Allergies

We want the best for our cats, and nutrition plays a vital role in any animals health. But advertising and lay opinions can leave a cat owner wondering whether to feed canned food or dry foods.

Things just got easier for cat owners everywhere. We now have an FDA-approved ointment that targets unintentional weight loss in cats.

Incisions are delicate. Even if your veterinarian has opted to use stainless steel suture to prevent a pet from ripping the suture material, the skin itself can be torn. If your cat rips open her incision, she may be allowing things that should be inside her body to get out and allowing things from the outside world to get in.

While studies have looked at the connection between periodontal disease and kidney failure in dogs, it is only recently that such a connection has been evaluated for cats. In the March 2018 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, a cooperative study between the Banfield Pet Hospitals centered in Vancouver, Washington, and the University of Minnesota looked at associations of these two health problems in cats.

According to Fox 8 in Cleveland, Ohio, Squad 51 was started by Yalanda Medina after a life-and-death health scare with her dog. Her 24-hour emergency response and transport company provides emergency triage-like veterinary paramedics-and transportation to the nearest veterinary emergency clinic.

You go to cuddle with your indoor cat and notice what looks like salt and pepper on your white shirt. Since youre a scientist at heart and want to know exactly what those specks are, you shake them off onto a white paper towel and add a drop of water. Oh no! The black specks dissolve into pink. You found flea eggs and flea feces.

A diagnosis of hip dysplasia might take you by surprise. Usually, a cat comes into the veterinarian because the owner notices that the cat is lame or sore, or less active than normal. Some cats with hip dysplasia will be consistently off in their gait, while other cats only show stiffness after a wild chase through the house.

Many cats will wear down their nails with routine scratching (hopefully on an approved scratching post and not your furniture), but for others, were responsible for their pawdicures. You may need to keep your cats nails trimmed to lessen the damage from scratches or to make your cats affectionate kneading less painful. Cats who dont wear down their nails must be trimmed regularly to avoid the nails growing into the cats paw.

We may now start classifying seizures in cats based on the canine system of the International Veterinary Epilepsy Task Force (IVETF).

Bony or osteo arthritis can be painful. While cats often hide pain well, with the use of pain medications owners often see a dramatic improvement in their cats mobility and quality of life. Many pain medications, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), are not metabolized well by cats and can even be deadly.

A study from Queens University, Belfast, says cats exhibit clear paw preference, much as humans do. Researchers recruited 24 neutered male and 20 spayed female cats and asked the cat owners to collect data on which paw cats used when they stepped down the stairs or over objects, whether they slept on the left or right side of their body, and which paw the cat used to reach for food inside a three-tier food tower.

A recent study took blood glucose readings from a variety of cats 8 years old and older as they entered the veterinary clinic, after they had been hanging out for a few hours, and again after fasting. One challenge of measuring blood glucose in cats is that their levels tend to skyrocket temporarily when they are stressed, such as at the clinic.