Preventing illness and catching feline diseases early is a large focus of our practice. If a disease is caught early, it can be cured or maintained much more effectively. The most effective ways to achieve this is through annual or semi-annual wellness exams, blood work, and vaccination. To protect your cat, you need to be proactive and take specific actions to prevent disease and to detect it early.
Wellness exams twice a year (or more often, depending upon your pet’s medical needs) are the best steps to keeping your cat as healthy as possible – along with your vigilant observations at home. Bringing your cat in for regular wellness exams is the very best you can do to ensure a longer life and the highest quality of life for your cat.
Feline Wellness Exams
A wellness exam is the routine examination of a cat that appears to be healthy. This is very similar to a “check-up” or “physical” that you would have with your doctor. During this routine wellness examination, one of our veterinarians will take a history about your pet’s diet, exercise, thirst, breathing, behavior, habits, elimination patterns, lifestyle, and general health.
Your cat will then be checked over from head to tail and their major body systems will be examined. Often times, weight management or dental health will be discussed during this visit and you may ask any questions that you have.
Annual Blood and Urine Tests
Blood tests are the best way to detect indicate an potential issue or diagnose disease. We will often recommend annual blood and urine tests to examine your pet’s kidneys, liver, thyroid, blood sugar, white blood cells, red blood cells, etc. Often times, abnormalities will show up on blood tests before we start to notice changes in our pets. This is offered for all pets from the very beginning of their life, but is especially important in geriatric animals (7 years old and up). One blood test that should be run at least once in every cat’s life is the FELV/FIV test. This test is for feline leukemia or feline immunodeficiency virus. These diseases both cause extreme immune suppression and can be fatal. These diseases are also very contagious to other cats.
Vaccines
Vaccinating your cat keeps your cat healthy by preventing dangerous infectious diseases. Cats have different lifestyles and deserve to be given individual attention and consideration at vaccination time. For more information about the vaccines we recommend for cats, please visit our vaccination page.