EMERGENCY CARE

Earlier in the year, I received a phone call from a cat owner seeking a second opinion. Their four-year-old male orange tabby, Teddy, has always been a bit of a troublemaker, knocking things off counters, chasing imaginary mice and leaving no houseplant un-nibbled. Over the last few weeks, however, Teddy had been battling a stubborn upper respiratory infection (URI), and it was only getting worse, despite treatment.

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.

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.

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.

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It stands to reason that cats who spend all of their time living indoors are far less prone to serious injury than outdoor cats. However, this doesnt mean that an indoor cat is completely out of harms way. Even within their own homes, they can suffer serious injuries, not the least of which are disabling and even fatal burns.

Until a few months ago, your eight-year-old cat Dotty has always been a healthy girl with a robust appetite, good eating habits and an apparently healthy digestive system. Moreover, Dotty has never ventured beyond the confines of your home, so her exposure to any disease that might be carried by other cats in the neighborhood has been virtually nonexistent.

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.

As you probably have already experienced first hand, cats can be tricky to medicate. Veterinarians know that it is difficult for many owners to medicate a cat consistently with a medication that is required twice daily, and almost impossible to administer a medication reliably and unfailingly three times daily. Therefore, most veterinarians aim for a balance between efficacy and ease of administration, prescribing the most effective drug that can be given with the least frequency. …

Virtually all feline surgical procedures - whether brief and relatively simple or lengthy and complicated - require that the patients pain perception be dulled, if not totally blocked, by an anesthetic drug of some sort. These days, sleep-inducing chemical substances are commonly used by veterinarians to reduce or eliminate pain in procedures ranging from such complex interventions as the excision of a brain tumor or the removal of a mass in the chest to such comparatively…

My nine-year-old cat Tommy has arthritis, but he is otherwise healthy. A few months ago, he developed a case of ringworm near the base of his tail. I treated it with a topical medication recommended by my veterinarian, and it went away.