My cat is vomiting and acting lethargic. Help!
Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties: This is urgent. My 4-year-old female cat threw up and then proceeded to have an excessive amount of saliva on the floor after I cleaned up the vomit. Her nose appears to be pulsating and she growls when you attempt to pick her up, which is not her. She seems lethargic as well. I put her up in her room with the door closed and she isn’t meowing to get out, which is really not her. She eats dry food, refuses to eat wet food. What is wrong with my angel? ~Lori Siouxsie: OK, first things first. If your cat is still acting lethargic or her condition has gotten…
My cats suddenly started fighting with each other. Help!
Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties: This question is urgent, because my roommate and I are going away on vacation soon and we really want to have things fixed before that because the cats will be fed by my mom but no one will be watching them full time. I have two cats. One of them is an 8-year-old neutered female tortie named Sabrina. The other is Speck, a year-old female stray we adopted last year and had neutered, vaccinated and vet-checked. When I lived with my parents, Sabrina had to stay in my room with the door closed all the time, because she had serious social problems with my mom’s cat. She’d cower and…
I’m worried about an injured cat. I don’t know if he has an owner. What can I do to help him?
Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties: I live on a main road. It’s a small town area, but the main road is used by a lot of 18-wheelers as well as commuters who come to town for work. My two cats are indoor only, but the majority of folks in my neighborhood seem to have outdoor cats. There is one cat I’ve been watching for the last year or so. It disappeared for a while, and when it returned, it was in horrible shape. It had obviously been injured. It had also mostly healed. It still has a rather bad limp, and it’s very ragged and mangy looking. It’s obviously friendly, and while it’s scrawny,…
Will kittens born to generations of indoor cats still be able to hunt?
Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties: I read somewhere that kittens learn hunting, climbing trees, and stuff like that from their mothers and from each other. If this is so, then if a kitten is born to a house cat, who was born from another house cat, will the kitten be able to hunt and climb trees and do other cat stuff? Thank you. ~Mary Siouxsie: This is a very good question for Mother’s Day. We cats do learn a lot of important stuff from our mothers, of course. Thomas: Our mothers teach us how to use the litter box–by working with the innate feline instinct to bury our waste–and whether to view people and…
Where do veterinarians work, other than animal hospitals?
Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties: Where can vets find work other than animal hospitals? ~Bailey Siouxsie: We know this isn’t the kind of question we usually answer, but we think it’s a good one. Although we can’t imagine why any vet wouldn’t want to spend his or her life treating cats, we do know that there are other very important jobs veterinarians do.
