of daylight begin to lengthen in temperate parts of the northern hemisphere, the breeding season of outdoor cats starts in January or February about 20-60 days after the winter solstice and extends through September or early October.

Q- I recently lost a three-year-old female cat to heartworm disease. I would like to see more information on what heartworms are, how to treat them, and most importantly, how to prevent these parasites from taking our precious cats. All of my cats are indoors, fixed, and go to the veterinarian yearly.

Many of you will recall that Dr. Mew, our longtime feline companion at the Cornell Feline Health Center, passed away earlier this year. We werent actively interviewing to fill his vacated position, but Elizabeth, the lovely tricolored kitty pictured here, had recently lost her previous job. We offered her a temporary position until she proved her capacity to fulfill the responsibilities which she most certainly has and she recently accepted our offer of full-time, permanent…