Hello all you pet lovers!
February 17, 2009 by jana
Hello everyone!
This will be my newest blog about Pet Care. I am a Registered Veterinary Technician and I practiced for over 35 yrs total. I was forced to retire in 2000 from a serious back injury sustained on the job but I am still licensed and keep current in all aspects of veterinary medicine.
So what’s this blog about? It’s about tips and ideas for pet care. It’s about columns I will write about topics that I am passionate about- how to properly care for your furry house-mates and friends.
I want feedback from you- I want your ideas. I can give you advice about problems your pet may be having but I will not diagnose something for you- only a licensed vet can do that. With that in mind you will hear me tell you to go straightaway to the vet’s many times.
Any advice given in here is not a substitute for veterinary care and must be taken as is for that reason. YOU are responsible for your pet’s health- don’t skimp on it. In this day of economic crunches and crisis we are seeing an alarming rate of pet abandonment. Horses being abandoned and left to die or taken to shelters is up over 300% alone! Shelters are being flooded with pets being relinquished by well-meaning owners that have lost jobs, houses, families.
Most of these animals could have stayed with their families with some forethought and sometimes some help. It is a very sad situation indeed.
I advocate and stress shelter adoptions!! If you are breeding a mutt then you are being very irresponsible and I will let you know that. Some people reading this blog might get mad at me as animals bring out a lot of emotions in people.
Either way, I will be telling it the way it is! So send me some questions or ask about whatever it is you want to know about your pet and I will attempt to give you an answer that you can use, BUT DO NOT USE THIS SITE AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR TAKING YOUR PET IN TO SEE A VET WHEN IT IS SICK!! I DO NOT CHECK THIS BLOG DAILY AND IF YOU WAIT FOR AN ANSWER FROM ME WHILE YOUR PET IS SICK YOU COULD BE RISKING THEIR LIFE!! I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.
CALL YOUR VET IF YOUR PET IS SICK!!
So join me now and then for a lot of information and some laughs too.
Take care and until then have a great now!
13 Responses to “Hello all you pet lovers!”
Hi Jana~
We recently had our 2 KitCats vaccinated against the deadly rabies virus. I feel good about this. I know a bite from a rabies carrying skunk, fox, raccoon or bat is fatal to an unprotected cat or dog. The girls take daily hikes with us in the oak forest surrounding our house and they have befriended an odd assortment of wildlife. Is there anything else I need to do to keep our almost adult kittens healthy as we continue to explore the outdoors together?
Another concern that I have is about their rodent diet. Can any disease or illness be contracted from eating rats, mice and gophers? Oh and lizards- I’ve seen lizard tails hanging from Alley Cats mouth- are they safe to eat?
Thanks
And great website Jana!
Hi Cherie,
You are my first commenter on my new blog. You asked some very good questions.
All cats should be vaccinated for Rabies as well as the typical and usually fatal feline viruses like Leukemia, FIP (feline infectious peritonitis) and FIV (Feline Immunosuppressive Virus) which is a lot like AIDS in humans.
Just remember that wild critters can do more than bite your cats, they can eat them. Coyotes are the worst offenders with foxes following closely. So keep them in at night when these predators are on the prowl.
As far as rodent diets go- well it is hard to get them to stop eating them unless they are in the house 24/7. Cats can pick up tapeworms from eating mice and rats both. We cannot get them from the cats but it is pretty gross to wake up with a moving tapeworm segment on your arm or worse!
So cats that eat rodents should be tapewormed once every other month. It takes 28 days for a tapeworm head to regrow a body so one worming might not kill it. That happens a lot or they have ingested a new worm egg that has hatched. You must buy tapeworm medicine at the vets- it is NOT an OTC drug.
Lizards are not good for cats-period. They have a substance in them called Avidin that can cause the Biotin in their food to become bound up (non-absorbable), making it unavaiable and we have seen cats nearly starve to death by eating them. They act like a cat with leukemia but their color is good, so we know they don’t have FELV. Cats with FELV are very anemic and have no color in their mucous membranes.
Lizard eating cats, on the other hand, can become weak and very thin very fast. We put them on a vitamin tonic that is liver flavored and they do very well on that.
Blue Belly Lizards are particularly dangerous as they have a toxin that can poison a cat. If the cat is in an already weakened state it can kill them. Most cats just get very ill from them and won’t eat for days and will vomit.
Most of the time they only HAVE the tail. Lizard’s tails are made to break off when they are pounced on so most of them do get away and all the cat gets is the tail. But a steady diet of tails isn’t good either.
So watch what they eat when they are outside!
Hi Jana,
Once in a while our cat seems to be constipated. It’s hard to tell how often, because she almost always goes outside rather than use the litter box. But maybe every few months she seems uncomfortable, scratching in the litter box but not passing anything. On a couple of these occasions she has had a protruding hard stool that I have to finish pulling out for her.
She is congenitally tailless, or almost so, just with a rabbit stump. At least I think it’s congenital – she showed up at our house as a young adult. I’ve read that sometimes the tailless mutation can be associated with problems in bowel control. She is on Hill’s c/d Prescription diet – the dry kind. She gets a little milk every couple of days if she is insistent about asking for it. Of course, she always has water available. She used to catch and eat lots of rodents and birds. That seems to have almost completely stopped now, but she’s still lively and healthy.
