CAT OWNERSHIP

Just one month has passed since I shared the news about my feline foster family - an adolescent mom and her six kittens - but it feels like a lifetime ago based on how much they have grown and developed.

To better understand mats in cats, lets briefly recap shedding. Seasonal shedding - with the two biggest shedding times of the year occurring in the spring and fall - correlates with the amount of sunlight during the day. However, indoor cats shed year round due to the constant artificial light in our homes; so instead of two heavy bouts of shedding, indoor cats experience continual light shedding. And it is the sloughing of dead hair that contributes to the baneful matting in a cats fur.

My family adopted Boo when he was eight weeks old. He was found when he was about two weeks old in a litter abandoned by their mother, and the kittens were taken to a local rescue organization. A volunteer agreed to foster the kittens in her home, and she bottle fed them until they could eat solid food.

We certainly dont need experts to tell us that cats enjoy having their heads scratched and rubbed by their owners. But experts feel that its probably because this handling reminds them of their mothers. Feline behavior experts believe that when owners take over this role, it inadvertently reinforces the idea that we are their mothers -and it can also serve as a reminder to the cats that they should groom themselves.

The shelter Im affiliated with has had an excess of newborn, orphaned and sickly kittens this year, so foster homes are currently scarce. I have a spare bedroom in my home, so I decided to make myself available for this worthwhile cause.

November 2017 - Full Issue PDF

We plan for so many life events like milestone birthday parties, graduations and weddings, yet we frequently postpone planning the major life event we all face - our death and distribution of our earthly possessions. Simply put, life happens despite our best-laid plans (or lack of planning).

Ahome-cooked diet for your pet sounds great, and it certainly appeals to the emotions, says Cailin Heinze, MS, VMD, DACVN. But realistically, the vast majority of these diets I see cats being fed are not nutritionally balanced because just using whole foods that are typically consumed by humans is usually not enough to balance a cats diet.

Its hard to believe that the dog days of summer are well behind us, and that we have our feet firmly planted in the Fall season once again. Theres something about the cool night-time temperatures and the gradual preparation for winter here in the Northeast that always brings a cozy feeling into my heart.

If you think about it, being a cat veterinarian is not very different from being a pediatrician. We cant ask our patients whats wrong - we just have to figure it out. Nowhere is the role of a cat owner more important than at the veterinarians office, where a good history can sometimes mean the difference between life and death. Veterinarians are faced with a variety of diagnostic challenges on a daily basis.

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, well over 86 million cats currently live in U.S. homes. Two-thirds of them are considered indoor-only feline companions - their owners keep them confined within the home at all times. The remaining one-third are so-called indoor-outdoor cats - they are free to trot in and out of their owners houses as the mood strikes them.

I remember that there used to be a lot of talk about the dangers of BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin used as preservatives in certain pet foods. Have they been replaced by different ingredients, or are there simply fewer concerns about them now?