Category Archives: Cats

A few years back, one of my dog-owning clients asked me about getting a stroller for her dog. She wanted to walk to the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center for her dog’s appointments, but her dog tired easily and she thought a stroller would make the walk to AMC easier for both her and her dog. My first reaction was “that’s dumb, a dog stroller” but after thinking about it a bit, I realized the dog stroller had many uses to improve a dog’s quality of life and wrote about it in a previous blogpost. Never did I think of putting a cat in a stroller. Now, a new research study is investigating if strolling with your cat is a good idea. I’ll discuss the study in today's blogpost.

August 17th is National Black Cat Appreciation Day. This is a much-needed holiday as black cats have been unfairly maligned since the Middle Ages. In a Papal Bull issued in 1232, Pope Gregory IX damned black cats as the incarnation of Satan. Several centuries later, another Pope, Innocent VIII, linked cats, the devil and witches by writing, “The cat is the devil’s favorite animal and idol of all witches.” At the time of the Salem witch trials in colonial Massachusetts, witches were thought to transform into black cats who could roam the countryside and cause mischief.  These superstitions have led to “black cat bias,” a term applied to the negative feelings people have about black cats, compared to cats with other coat colors. Black cat bias may also lead to longer shelter stays for black cats relinquished to an animal shelter. Today’s blogpost will focus on one of these unfortunate black cats, a five-week-old, flea-infested black kitten, brought to AMC by a Good Samaritan. This little waif was covered with so many fleas, she had become anemic. The photo accompanying the blogpost shows her in her ICU incubator with an IV catheter in her arm for her blood transfusion.

June is Adopt a Shelter Cat Month, and we’re highlighting our feline friends throughout the month with a series of cat-focused posts. Last week’s blogpost highlighted the health risks of feline

June is Adopt a Shelter Cat Month, and we’re highlighting our feline friends throughout the month with a series of cat-focused posts. Last week’s blogpost highlighted the risk of the ongoing H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak for your cat. Today I am blogging about chonk.

June is Adopt a Shelter Cat Month, and we’re highlighting our feline friends throughout the month with a series of cat-focused posts. Last week, I highlighted some household hazards specifically affecting cats. Today’s blogpost will focus on a much larger issue, the current nationwide outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1. The term highly pathogenic refers to how the virus behaves in birds. It may behave differently in other animals.