Tag Archives: Health

4 tips to avoid a heat stroke to your cat

Last week, the temperatures were scorching here. We remained hidden the largest part of the day in the shade of bushes, lying on the cool ground.

Cats cannot perspire as a human to lower their physical temperature when it’s warm : they have only some sweat glands between the pads, that’s all. We risk a heatstroke in case of strong hot season ; the following signs (in order of growing gravity) indicate that we are too much hot, far too hot, and that we have to cool quickly :

Hanging out tongue
Panting
Fast pulse
Too high body temperature
Loss of balance
Respiratory distress syndrome
Apathy
Unconsciousness

What’s to be done in the presence of these signals of distress ?

Place immediately the cat in a cool and well ventilated place
Place his paws in cool water (not cold !) during 10-15 minutes to lower his temperature

To avoid getting to this point, some simple precautionary measures can be taken :

Provide some cool water in various places of the house (also outside)
Renew often the water so that it remains cool
Keep the house as cool as possible: draw the blinds or close the shutters, close the windows on the side of the sun but leave the others opened so that the air circulates, and suspend wet linen in front of the open windows
If it’s possible, keep the cat inside in a cool room ; if the cat is used to go out, make sure that he has an easy access to a cool and shaded place

Getting cool, that can also be funny : go to see how do our friends Die Kleine Fellindianer here and here !

Veterinarians and hairballs

This year, World Vet Day and Hairball Awareness Day (24th April) follow each other closely. Now, hairballs can lead at the veterinarian’s !

By licking us, we swallow our hairs ; they agglutinate in our digestive system but are not digested.

If we’re lucky, our hairs don’t go farther than our stomach, and we vomit them in a characteristic sausage shape. Provision of grass to be chewed helps to regurgitate the ingested hairs.

If we have less luck, the swallowed hairs pass in the bowel ; they can then cause a constipation, an intestinal obstruction requiring a surgical operation, or in the worst case an intestinal obstruction.

To avoid all these inconveniences, we must be regularly brushed to eliminate the dead hairs and avoid that we swallow it too much. The long-haired cat breeds must be brushed every day, and the old cats two-three times a week.

Having heard about this “magic” tool at least a million times, Claire finally bought us a FURminator. She took time to be convinced that it was not a gadget, but seeing the price of the object (40 CHF !), we can understand that she took time to get her opinion made.

She’s thrilled, and us too : we purr every time she uses it. It’s a purchase that is really worth of it : the ergonomic shape of the tool allows to have it well in hand, hairs are collected without any trouble, no need to press or to pull excessively, it’s very effective. A 10 minutes session a week is amply enough for us who have short hairs.

We shall not thus go to the Cabinet du Molage for that reason : moreover, we don’t like that the veterinarians make us injections and that they stick us a thermometer in the ***, that they inspect us ears and teeth, even if we know that it’s for our good. Claire nevertheless likes this office, because all the staff is very nice. The three veterinarians are competent and say clearly things : certain people don’t appreciate this frankness, but that suits our human very well. They have a big package of handkerchiefs for difficult times, and always have a small word kind to us. They watch our health, and Claire trusts them: finally, maybe although we like them… just a little !

PS: we were very sad and very angry to hear that a young veterinarian had made dirty and dishonored this beautiful profession by a useless, cruel, and stupid act of which she boasted on social networks. Shame on her. #JusticeforTiger on Twitter and on Facebook.

How do cats see ?

Zorro laughed well recently when he saw me looking for the ladybird which I had down on the nose ; he even dared to say that I needed glasses ! This ladybird was just outside my field of vision, that’s all…

The cats eyes are made to spot the slightest movement. Our vision field is bigger than that of human : human covers approximately 210^o (120^o binocular), and we cover approximately 285^o (130^o binocular).
Proportionally to the size of our head, we have big eyes.

Our pupillary reflex to the variation of luminous intensity is extremely fast : only big cats of the Felis genre can retract their pupil to the size of a slender vertical crack. We can dilate it also considerably to see better at night.

We are able to distinguish colors, but less well than humans : we are little sensitive to red, and we could say that our vision of tints is more pale. This is due to the structure of our eye cells : we have more rod cells (night-vision in black and white) than cones (diurnal and colored vision). We are diurnal and crepuscular predators, thus our eye is perfectly adapted to our nature.

Two erroneous assertions have nevertheless firm existence :

Cats see in total darkness.
WRONG. Cats need from five to six times less light than humans to see during the night, but they cannot see in total darkness.
The eyes of cats shine in the dark.
WRONG. Our pupil is dilated to receive the tiniest rays of light in the darkness. Cells situated behind the retina act as a mirror to amplify the light and allow us so to see better when it’s dark, what seems to make our eyes shine.