To keep track of the health of our cats, we take our cats to a yearly cat vet check up. That way we keep them in optimal health and know where problems occur and develop.
Keeping Cats Healthy
Keeping cats healthy is a matter of giving them the right amount of food and water and providing them with a cat safe environment. Cats need play and sleep. Cats also need a place they can use as a toilet. Overall cats stay healthy for a good amount of years of our lives. Who doesn’t love these remarkable creatures in and around the house. There is never a boring moment.
Cats are easy, they pretty much take care of their own health. They clean themselves, they eat the food they need, they play on their own, they drink water and so on. Or do they? Are they as healthy as they appear to be? How can we tell?
Hydration Problems
Healthy cats certainly do clean themselves through grooming and they usually also eat and drink enough. Cats are however not extremely good at drinking. This maybe sounds strange, but it is because most of their natural food contains most of the water they need. Ever since we humans have started to feed cats kibble, they are having some troubles getting enough water in them. This is why they come up with things like a cat water fountain to make cats interested in drinking more water.
Signs and Patterns
How will you know that your cat is healthy or not? Well one way is to keep track of what they are doing usually. When you know how they act and react in daily life, you will be able to see a pattern or when a pattern is off. For example, when you know that your cat takes a certain round through the house each day and goes for food, then their litter box and concludes with a sleep in their favourite cat bed, then when there is a day they use extremely long on their litter box, there is something at hand.
Read: Common Signs Of Illness In Cats
A smelly product on the toilet or a cat running too often to the litter box for nr 1 is an easy sign to read when something is wrong. In figuring out these patterns, it is important to clean the cat litter box often, so that you can easier figure out which cats has which type of problem.
Unfortunately are cats also extremely well at hiding certain illnesses. They are proper tough animals, almost like tough warriors, where a wound here or there isn’t going to stop them from doing what they do best. This is also seen very well on cats that got hurt and just keep on going with their wounds. They got enormous survival skill there.
Are they really all that well at hiding or is this simply because we humans still haven’t learned their language entirely yet??
A cat can purr for happiness, but a cat can also purr out of pain, trying to remedy or comfort themselves. It is this type of things that make it very difficult for us humans to assess problems early on or anytime at all. If a cat purrs for so many reasons, how are we able to assess whether there is a problem or whether the cat is perfectly healthy?
One way is to go to the vet!
Go To The Veterinary
A great way of knowing whether your cat is alright or not is by going with your cat to the vet. The vet or veterinary is the doctor for cats and other small pets.
Usually you need to call beforehand and get an appointment. I live in Norway so it is definitely impossible for me to advise to which veterinary you should go, because the people visiting this website are from very different places.
Be sure to check out their reviews on the internet if possible or get advise from other cat owners around you. If nobody knows, your only option is to try one out and see for yourself which veterinary suits you best.
I found a solution on the problem hereby I present you how to:
Search a Veterinary Near You on Google Maps (opens in a new window)
A veterinary will do a general inspection of your cat. If you did come there because of a certain suspected problem, they will generally focus on that problem first. In most cases the vet does a total check-up of your cats health to be sure nothing is missed. If your cat is a tame one, they will simply remove the cat from the box and feel all the sides of the cats body. This way they check the size and feeling of each organ of the cat’s body.
They usually also check your cats ears and mouth. Veterinaries are able to treat most problems and can even treat your cats teeth. Most veterinaries have also possibilities for blood tests, X-ray imaging and echo imaging. They can do a various amount of operations, such as spaying/neutering of your cat and much more. The capabilities of a veterinary clinic depends on the size of the clinic and the amount of facilities and personnel available.
Depending on the diagnose, they can advise you on further treatment and might give you a note for additional medicine of the apothecaries.
Visiting the veterinary the first time around with your pet, they will also ask you if you want to register your pet with them. They might scan for your pet ID if you have one and they want to see the pet passport and health card. If your cat is a new one, they might have to make this for you.
Yearly Cat Vet Check Up
A great way to keep track of your cats health and progress is to keep a log of your cats health at the veterinary of your choice. They will register your cat in their system and in most places they will call your cat in for a yearly cat vet check up.
I have not experienced this yet in Norway, but this might just have to do with the size of our clinic. We simply try to keep track of that ourselves and try to keep up with yearly visits with our cats anyway.
The great thing of a yearly cat vet check up is that you can see changes in your cats health changing over time. You keep coming every year with your cat to the vet and each time your vet will do a full check up of your cat’s health. Everything that has been found or not is being registered in their cat health register. The weight and possible issues are written down each time.
When you come across a problem, treatment is given as usual, but now this problem and treatment is also tracked for your cat. On the next visit to your vet, be it a yearly check up or a check up upon a found problem, your vet is able to better assess the progress or treatment of a certain known problem.
It is also easier to figure out whether a previous signal has been the cause for a new problem. Upon each visit you will learn more and more about your cat. Your cat might also get used to your veterinary and be less stressed out of each visit.
Generally however, cats don’t like a visit to the veterinary, so if your cat is of the extremely stressy type you might want to do check ups less often. My advise however stays on the yearly check up to prevent the situation where you suddenly have to face surprising health issues your cat never shown to you.
Do you take your cat on a yearly cat vet check up? Please leave a comment below!