Tag: protect your pet

Total 12 Posts

FIV Cats Make Great Family Members

For decades, Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) positive cats basically faced two fates: euthanasia, or a lifetime without a forever home. Due in part to a lack of conclusive studies on the virus, and made all the worse by the stigma associated with other immunodeficiency viruses, the public had long been convinced that FIV+ cats could only live with other FIV+ cats, which made placing these cats into homes nearly impossible. Fortunately, recent veterinary studies, a growing…

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Fireworks are Terrifying! Protect your Pet this Fourth of July!

The Fourth of July is super fun for people, but not so super fun for pets! Terrifying fireworks, disrupted schedules, dangerous food… drunk neighbors… the whole thing is enough to send a cat or dog into a state of panic, sometimes with terrible consequences.So keep your pet safe this holiday with these tips from the Cat Connection: Make sure your cat or dog is wearing a collar with tags AND is microchipped (with up-to-date information)!…

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Tag and Microchip Your Cat (It’s Important… Don’t Wait)

Nightmare scenario: your cat gets out of the house. You don’t know how it happened, but it did. Maybe she slipped out while you were bringing in groceries. Maybe a screen was loose or missing. Maybe someone broke into your home, and your cat escaped in the process. Maybe there was a fire or a storm, and the cat managed to make it out of your partially destroyed home, but is now lost. It’s a…

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Declawing: A Message to our Veterinarians, with Love

Today, the Cat Connection wraps up our month long “Love the Cat, Love the Claws” campaign. Overall, we’ve been thrilled and invigorated by the positive response, and we feel in our hearts that declawing will one day (hopefully soon) be viewed as an unfortunate chapter in veterinary medicine. Which brings us to our final piece of the month: A Message to our Veterinarians, with Love. Veterinarians and their professional organizations exist at the center of…

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Why Cats Scratch (and what you can do about it)

Scratching. When you share your life with a cat, it’s just part of the deal. But although scratching is one of the most natural feline behaviors, it is often met with frustration or fear by humans. It’s no secret that the Cat Connection is emphatically against declawing cats (for more info, see here, here and here), so whenever someone is willing to listen, we educate our friends about why cats scratch and how people can…

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Declawing: What You Need to Know

Declawing, or onychectomy, is the amputation of the last digit of each toe. Because a cat’s claws grow directly from bone, the bone itself must be amputated; it is not simply the removal of claws. The surgery is performed with either a scalpel or a laser on either the front or back set of paws. It is the equivalent of amputating a human’s fingers or toes at the first joint. Because cats walk on their…

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Road Warriors: Car Rides with Kitty

At one time or another, most cat people will wind up making a long drive with kitty. But even for the most seasoned feline traveler, car rides are rarely fun. When you think about it, this is understandable: your cat was minding her own business when you suddenly put her into a box, then put that box into a bigger box that also moves, and then made her stay in the box for what seemed…

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Why Cats are Associated with Halloween

We’ve all seen it: the snarling, hissing black cat figure of Halloween that has been a staple of the holiday for more than a century. For many, this comically scary representation of our beloved house cats is as much a part of Halloween as ghosts, candy corn and pumpkins. But few know the fascinating intricacies of the cat’s relationship with the holiday, a history that goes a long way to understanding the way we regard…

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Cat Safety Tips for Halloween (known to your cat as the terrifying day of small shrieking humans where the doorbell won’t stop ringing)

It’s almost Halloween! YES!!! Halloween is the holiday of so many great things: candy, trick-or-treating, scary movies, spooktacular lawn decorations, candy again… an excuse to buy all kinds of Halloween-themed cat toys (as if we needed an excuse). However, as great as Halloween can be for people, it can be just as terrifying and dangerous for pets, particularly cats. So to help keep your kitties safe, the Cat Connection has compiled this list of Halloween tips. Keep your cat…

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Costumes: Your Cat Hates Them

Yup, it’s that time of year again. From October through December, normally well-adjusted pet parents go a little crazy, dressing up their cats, dogs and… iguanas, we guess… in costumes that range from the most elaborate homemade creation to the worst last-minute store-bought mess. To put it bluntly: it’s weird. Unsurprisingly, the Cat Connection is regularly asked why we don’t sell costumes, antler ears, Santa hats, etc., during this time, especially when the larger pet supply…

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