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Xerin posted:So in summary, do I need to buy multiadvantage every month of the cats life and do soft paws work and can cats really sharpen their claws in a even after you trim them? You do not have to buy Advantage Multi specifically, but you should keep your cat on flea prevention and heartworm prevention as well if you live in an area that has high rates of heartworm (much of the US). This will mean spending $11-20/month. Yes, soft paws really do work, no cats cannot sharpen their claws in 1 day, and you should be running away from that vet as quickly as you can. I trim Eowyn's claws about once every 2 weeks and she never claws anything except her scratch posts and the mats we keep by the doors that she's allowed to scratch on ($10 Ikea mats). All it took was a little patience to train her. Here is the American Veterinary Medical Association position statement on declaws: http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/apr03/030415c.asp The position is not even particularly strict (compared to what is acceptable in many countries) but your vet is way outside of this into pushing declaws and denying that it is possible to train a cat not to claw.
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Jul 25, 2009 04:27
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Booties posted:I'll go look for some of that stuff this week. I've also heard of vinegar as a good neutralizing agent for the smell. The problem is that this is a messenger bag so I'm afraid to put it into the washer because of the velcro wearing out plastic clips melting a little. I can find out about the washing machine from a biking forum though. Wash it on cold with some Simple Solution or Nature's Miracle in addition to the detergent. To be extra sure it comes out I would soak it with some of the enzyme cleaner before you put it in the wash. Velcro washes fine and the plastic clips will be fine on cold (really I'm quite certain they would be ok on hot but just to be safe). Don't put it in the dryer, just hang it up to dry. I washed my Chrome bag and it came out fine.
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Aug 4, 2009 02:38
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Zeus only ever had wet food and I gave it to him 3 times a day when he was young, and twice a day once he hit six months. He never seemed to have an issue with it and the vet never commented that there was anything wrong with it. My mom fed her kittens twice a day starting when she got them and her vet said it was fine. In both cases the cats in question were about 12 weeks old when we started the meals. I can find several food manufacturer and vet clinic websites that said 2-3 meals a day is fine for kittens.
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Aug 10, 2009 14:02
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Smoking_Dragon posted:The word from my friend who frequently flies with her cats (especially through RDU) is that security doesn't care if you have a ticket for the cat or not, only the airline does. She told me that she takes the cat out of the carrier before it gets x-rayed but security never gives her any trouble. If you get caught you will at a minimum be forced to pay the pet fee on the spot and at a maximum be prevented from boarding the plane and forced to pay for a new ticket (with the pet fee). Call them now and pay your pet fee and get things set up properly. Here is the appropriate portion of the website: http://www.southwest.com/travel_center/animals.html (My stepdad is a pilot with Southwest. While I can confirm that security won't care about the cat, I can also confirm that if you get caught with the cat while boarding the airline can (and will) keep your rear end off the plane)
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Aug 20, 2009 18:23
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i saw dasein posted:Kitten pee problems How old is she? How far away is the box from your bed? How easily can she get back to the bed from the floor?
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Aug 22, 2009 03:22
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Fire In The Disco posted:It totally depends on the cat. Some cats can be free fed their entire lives without any problem. Some start to get a little rotund earlier, and should be fed portioned meals. My cats fall into the former category; HondaCivet's fall into the latter. You basically just have to watch and see. I'd keep free feeding her unless you see that she is getting fat. On the flip side, I see no reason whatsoever to free feed unless your cat is having trouble keeping weight on. It's stupidly hard to get weight off of most cats, hard to transition them from free feeding to meals, etc. Just head it off by not ever letting them get chubby in the first place.
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Nov 10, 2009 00:54
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Fire In The Disco posted:I guess the reason I'm skeptical is because I've never in my life had a problem with overweight cats, and I've had anywhere from 3-10 cats at a time throughout my life, which is a total of somewhere around 30 cats. I'd think that with that many cats, we'd have had at least one tubby cat, but we never did. So I'm curious to hear how common cats without the "off" switch are. Exceptionally common. My cat is one, my old roommate had one, the new cat she got is one, my labmate's cat is one, my friend with three cats has one, my brother's cat is one. In fact of all the people I know with cats, only 1 or 2 don't have at least one that can't handle being free fed. And most of them wound up with a pretty fat cat before they realized free feeding wasn't working. Also, I'm probably super sensitive to the issue of obesity in animals because I teach an anatomy lab in which we dissect cats. Even animals that only appear slightly overweight from the outside are grotesquely fat when we open them up. The risks that come with being overweight are generally much much worse than those that come with being slightly underweight. I tend to err on the side of a little skinny than a little chubby.
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Nov 10, 2009 01:52
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Reposting this from the general questions thread in hopes of getting an answer: If it keeps up, I'd be worried about asthma. It could just be a hairball she's having trouble with though (especially if she's prone to them). What is her posture like during the coughing? A hairball cough is usually higher off the ground, where an asthma cough is lower and the neck is stretched out more. As long as she isn't showing other signs of respiratory distress (panting, rapid breathing) or otherwise acting sick I would probably give her some hairball paste and wait a week. If it doesn't resolve I would get her checked out. In addition to asthma, lungworms and heartworms can also cause coughing in cats, as can heart failure (an uncommon presentation in cats, but it does happen).
