Common Health Problems in Cats

common health problems in cats.

With a bit of luck and lots of TLC, hopefully your cat won’t need to come to the vet very often at all; hopefully, just once a year for their regular checkup and vaccination. But, if things do go wrong and they suffer health problems, it’s important to be able to recognize the symptoms and know exactly what to do. So, these are my top health tips for the most common health problems you’re likely to encounter with your cat. The first tip I’m going to give you has all to do with probably the most common condition that I see in my surgery day in and day out and that’s cat bites. Cats are very territorial animals and they’re always getting into scraps, battling away and fighting each other and it’s important to what to look out for so you can take your cat down to the vet and get immediate treatment because cat bites can be quite serious depending on the location because cats have got really nasty bacteria in their mouth and when they bite into another cat, they implant these bacteria and cause a nasty infection. So, the symptoms to look out for are a lump. So, a lump that’s come up quickly tends to be either around the head or the shoulders or possibly on the base of the tail or the back leg and it will be a big swelling. The hair will often fall out of the top of the swelling. You’ll also notice perhaps that your cat goes lame. If it it’s on her leg, they’ll be limping holding her leg up. And if they’ve been bitten near the tail, you’ll find the tail will hang down and they’ll be very sore and angry if you touch them in the affected area. Others symptoms also might include some ooze when the abscess burst, you might get some discharge and a nasty smelling discharge. Those are the things to look out for. And if you notice those, you should take the cat down to a vet and your vet will apply the three A’s of treating a catfight abscess. And those are antiseptic so your vet will take some antiseptic solution like this and they will clean up the abscess. So, if there was an abscess here, they’ll give it a good clean, wipe away any discharge. They’ll trim away the first so they can see what’s going on and the second aid is antibiotics so you’ll probably go home antibiotic tablets or liquid for your cat and the third aid is anti-inflammatory. Your vet may well give an injection with anti-inflammatory like this or again, you may get tablets to go home with. And these three aids, the antiseptic, the antibiotic and the anti-inflammatory should sort out the catfight abscess and leave your cat happy to fight another day.