Why is it challenging to bring cats to the vet?
Our cat patients are so amazing and we love to see them, but we know that you don't always like to bring them to see us. Cats don't leave the house very often and so sometimes getting them into the carrier or into the car can be a bit of a challenging process, especially if they're not used to being handled that way. And then sometimes there's just some fear and trepidation about what's gonna happen when I get there? How's my cat gonna be? Is everything gonna be okay? I don't want to hear any bad news.
Dr. Jessica Torok DVM
Urban Veterinary Associates
Why does a house cat need to come in for an exam?
There are so many things that I get to pick up on an exam on kitty cats, right? I get to check their teeth, their eyes, their heart. I get to palpate their thyroid to make sure there are no challenges there. I'm gonna ask you some questions about what kind of things are happening in the litter box. Do we have any accidents? How big are the urine clumps, right? So there are all kinds of questions that help me to kind of suss out what's going on with your pet from a routine basis. And sometimes the news is great, right?
What does a wellness exam include?
The other thing we do for all of our feline patients during their wellness exams is some annual lab work, which is gonna include looking at red and white blood cell counts and platelets, checking their liver and kidneys and thyroid, looking at cardiac peptides, right? This is a really important component for feline patients because they don't show clinical signs of heart disease like dogs and people do. They don't often have a murmur. They often don't have any exercise intolerance. The first thing we see for cats sometimes when they have heart disease is that they just go into sudden respiratory arrest. They might throw a clot, be extremely painful. So it's important that we get in here and evaluate them on a yearly basis.
What happens when a cat becomes a senior patient?
Once your pet becomes a senior patient, so for cats that's sometime between 7 and 10 years of age, about halfway through their life, we start to look at some additional components in their lab values, right? We want to make sure that they are not in any way diabetic, that they're not hyperthyroid, that they don't have any sort of other underlying diseases that we need to address for them. We want to look at their teeth, right? Cats are huge crunchers and chewers and hunters, but unfortunately they also can succumb to something called feline resorptive lesions where the body attacks the enamel of their teeth and makes physical holes in the root or the crown of the tooth. And so that's something that we look for on those or on those yearly exams as well. Seniors we like to see twice a year, every six months, right? If we imagine that our patients are aging seven to eight times faster than we are, when you have a ten-year-old cat, they're 70, right? So that's an old kitty. And so we want to make sure that we're looking at those animals and evaluating them as much as we can for their routine health care.
How do you ensure the comfort of your feline patients during visits?
Our patients are happy that we are a fear-free certified practice, right? As certified practitioners, we try to minimize fear, anxiety, and stress in our patients at every visit. We have pheromones in our exam rooms. We have a specific cat-only exam room that is friendly. It doesn't smell like other animals. It's just a really unique way that we can make those cat patients a really important part of our practice.
What should cat owners do if they have more questions?
So if you have any more questions about feline wellness care, please reach out to us here at Urban Vet. Myself and any other doctors are always happy to answer questions. Our nurses are super smart, and they can answer lots of questions for you as well. If your pet's really anxious when they come to see us, as a fear-free practitioner, we're going to make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure their physical and emotional comfort during this time, and we look forward to seeing you soon.
If you have any other questions, please give us a call at (630) 541-8088. You can also email us at [email protected] and we will get back to you as soon as we are able. Don't forget to follow us on social media: Facebook and Instagram