All posts by AMCteam

If you watch television, you’ve likely seen advertisements promoting the health benefits of yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha. These foods contain probiotics—“good” bacteria and fungi with health-promoting properties. Just like humans, all living creatures have a resident population of bacteria and fungi called the microbiome, and I’ll discuss the microbiome of dogs in today’s blogpost.

About ten years ago, I developed an educational presentation for veterinarians titled “A Cat Is Not a Little Dog.” This presentation highlighted diseases that affect these two species very differently. For example: Diabetes: Dogs can develop Type I diabetes, while cats develop Type II diabetes Thyroid Disorders: The most common endocrine disorder in dogs is hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid gland), while cats more often have the opposite condition, hyperthyroidism (an overactive thyroid gland) Mast Cell Tumors: These skin tumors are most common in dogs, while in cats they often occur in the spleen. However, there are a few medical similarities between dogs and cats that might surprise you. Today’s blogpost highlights three key areas where our feline and canine companions face similar health challenges.

The second Sunday in September is National Pet Memorial Day—a day when we remember those animal companions who live on in our memories. Both humans and pets grieve over the loss of an animal companion, and there’s new research about grief in cats to deepen our understanding of our feline friends’ feelings. I’ll share these new findings in this blogpost.

We had a “Lost in Translation” moment last week in the clinic. While discussing the need to place a catheter in a patient to administer chemotherapy, the pet’s family asked, “How will he urinate if there’s a catheter in his bladder to administer chemotherapy?” We were talking about an intravenous catheter, and they were talking about a urinary catheter. After a bit more chatting, we cleared up the misconception, but I suspect this family is not the only one with questions about catheters—and that is the subject of this blogpost.

August 22 is “Take Your Cat to the Vet Day,” but here at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, every day is take your cat to the vet day. In the first half of 2025, our veterinarians saw more than 1,300 feline patients. While 74 million pet cats share our homes in the United States, another 30 to 40 million stray cats live in our communities, according to the inaugural issue of the World of the Cat Report produced by Hills Pet Nutrition. “Take Your Cat to the Vet Day” originally began to promote better care for cats, addressing a significant gap in feline healthcare. Cats visit the veterinarian much less often than their canine counterparts--only 40% of cats visit the veterinarian annually, compared to 82% of dogs. In today’s blogpost, I’ll discuss the barriers cat owners face when taking their pet to the veterinarian, new research to help improve feline health that you and your cat can participate in and good news about treatments for feline disease.