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Dec 13, 2009 04:01
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Hmm. I'd say it's lower, and she hasn't been prone to hairballs, but I'll watch her more carefully for the next few days and see what happens. She's 3 years old and hasn't done this before; is it usual for asthma to turn up like that? What could cause it, and what does having asthma mean for a cat? Zeus' started at ~2.5 years, although with him there has been some signs earlier. It is pretty normal for it to just kind of start though, at a variety of ages. What it means depends on how severe it is and how you choose to manage it. If it is asthma, it will be a lifelong problem but it does not have to be a life-ending one if it's managed well. A lot of cats with asthma live pretty normal lives.
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Dec 13, 2009 17:10
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Eggplant Wizard posted:Update! Did they say anything specific about the big heart? Big heart can mean some bad stuff...
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Dec 15, 2009 16:50
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Sort of phlegmy sounding but still low to the ground.
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OatmealRaisin posted:I've gotten both of them used to wearing collars, which was an episode in itself, and I'm going to have tags made soon. If you haven't had the tags made yet, I highly recommend https://www.collartags.com. They don't make noise or anything so cats don't find them nearly as annoying. The tags really do not come off, the engraving is great, the shipping is free, and they come in about 3-4 days.
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Dec 17, 2009 00:16
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I agree. Glad you have your kitty back, definitely vet time. You don't want to wait and have him suddenly take a turn for the worse during the holidays when it will be a bitch to take him in and probably cost you twice as much.
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Dec 20, 2009 03:33
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If you need an additional reason to clean the cat boxes more often, you should know that the thing that makes the cat boxes dangerous for your wife, toxoplasmosis, does not become infective in the poop until about 24 hours after the poop leaves the cat. This means that by waiting 2-3 days to scoop you are increasing the risk to your wife.
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Dec 22, 2009 21:04
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spatula posted:Will tapeworms just... go away? Is it possible that only one tapeworm crawled out a cat's butt and that was it? No and No. The pieces you see are just a tiny part of the actual worm, they are segments with nothing in them but eggs and the reason they move after coming out of your kitty is to spread eggs all over the place. This is also why tapeworms are hard to detect on a fecal, the eggs are not released inside the cat.
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Jan 16, 2010 16:09
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Triangle Head posted:I have a random question that popped into my mind earlier. I turned to Google first, but it didn't return anything that actually answered my question. I teach comparative anatomy and one of the primary dissection animals is cats. I have dissected a LOT of cats (several hundred at least by now) and I can tell you two things about that fat pad. 1) ALL cats carry fat in that area, fixed or not. Even cats that are very skinny have some fat here. Including the ones that are fixed. It's just one of their primary fat storage areas. 2) The average housecat is pretty drat fat. What you likely think of as a normal weight cat is disgustingly fat when you open them up. This means they are carrying even more fat on their belly. A healthy weight cat will often not have an obvious dangly fat pad on their belly though, even if neutered. Cats with certain body types are more prone to having one, and it will be more obvious on older cats (think about how the chest of an old man looks compared to that of a young man, even when they are the same weight). There are a couple of reasons that this fat pad tends to be larger and more obvious in neutered kitties. The first is that neutering tends to reduce the metabolism somewhat, which results in weight gain if the owner doesn't adjust how much food the animal is getting (and many don't). The second is that the metabolism naturally starts to slow down around the same time most people get their animal fixed (6-12 months). So you won't see an intact cat with a big fat pad because they aren't old enough to have lost their kitten figure yet. And once kitties get fat they tend to always retain loose skin and some fat in that region even if they've lost weight (same thing happens a lot of people when they lose weight). Of the cats I've owned, one had a bit of a dangly belly, despite never being especially overweight. He just had the body type for it. The other doesn't have one, and she was fixed years ago.
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Mar 18, 2010 04:27
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Any recommendations for keeping them from scratching at carpet? Every morning I am woken up by scratching at the carpet under my bedroom door, and the damage is really starting to show. Double sided tape, upside down carpet protector (like you use for under your computer chair), or vacuum cleaner by door, turned on but unplugged until they start (at which point you plug it in and scare the poo poo out of them).
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Mar 26, 2010 04:24
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HondaCivet posted:Then they have to poop in the dark. The stinky dark. It does not need to be particularly dark or stinky if you make the hole nice and large (40-50% of the lid size). It also reduces litter tracking and lets you place litterboxes in places you otherwise couldn't. I've done both, they are both great for different situations. Hell, a big rubbermaid is still the best litterbox even when you leave it completely uncovered and don't cut any holes in it. Some of my cats seem to prefer jumping in to going through a hole.
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Jun 21, 2010 19:35
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HondaCivet posted:Really? Why does everything say that onions are so toxic to cats then? So people don't give them onion rings as treats every day or something? Because the effect can accumulate. Also because under certain conditions, even a very small amount can be very dangerous for some cats. And because the illness it causes is very dangerous and not easy to treat. UGA vet school page posted:Onions (Thiosulfates)
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Jul 20, 2010 19:49
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