So is there something I can or should do for her? I tried giving her canned pumpkin, but she had absolutely no interest in that. Could something like Benefiber in her water be helpful? I’d be a little concerned about getting the dosage wrong. If I need to, I suppose I can try giving her canned food, but then I don’t know whether she would ever go back to the dry.
Thanks
Hi Ray,
I am going to guess that your cat is a bit older than the average five yr old by what you are telling me.
You hit the nail on the head when you mentioned the tailless factor. Cats like Manx can have a bowel problem since the nerves that control the rectum run out of that part of the spine.
When a cat has a short tail, the nerves can be less functional than normal. In some cats, they don’t work at all and you can imagine a kitten like that doesn’t last long.
Pumpkin could help but it again is more nerve control than dry stool. Keeping her stool soft will help. I give my cats about a tablespoon of wet food every morning but they live on Science Diet Senior the rest of the day. I haven’t had the issue with dry stool since my cats have been getting the wet/dry food combo.
You can also try Vetasyl, which is a powdered formulation of psyllium. That helps also but you need to put it on wet food. I am not sure what benefiber is but it sounds like a human product. You have to be careful about the fillers and sweeteners that they add for us in those products. Vetasyl has none of them. Most of the vets carry it. You can also use a small spoonful of olive oil every few days but that has no fiber in it. Hill’s w/d is a good food for this problem because it has extra fiber in it.
Since she is already on C/D try a few cans and just give her a small amount in the mornings and night- a spoonful twice a day.
There may be some new stool softeners on the market for cats but I don’t know what they are.
Let me know if any of these ideas help.
this looks like it’ll be a great site! I’ll check back often. Hopefully I’ll never need to ask for advice about my cat but you never know. 🙂
My kitten just died from something very toxic, and I’m afraid that I did not read the signs well enough and let him dehydrate. Today I found the remains of what he ate, and it looks as though it was a large blue belly lizard. Could I have saved him if I had made sure he had enough fluids in him? I am heartbroken, and feeling very guilty and neglectful.
He was vomiting some, and lethargic, but it seemed as though he was drinking, though he had no appetite. I don’t know if I could have done anything or not.
Lini,
I am guessing you live here in Sonora? Are we talking about an actual kitten or an adult cat over one year?
Yes blue belly lizards are very toxic to cats. I had one almost die from eating one years ago and she stayed under my house out of reach so I couldn’t get her to the vet. She was an adult, however, and that is probably why she survived.
The dehydration, more than the toxins, or combined with that and his size, probably was too much for him. The vomiting and lethargy are the warning signs but kittens just don’t have any reserve.
Most young kittens aren’t good enough hunters to catch a blue belly lizard. One thing that lizards to do is they bind the B vitamins in the body and make them unavailable to the cat. The substance that does that is called Avidin. It’s in raw egg whites also.
So the cat can starve to death or close if they eat a lot of lizards all the time. They present to the vet with signs that look like leukemia but the color of their gums is pink, and in leukemia cats it’s pale or white.
I am really sorry to hear about your kitty. Not knowing what to watch for doesn’t make you a bad pet owner. Now you know what to do. I always tell people that if the cat isn’t eating for 24 hours to call the vet because they really shouldn’t go that long without eating. It’s hard to break a cat from hunting but that is why indoor cats are so much safer.
I hope that you will find another cat perhaps at the humane shelter that needs someone to love them again. You won’t be sorry. Until then, my thoughts are with you.
Hi my name is Vs and I have always wanted a puppy but my parents always say no and we already have 2 dogs 3 cats and 2 fish I know that we already have niugh dogs as it is now but i want my own puppy to take care of and it would be mine only and my parents or my siblings wouldnt have to take care of it only I would but I’m having trouble conviencing my parents I feel like I have tried everything! please help me!
this looks like it’ll be a great site! I’ll check back often. Hopefully I’ll never need to ask for advice about my cat but you never know. 🙂
this looks like it’ll be a great site! I’ll check back often. Hopefully I’ll never need to ask for advice about my cat but you never know. 🙂
I took in a stray kitten that was dumped at our house. We live in a rural area. The kitten is (guessing) about 5 or 6 weeks old. She seems to be ok and has good bowel movements and is now worm free. She has blue spots under her skin on her belly. She is very thin. Could this be her intestines under her skin or bruising? What coud it be if not those two things? Thanks
HI Penny,
there are a few things she could have on her belly. They do bruise, and if she was on her own she might have had a tumble or gotten scratched by another cat and you are seeing the end of the healing.
Certain colored cats do have dark freckles on their bellies, so it could be that. If they are more like a wavy line and are really blue they are probably veins or some shallow blood vessels you are seeing.
Bless you for taking her in. Make sure she gets a good check up from your vet, and is tested for leukemia, FIP, FIV and is vaccinated against these deadly diseases and distemper etc. She should be put on a high quality kitten growth formula such as Science Diet Kitten Growth.
Do not feed her Purina Kitten chow as it has milk in it and will cause diarrhea and very foul stools. Cats and dogs are lactose intolerant once they are weaned.
Keep her healthy and she will be with you for many years! Thanks for posting!
My cat is overweight and recently, I have noticed that after she has a bowel movement, the area around her anus has not been cleaned, and she has small areas of matted fur and left over dingleberries around her anus. Do you have any idea why this is happening all of a sudden?