All Care Guides
Ear Mites in Dogs and Cats
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Ear mites are small parasites that live on an animal’s body, particularly in the ears of dogs and cats. Ear mites sustain themselves by eating skin cells, blood, and earwax. They deposit their waste (a dark, crusty debris) in the ear of the host animal. They also mate and produce eggs in the ear of the host. The mite’s entire life cycle is only about 3 weeks, and the mite spends its whole life on the animal. Ear mites are contagious to some other animals (for example, cats, dogs, and ferrets), but they are not contagious to humans.
Read More Examination and Rabies Vaccine
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Regular physical examinations are essential to maintaining your pet’s health. A thorough examination checks every major body organ and system.
Read More Exercising Your Cat
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Cats are notorious for preferring sleep to exercise. However, regular exercise is important to your cat’s health because it burns calories, reduces appetite, maintains muscle tone, and increases metabolism (the rate at which calories are burned).
Read More Feline Leukemia and Rabies
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Feline leukemia virus (FeLV) is contagious among cats. Unlike many other viruses that enter specific cells in the body and destroy them, FeLV enters certain cells in a cat’s body and changes the cells’ genetic characteristics. This permits FeLV to continue reproducing within the cat each time infected cells divide. This allows FeLV to become dormant (inactive) in some cats, making disease transmission and prognosis (outlook) difficult to predict.
Rabies virus is dangerous and infects animals and humans worldwide. Rabies is generally fatal in all species, and any warm-blooded animal can become infected. Foxes, skunks, coyotes, and certain rodents spread the disease in many cases. Surprisingly, cats are more commonly involved in spreading rabies than dogs are. In fact, cats are the number-one domestic animal carrier of rabies in the United States.
Read More Feline Senior Wellness
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With many cats living well into their teens or even twenties, many owners wonder: When is a cat truly a senior citizen? The answer is that there is no specific age at which a cat becomes “senior.” Individual pets age at different rates.
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