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Some nurseries advertise that pollen-free lilies are safe for cats. They’re not. In fact, all parts of the lily plant are poisonous for felines. A cat can suffer fatal kidney failure just from nibbling on a lily leaf or even drinking water from a vase with cut lilies in it. It doesn’t have to be the pollen that’s released from little pods atop the thin filaments in the middle of the flower.

Nearly one in two people with pets have gotten into a disagreement or heated interaction with their veterinarian or others on their animal’s veterinary staff. So says a survey of 1,000 people conducted by Banfield Hospital, which offers veterinary services in 42 states.

The statistics are not comforting. A tumor found either on or in a cat is three to four times as likely to be malignant as a tumor discovered on a dog. Such cancerous tumors can spread to other tissues and wreak havoc on the body. And they occur all too frequently. One in five cats ends up diagnosed with cancer — frequently, but not always, in their later years.

Q: You always hear that white cats are likely to be deaf, but I have an all white cat who has no hearing problems whatsoever. How can that be?

Q: I noticed that some of the nutrients listed in the Guaranteed Analysis panel on the label of my cat’s food have an asterisk that leads to the following statement: “Not Recognized as an essential nutrient by the AAFCO Cat Food Nutrient Profiles.” If it’s not recognized as an essential nutrient, why would the manufacturer add it? The nutrients are not named in big letters on the front of the package as a marketing point.

Q: I have a 14-year-old cat who needs surgery. But at that age, will she be able to tolerate the anesthesia?

Q: My wife and I have noticed that when we put on soft classical numbers, our cat seems to settle in and become calmer. Are we imagining this, or might she actually be responding to the music?

People often assume increased thirst and drinking — medically termed polydipsia — results from diabetes, but it can have a number of other causes:

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• New Guidelines for Helping an Itchy Cat
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• Can Cats Use Facial Expressions to Signal Friendliness to Other Cats?
• Dear Doctor: Worried about dehydration; Cat’s got rhythm; Mental illness in cats.

Forget the old saw that the way to calculate a cat’s age in human ears is to multiply each year by seven. That simply won’t give you an accurate assessment of where your cat is at in life, say the American Animal Hospital Association and the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP).

Sometimes, to treat a medical condition, it’s necessary to change a cat’s diet. Diet changes can be a challenge with cats, however. They develop their food preferences very early on in life and may be reticent to adjust them. That’s why, until a kitten is about four months old, it’s a good idea to feed him a variety of foods — different flavors, shapes, and textures of both dry and wet. That way, if he develops an illness in adulthood that requires he eat food that’s different from what he’s used to, he will be less likely to resist the switch.

People tend to rate their cat’s intelligence by how much their pet interacts with them. Cats deemed smart are often those who spend time connecting with their people. But it may not just be a perception on our part.