EVERYDAY CAT CARE

Believe it or not, there was a time when cats were considered seniors when they reached the age of seven or eight years old. As a result of the major breakthroughs in veterinary care - along with the many advances in feline nutrition - cats are now considered elderly at twelve, seniors at age fourteen and geriatric at the age of fifteen. Today, some cats can even live up into the upper teens and into their twenties.

When we invite cats to live with us in our homes, its our responsibility to align their basic needs as closely as possible to Mother Natures provisions. The natural substrate that cats use outdoors for elimination is dirt or sand.

I am fostering an adolescent stray mother cat and her three kittens (I picked them up when the kittens were about one-week-old) and I fed her a high-quality wet cat food the first few days.

In a striking visual of the tenacious bond between pets and their human parents, Houston residents remained yards from the safety of the George R. Brown Convention Center during last summers Hurricane Harvey because they were not permitted inside with their cats and other companion animals.

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.

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.

Most people have some familiarity with the concept of a blood transfusion, perhaps by donating blood to the local Red Cross, or possibly as a recipient during a hospital stay. Thankfully, most cat owners have very little experience with transfusions when it comes to their pets.

Although two submicroscopic organisms - the feline leukemia virus (FeLV) and the feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) - differ from one another in a number of significant ways, they have one very important characteristic in common: Infection with either of them can cause a cats premature death.

Much in the same way that stress affects humans, it can also affect cats. While brief periods of stress can help cats to survive dangerous situations, recurrent or prolonged stress can be harmful for them both physically and emotionally.

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.