Spotted Cat Designs

I can cruise the net with the best of them Anecdotal stories are often interesting. However, when it comes to caring for our precious family members — that includes my sons as well as our cats I prefer to get my medical advice and information from those whose jobs involve staying at the forefront of medical knowledge.

Cornell University Veterinary School’s Feline Health Center has quite a few free online brochures related to various health and behavioral concerns. You can read them as an article or download as a .pdf file. Where appropriate they cross reference their own videos. From the link above, you can also access a glossary of feline medical terms, articles from their newsletter CatWatch.

At this writing there are 8 articles about general health issues ranging from what to do if your cat is “going outside the box” to dealing with aggression. There are four brochures about feline infectious diseases including zoonotic (transferable to humans) disease. And there are six about specific feline health diseases.

The American Veterinary Medical Association has lots of feline health brochures in English and Spanish; printable .pdf files and online readable files. Veterinary clinics can order mix and match packages of 50 brochures to give to clients. They also have a huge number of .pdf files concerned with disaster preparedness, mostly for veterinary practices and state organizations, however there are a few that are of use to pet owners such as Saving the Family (including pets!).

Go and see for yourself!

Not in any particular order, these are some of the web sites that have helped us recognize, understand, and cope with a variety of medical situations and conditions. See also my blog entry on feline asthma, and my older article on cats with allergies. I also wrote a more exhaustive article covering online feline medical and health resources.

These are some of the first places we turn to:

The Pet Web Library by the Mar Vista Medical Center of Los Angeles offers a free alphabetical listing of many diseases and disorders with information to help you understand the condition and what can be done about it. It was one of the first places we found when our beloved Glory was diagnosed with pancreatitus.

American Veterinary Medical Assoc. and their Animal Health section for pet owners

NetVet and the Electronic Zoo Created by Dr. Ken Boschert DVM. While not recently updated, still a great place to browse for information

The British Small Animal Veterinary Assoc.

Canadian Veterinary Medical Assoc has Animal Health Care Information and Advice

Whenever I see or hear one of our cats having hairball coughing, I immediately get the Laxatone or Petromalt and give them about 1 inch (2.5 cm) every other day for a week and then weekly. Then I get my family to increase brushing and combing our cats. For more on this subject see Hairball Express or the Fur is Flying.

The problem is that not all coughing means a hairball. Sometimes it can be far more serious. Asthma attacks are an emergency. Asthma can kill. I recommend you watch these videos (links below) so you can recognize the symptoms, and can take appropriate emergency measures. Know where the nearest emergency vet clinic is located. If you think you have seen these symptoms in you cat, talk to your vet ASAP.

As someone who has asthma, I know how scary a sudden onset attack can be. Seeing it in a cat was heartrending. There are medications such as albuterol inhalers, Flovent and steroids to cut inflammation — how familiar I have used them, too… They even have the aerokat pet inhaler designed as a feline friendly device for using MDI’s (metered dose inhalers). This video shows it being used.

Each of the people who took these videos did so in order to educate others.

I found Dave’s Feline Asthma attack video while browsing. That is what got me started on this blog entry. The coughing is not like hairball coughs I have heard. Much more labored and tiring for the poor kitty.

This video gives a medical explanation of symptoms associated with feline asthma.

Another video of a cat with labored breathing. As the person who posted this wrote: “The purpose of this video is to give an example of what labored or abdominal breathing looks like. This video was made in order to show our vet what we were seeing. Needless to say, Stinky [their cat] was brought in to the emergency room after capturing this footage. Note: Normal respiration should be between 20-30 [per minute].“

Cats can also have food or environmental allergies, as we found out when Glory repeatedly started scratching the side of her neck until she was bloody. For a more detailed discussion of what we learned, see my article “When Cats Have Allergies“.

I had an earlier post on some Online Feline Medical and Health Resources to find reliable medical information regarding feline health issues. Looking it over, I think I will add others in a future blog entry when I can.

We not only have cats, we have reptiles and fish at our home. Since I work full time, time for shopping and especially for browsing is limited. My solution, like that of so many others is to surf the Internet. A lot of these places have email newsletters that I have signed up for, so I know in advance about sales and special offers.

Some of my favorite web sites for pet products are:

Drs. Foster & Smith – The Trusted Name for Cat Products

Petsmart

Pet Planet (U.K.)

Only Natural Pet Store

Amazon.com
Amazon is a good place for comparative product reviews.

And for those with allergies to pets my favorite site is: Allergy Control Products.

Other sites to go to are:

iAllergy

Allergy Be Gone

See my article about human allergies to cats and coping with an allergic cat.