Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:

Can cats carry bed bugs, and if they can, how do you get rid of them on the cat? The place where I’m staying has bed bugs and I have three cats.

~ Jammie

Good night, sleep tight ... and don't let the bed bugs bite.

Siouxsie: Well, Jammie, bed bugs sure are a drag, and they’re the just about single biggest pain-in-the-tail pest of modern life in the U.S. But the good news is that no, your cats will not carry or spread bed bugs.

Thomas: Bed bugs generally don’t live on their hosts. They hide in cracks and crevices and come out at night to feed. Once they’ve eaten their fill, they hop off again and go about their nasty business elsewhere.

Dahlia: And given the choice, bed bugs will feed on humans before they’ll feed on cats, dogs or other animals. You humans have a lot less hair, so you’re easier to bite!

Siouxsie: If your cats are itchy, take them to the vet to make sure they don’t have other parasites like fleas.

Thomas: Because cats don’t carry bed bugs like they do fleas or ticks, you can’t keep them off your cat with flea treatments.

Dahlia: The only way to get rid of a bed bug infestation is to de-clutter, wash the heck out of all your (and your cats’) bedding and clothes, and bring in exterminators to treat your home.

Siouxsie: The ecologically safest way to get rid of bed bugs is heat treatment. Exterminators bring in special machines that raise the temperature of your house to well over 120 degrees F and keep the temperature that high for a set amount of time.

Thomas: One of Mama’s good friends got bed bugs in her apartment, and the property management company had the heat treatment done. She hasn’t seen a bed bug since then — and it’s been a few months now. (Heat treatment is not a DIY project! The Bedbugger.com forums contain a few horror stories about people who’ve destroyed their belongings and sometimes even burned their houses down by trying to heat-treat their own homes.)

Dahlia: You can read more about the various treatments for bed bugs here. They also have some advice for DIY treatments you can use to keep the nasty little things at bay.

Siouxsie: A couple of years ago, we responded to a reader who asked about how cat-safe the various bed bug treatments are. If you’re interested, you can read that column here.

Thomas: So rest assured, your cats are not a bed bug vector, and nobody should blame your cats if the bugs spread!

Dahlia: We hope you and your housemates can get your bed bug situation sorted out and that everybody is less itchy and creeped out as a result.

Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:

Last night I found my 18-year-old cat, Pinky-Boy in front of our space heater, and his whiskers and “eyebrows” are now severely burnt from standing that close. He’s going blind, so maybe he just didn’t realize where he was. I know the space heater seems like a safety hazard, but we have three other cats, and nothing like this has ever happened before. But yes, the heater is now out of reach from Pinky. Anyways, back to my question: can I cut off the burnt edges of his whiskers? I know that whiskers are very sensitive, but because they are so burnt, could the ends be cut? Thank you so much!

~ Katie and Pinky

Siouxsie shows off her whiskers to great effect. The whiskers, or vibrissae, are a vital part of the feline sensory system.

Siouxsie: Well, Katie, first of all, we want to reassure you that you’re not a bad caretaker for having a space heater! Most cats never go close enough to a space heater to burn their whiskers.

Thomas: But when Mama had a space heater in her house, I loved to get so close to it that I singed my fur more than once! It was kind of embarrassing, really … but it was just so cold and I wanted to snuggle up next to the heat.

Dahlia: An interesting thing about cats is that we comfortably endure much higher temperatures than humans do. Animal behaviorist Linda Case discovered in her research that while humans are very uncomfortable at temperatures above 112°F (44°C), cats can tolerate (and even enjoy) temperatures as high as 126°F (52°C).

Siouxsie: So that’s one reason why your Pinky is so in love with your heater.

Thomas: As cats get older, much like people, we tend to be less able to control our body temperature. You’ve probably noticed that elderly humans tend to like much warmer environments than their younger counterparts. We feel the same way.

Dahlia: But now, on to your question. We believe you should not trim Pinky’s whiskers, and here’s why.

Siouxsie: Although the whiskers themselves don’t have nerves, the reason our whiskers are so sensitive is because there are lots and lots of extra nerves in the hair follicles that grow our whiskers. It’s those nerves that react when the whiskers are touched.

Thomas: Cats whose whiskers are cut off tend to lose their sense of orientation in space. This would be extremely hard for a blind cat to deal with! Even the singed ends of his whiskers are helping those nerves to relay messages to his brain about his environment.

Dahlia: The ends of the whiskers will probably fall off on their own eventually, but meanwhile, leave them be.

Siouxsie here. I love my bed so much I didn't even wait for Mama to get it out of the box before I slept in it! If she got me a bed warmer, I'd love it even more.

Siouxsie: You can help make your sweet Pinky more comfortable — and less likely to romance your heater — by providing him with a heated cat bed. This will help keep him comfortably warm, and if he’s a bit creaky with arthritis, the heat will be very soothing to those sore joints.

Thomas: There are three common types of heated beds. One has an electric heating pad that releases a steady heat as soon as the cat gets in it. These tend to be the most expensive.

Dahlia: Beds also come with removable microwavable pads filled with buckwheat or other materials. These can retain heat for half an hour to an hour, and are the least expensive.

Siouxsie: Thermal, or self-heating beds, use insulating material to reflect the cat’s body heat back to the cat. They don’t warm up as fast as electric beds, but they are more affordable.

Thomas: If Pinky already has a bed, you can buy a pet bed warmer and insert it under the fabric cover.

Dahlia: So, Katie, we hope we’ve answered your question and given you some options to help keep Pinky nice and toasty without risking nasty injuries.

