Pet Care & Animal Issues
THE FRONT PORCH OF AN abandoned trailer was the grizzled gray tomcat’s chosen hangout. He could have been sizing up potential rivals for food or looking for females. Or he could’ve been waiting for his long-gone family to return. At any rate, the location was an excellent place to monitor the campground he called home.
Troy Lea first noticed the cat she called Smokey when she and her mother approached the year-round residents of the southern Missouri campground about getting their community cats spayed or neutered. As it turned out, people were more than happy to help control the population of stray cats, whom they loved and accepted as part of their neighborhood.
Getting Positive
Imagine you’re walking past a pet store and you see a pile of playful puppies in the window. It’s hard to resist the urge to go inside and scoop one up. When Mindi Callison passed a Petland store in West Des Moines, Iowa, over a decade ago, she couldn’t resist that impulse. Once she was inside the store, she says, “A salesperson put this puppy in my hands and said, ‘Look, he loves you. You’re his mommy.’ Then they offered me a store credit card so I could afford him.”
At the time, Mindi was a broke 19-year-old college student who clearly couldn’t afford to purchase a dog from a pet store. Even so, she walked out of the store that day with Ozzy, a blue-eyed Siberian husky puppy with a $1,500 price tag.
Stopping Puppy Mills
The Case of the Missing Cat
How to increase the odds of finding your lost feline
It was nearly winter in Butte, Montana, and a 12-year-old tabby cat named Captain was traveling cross-country with his person. Though Captain was nestled in a roomy crate with a litter box, bedding and toys, his human decided to let him out for a short break. As soon as she did, however, Captain bolted from his carrier and disappeared into the trees.
Captain’s person had adopted him from Harbor Hope Cat Rescue in Gig Harbor, Washington, and before embarking on that lengthy road trip with her cat, she had contacted Laura Carlson, the executive director, for advice on how to travel safely with him. When the cat took off, the distraught woman once again connected with Laura for advice. Only this time, the cat was lost in the woods 600 miles away — and Laura was desperately trying to recall everything she knew about how to find a missing pet.
Tips for a stress-free vet visit with your cat
Let’s face it, most cats aren’t leaping at the chance to take a trip to the vet. Their routine gets messed up, they have to endure a car ride, and being around barking dogs is beyond stressful.
We’ve put together some easy tips to reduce your cat’s anxiety and make vet visits a breeze for everyone involved.
A rose by any other name
My dearest love was a stray who was found in the middle of nowhere. A handsome and goofy dog, he fit seamlessly into my multiple-pet home. Before I even knew exactly who he was, however, I found myself trying to guess exactly what he was. Black and white like a border collie, he had the large build and thick, curled tail of an Akita. One friend noted that he looked like a Karelian bear dog. So, based in part on this assessment, his name officially became Sullivan Bear Dog.
"I'm seeing this new cat around, don’t know if he’s lost or if he belongs to someone. I want him to be OK, but I’m not sure what to do.”
This wouldn’t be an unusual comment from someone not involved in animal rescue. In this case, though, it came from a coworker of mine who has spent more than a decade working at Best Friends. She noticed the cat hanging out a few doors away and commented on his cuteness to the man who she thought was his person.
“He said, ‘Oh, that’s not our cat. I wish he’d go away. He comes around here because of all our bird feeders,’” she told me. “Now I’m asking myself: Am I supposed to intervene in some way? What if the guy decides to get rid of him? What is the right thing to do?”
Doing Right By Outdoor Cats
Dogs communicate through an array of behaviors, and circling is one that is often misunderstood by their people. Though some pet owners worry this behavior signals serious health issues or is a sign their pet is nearing the end of their life, the reality is that dogs circle for many reasons – from the perfectly natural to the medically significant.
Why do dogs walk in circles before they die?
By the time I noticed my cat Sigmund pawing at his mouth and avoiding his food bowl, it was already too late. One whiff of his death breath confirmed that Siggy was in dire need of a dentist.
It’s not uncommon for a 6-year-old cat like Siggy to already exhibit the stinky telltale signs of advanced dental disease. Statistics reveal that about 85% of cats develop periodontal disease by this age, which can manifest as cavities, infections, broken teeth, or abscesses. Even more concerning, Siggy’s smelly breath might mean he was already experiencing kidney, liver, or heart problems related to poor oral health.
Staying Ahead of Dental Disease
If there is one thing that helped many of us keep our sanity during the pandemic, it was having our beloved pets at home with us. In fact, many people brought home new pets within the last year because they finally had the time to devote to making a cat, dog or rabbit a part of their family. But for some, COVID effectively eliminated the opportunity to interact with furry friends.
That was the case for the sailors at Naval Station Great Lakes in northern Illinois, the Navy’s largest training installation and the home of its only boot camp.
Visiting pooches a big hit on navy base
Cats have a well-earned reputation for being very, very lazy. No sunny windowsill or pile of warm, clean laundry is safe from a kitty on the prowl for a good napping spot. And they tend to sleep even more as they get older.
So what does it mean if your senior couch potato of a cat suddenly loses a bunch of weight, is ravenously hungry and thirsty, and spends hours swinging from the curtains rather than gluing themselves to the nearest lap? It’s likely that your cat has hyperthyroidism.
Radioactive Iodine Treatment
The best slow feeder cat bowls can help stop your cat from eating their meals too fast and getting sick, and they can help cats maintain weight better, too.
Slow feeder bowls decrease how quickly your feline friend eats so they feel full faster. As cat behaviorist Marjan Debevere, DVM, explains, “When a cat eats slower, it allows the brain to register that it’s full earlier than if it was eating out of a normal bowl, therefore eating less.”
Best slow-feeder cat bowls for happy, healthy pets in 2024
Miami-Dade County resident Dahlia Canes had no idea what she was getting into when she found a stray pit bull terrier-like dog nearly two decades ago. It took only a few minutes for the friendly and sweet dog — whom Dahlia subsequently named Chocolate — to clamber into the car. Dahlia was smitten.
However, taking in Chocolate would present challenges due to the breed-specific legislation (BSL) — legislation that bans or restricts certain types of dogs, deeming them “dangerous” based simply on their appearance — that had existed in the Florida county since 1989. Like lovers of the many dogs who get swept up by BSL, Dahlia went to great lengths to keep Chocolate under wraps.
Historic victory for dogs in Florida
Although he’s been gone for more than 13 years, Dr. Heather Kennedy still can’t think about Calvin without crying. The adorable Siamese kitten the veterinarian fostered one winter after he was found freezing in someone’s front yard is her one who got away. She got attached to the tiny kitten but had to make herself let him go to another home, rather than adopting him herself.
The depth of Heather’s sadness about Calvin isn’t because he went on to live a long, happy life with someone else. Although Calvin did get adopted to a family whose plan was to love him for life, he was only nine months old when he died of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). He became one of many cats across the country to succumb to the virus because at the time, there was no known treatment for it.
