Veterinary Tips When Adopting A Stray Cat
Posted on: 25 January 2016
If a stray cat follows you home or if you've gotten in the habit of putting out milk and other food for the stray cat that lives behind your house, you might be tempted to adopt said cat. This is a noble gesture that keeps the cat off the streets and ensures that the cat gets enough food to be happy and healthy. However, you need to be certain that the cat that you allow into your home is perfectly healthy and will not get your family sick. Here are some tips for making this happen.
1. Spay or Neuter the Cat
The first thing that you are going to want to do, when you have decided to adopt a stray cat, is get an appointment to have him or her neutered or spayed. This is important because it will allow you to make sure that your cat does not produce any undesirable litters, does not mark your house with urine regularly, and is safe from several different types of cancers. Even if you decide to temporarily adopt a stray cat, consider spaying or neutering him or her before releasing him or her back into the wild, because this will help reduce the stray cat population in your area.
2. Get a Flea Treatment
When you go to the vet to have your cat spayed or neutered, also look into getting a vet-approved flea treatment. This is a treatment that you apply to the fur of your cat and leave in. You usually apply it once a month and makes your cat's fur inhospitable to fleas. Make sure that you get a flea treatment from your vet because your vet will know exactly what types of treatments are going to be safe. Over-the-counter treatments are sometimes poisonous to cats and can be accidentally ingested while your cat is cleaning him or herself. Keep your cat safe.
3. Have any Abscesses Drained
Finally, go over your cat's body and look for sensitive lumps that your cat reacts to when touched. These are abscesses and are essentially infected wounds that have had skin heal over them. They are usually found in male stray cats that fight a lot. You need to make sure that the abscesses get drained by a vet in order to make sure that they don't burst on their own and get worse. Your vet will drain the abscesses and give you antibiotics to give your cat so that the infection that caused the abscess is taken care of.
For more information about how to properly care for you stray cat, contact a veterinarian, like Covington Veterinary Hospital PC.
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