Dear Most Esteemed and Knowledgeable Kitties:

I have a 7-year old Siamese mix cat who came to my house as a starving kitten. She was terified of humans, but hunger won out, and after many weeks she allowed me to pet her. I brought her inside where she has stayed since then. She only likes dry food, except for tidbits of chicken which I give her for good behavior. She was drinking lots of water and peeing massive amounts, so I took her to the vet about two weeks ago and had a metabolic panel done. It turns out she is borderline diabetic, and the vet put her on Hill’s Prescription diet m/d for weight loss, low carbohydrate, diabetic — I’m feeding her 3/4 cup per day. She currently weighs 16 pounds. I had a cat that lived 16 1/2 years and died from kidney failure. He didn’t show symptoms until about a year and a half before his death. Is my current cat headed in that direction? Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

~ Carol

Obesity can put cats at risk for many health problems, including diabetes. (This is not Carol's cat, by the way; it's a photo we found in a random Google search.)

Siouxsie: Carol, it’s a good thing you took your cat to the vet when you did. If she’s borderline diabetic, there’s a very good chance you and your vet can work together to manage her care and perhaps even get her back to remission — a non-diabetic state that could last for weeks, months, or even the rest of her life!

Thomas: You didn’t say your vet put your cat on insulin. That’s a good sign: it seems that your vet believes your cat’s diabetic symptoms are due to her obesity, and that if she loses weight she may well go into remission.

Dahlia: Sixteen pounds is quite heavy for a cat. It’s more or less the equivalent of a 5’6″ woman weighing 250 pounds when her ideal weight is somewhere between 135 and 155 pounds.

Siouxsie: So your vet prescribed the m/d food not only to control your cat’s blood sugar but to help her lose weight. If you feed her an appropriate amount of food and spend more time exercising her with interactive toys, the weight will come off, and at a reasonable pace.

Thomas: We visited the Hill’s Pet Nutrition website to get more information on m/d food. According to the chart on that page, 3/4 cup per day is a maintenance dose for a 16-pound cat. For weight loss, they recommend half a cup a day (of course, their chart is trumped by your vet’s orders, so if he or she recommended 3/4 cup a day, take your vet’s advice).

Dahlia: But the thing that really stunned us about m/d dry food was the ingredient list! Most vets agree that a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet is the best way to manage diabetes and correct problems like obesity. But the m/d food’s second ingredient is corn gluten meal. Ingredients 5, 6 and 7 are powdered cellulose (plant fiber), brewers rice, and whole-grain corn.

Siouxsie: Although we’re sure that the carbohydrate levels in this food are lower than they are in most dry cat foods, which is why they can call it low-carbohydrate food, we would encourage you to think about switching her to a canned food.

Thomas: Canned foods have more meat protein by volume and fewer carbohydrates than many kibbles. The reason for this is that kibble needs to be made with carbohydrates or plant products in order to be shaped into those little crunchies, but canned foods don’t.

Dahlia: You say your cat likes tidbits of chicken, so we think you might be able to convince her to eat canned food if you use a product that features chicken. Of course, you may have tried this before, with no luck. But fear not, veterinarian Lisa Pierson has written a great guide on how to transition a dry-food addict to a canned diet.

Siouxsie: We think it would be a great idea for you to do some research on diet and nutrition, and diabetes management in cats, and we’re going to give you some great places to start.

Thomas: Little Big Cat is an award-winning website written by veterinarian Jean M. Hofve and celebrity cat behaviorist Jackson Galaxy. Mama’s learned lots of cool stuff from Doctor Jean, and she highly recommends you check out the Health and Nutrition sections of the site.

Dahlia: We’re big fans of a species-appropriate diet for cats. Cat Nutrition has information on species-appropriate diets and about obesity and diabetes.

Siouxsie: Veterinarian Lisa Hodgkins runs Your Diabetic Cat, a website dedicated to information on the management, treatment — and prevention — of diabetes.

Thomas: The Feline Nutrition Education Society has information on species-appropriate diets, and how to read pet food ingredient labels. You should know, however, that FNES advocates a raw-food diet, and this is still very controversial among veterinarians.

Dahlia: That said, we eat a raw diet at least half the time. Our vet knows this, he knows Mama uses recipes from highly qualified and experience-tested sources, and he’s fine with it, especially because we’re such healthy cats.

Siouxsie: In any case, Carol, you don’t have to make drastic changes and turn your and your cat’s life upside down for her to be okay. Just start educating yourself about diet and do try to transition your cat away from dry food. Canned food — any canned food! — is, in our opinion, better for cats than kibble. Exercise your kitty every day and work with your vet to make sure she’s losing weight at a proper pace.

Thomas: We’re certain that your sweet girl will stay healthy for a very long time to come because you’ve discovered her health condition early. Your quick intervention will ensure that she’ll be a part of your life for many years to come.

Since we’re part of the crowd that amplified the rumor, we feel ethically obligated to set the record straight.

When we responded to a letter from a reader who heard Ellen De Generes and Halo Pet Foods plan to introduce a line of vegan pet foods, we had no idea how much response we’d get to this post and how far it would spread around the blogosphere. We were a little concerned when we were able to source the story to a gossip blog in the Chicago Sun Times, but it didn’t occur to us to ask Halo directly. Yesterday, another blogger asked Halo Pet Foods whether the rumors about a vegan cat food are true, and they said in a direct e-mail and in a tweet that they have no plans to introduce a vegan cat food.

We apologize for our error, and we hope our readers will also share this story and help us get the truth out there.