EVERYDAY CAT CARE

It requires a special kind of devotion to care for a chronically ill pet. Here are expert tips to make some of the necessary tasks easier for both of you.

Although this may be old news to cat owners, new research reveals the feline tongues microstructures are uniquely suited to pull out snags and tangles in a cats coat. While the tongues texture is also helpful to the cat while eating and drinking, it is first and foremost a grooming tool.

Q My son and I recently adopted an older cat from our local shelter. We named him Vincent and so far, so good. He came with his necessary vaccinations, etc. so we havent needed to take him to the veterinarian yet. One night while watching television, Vincent was rubbing on me and I noticed something strange about his teeth. He is missing one of the big fangs!

Q I have been breeding Singapura kittens on a very small, informal scale for several years and will soon be ramping up the scale with three fertile females and the launch of a small online cattery.

The University of Missouri plans to study the benefits of placing shelter cats in homes of children with autism thanks to fundraising help from the MU Research Center for Human-Animal Interaction. The project - called Feline Friends - is important because one in 68 children is diagnosed with autism, according to Rebecca Johnson, PhD, Director of the center.

With the arrival of winter, you should take the necessary measures to protect your cat against the health hazards that cold, inclement weather can create. Most vulnerable to various cold-weather disorders are those cats who spend all or the bulk of their time outdoors. Cats who are allowed to go outside even for brief periods of time during the winter months are also at significantly greater risk than those who never put a paw beyond the front door.

Q Our two cats are siblings, and have long, handsome tails, which are mostly held straight up. However, the last three to four inches seem to be independent of the rest of the tail. When the tail is straight up, the end of it wags gently back and forth. But when they are stalking something, the majority of the tail is held down, but the end remains up.

Each trip I make to the supermarket, I always think of the people who are able to amass a tremendous amount of savings by clipping coupons and knowing exactly when and where to shop. I must admit that I lack that type of discipline! But I do stock up on staples when theyre on sale - especially cat litter and cat food - and I feel like a good cat mother whenever the pantry is full.

Even though similar statistics have been available before, it has become even more evident this year that cat owners dont take seriously the idea of regular veterinary visits.

Thanks to a consortium headed by the food company Royal Canin, a new survey was conducted in June 2016, and the results were not good: Cat owners were six times less likely to have taken their pets to the veterinarian this year as opposed to dog owners.

Car sickness, a problem marked chiefly by an animals inability to ride in an automobile for any length of time without becoming physically ill, psychologically disoriented, or both, affects a high percentage - perhaps as many as half - of all household cats in the U.S.In some cases, the disorder and its manifestations may be caused by a fleeting disturbance of a cats vestibular system - the complex array of nerves and other components, centered in an animals inner ear and lower brain, that governs his sense of balance and coordinates the movement of his head and eyes.

The statistics speak for themselves. Seventy-one percent of pet-owning women who find safety in a womens shelter report that their abuser had also injured, maimed, killed or threatened family pets for revenge or to gain psychologically control. Furthermore, 32 percent of the children who end up in shelters to escape domestic abuse had themselves harmed or even killed pet animals; the lessons modeled by the offending adult seep in insidiously.

Over the years, our family has lived with a number of cats. Each was certainly unique in his or her own way, but quite a few of them shared the same trait: They drooled sometimes while you were petting them. To clarify, it often appears like drool, but sometimes its a single droplet that seems to come from their noses. Its obviously not a health concern, but just an interesting behavioral thing that I would like to understand better.