Subscriber Only

It can be hard to find room in the house for all your cat’s stuff: scratching post, food and water bowls, toys, bed, litter boxes. Many people relegate many or all of those resources to a back hallway, a staircase landing, or a mudroom off the kitchen. It’s understandable. It keeps the items close by yet more or less out of sight. But from your cat’s point of view, narrow areas like that make unnerving choices.

Drooling, eyelid or facial twitching, excessive vocalizations, growling, and weird head, neck, or limb movements. Each of these can be a sign of a partial seizure, which is much more common in cats than generalized seizures. Partial seizures are also harder to recognize for what they are, unlike a generalized’s seizure’s sometimes violent shaking and loss of awareness. 

Many people feed their cat twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening—and cats in general seem to do fine on that schedule. Some people feed their cats just once a day, and even those pets appear to do okay, although they might like their food divided between two feedings in order not to get too hungry overnight. But if a cat had his druthers, he’d probably prefer several small meals a day—three, four, or even five. Why?

A number of years ago, researchers reported the case of a New Mexico boy who ended up with bubonic plague after he let his cat share his bed. It turned out the cat was infested with fleas who carried the disease, and the boy ended up with flea bites. Another woman who let her cat lick her awake every morning ended up with a serious sinus infection. Yet someone else developed lesions and itchiness on her trunk and arms after her cat, infested with mites, slept in her bed; she was diagnosed with a parasitic infection known as Cheyletiella blakei.

It’s not just the booms of the fireworks that cats hate. It’s the comings and goings of people attending your barbecue, the overall differentness of the day. Cats derive so much comfort from things being predictable. When the flow of daily events is thrown off, your pet is thrown off, too. Here’s how to make the holiday more bearable for your feline family member.

When it comes to people, long-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin and ibuprofen are often thought of as problematic because they can cause problems ranging from a tendency to bleed too easily to stomach ulcers. There can be risks to the heart and brain, too. That said, under a doctor’s supervision, NSAIDs are sometimes prescribed to deal with chronic pain—pain that is not going to subside in a short time.   

Q: Sometimes marijuana is smoked recreationally in our home, and I am worried as our cat does not seem herself when that happens. Am I imagining it, or could there really be some effects?

It’s often said that the best life for a pet cat is entirely indoors because that will keep her safest. But the new 2024 Position Statement on indoor/outdoor lifestyle from the American Academy of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) makes it clear that the truth is more nuanced.

• For How Long Can a Cat Food be “New” and “Improved”?
• Morsels
• 3 Easy-to-Miss Signs of Feline Fear
• Veterinary Chaplaincy Edges Towards the Mainstream
• How Concerned Should You Be about Lumps and Bumps on Your Cat’s Coat?
• What It Means When a Cat Throws a Clot
• Dear Doctor: Vaccine Confusion

One minute your cat seems fine, and the next, she’s paralyzed in her hind legs and is crying out in great pain, dragging herself around by her front limbs. What’s going on?

The COVID pandemic led to more Zooming and FaceTiming, including for veterinary care. And it may be easy to assume that most people have come to prefer such virtual vet visits because it’s more convenient and less stressful than taking your cat to the doctor. But they don’t.

Grief shared is grief abated.