The Best Stuff For Your Cat

By Paul Kramer

Good ear care is important to your cat’s health, especially as she ages. Check her ears at least once a week, and clean them as needed to prevent ear mites, allergies, and bacterial, fungal and yeast infections from taking hold.

To check the inner part of your cat’s ear, hold the tip between your thumb and forefinger and roll it gently toward the back of her head. The skin should be pink or flesh colored and should look healthy and clean, with no red or sore looking patches.

A little bit of light brown wax is normal, but a heavy discharge (especially black, red, or green yellow) indicates a problem. If the ears look healthy and your cat shows no signs of discomfort around her ears or head, gently wipe away any excess wax with a pad soaked in ear cleanser.

Ear problems are hard to diagnose, and treating for the wrong type of infection will not help and might make things worse, so if your cat’s ears look red, sore, or dirty, or if she scratches her ears or shakes her head a lot, see your vet.

Older cats often lose some or all of their hearing, but hearing loss is not always easy for us to detect. If your cat does not react to sounds that used to attract or startle her, chance are she is hard of hearing.

Common signs of dental disease include bad breath, difficulty eating or drinking, drooling and unexplained weight loss. An aging cat may have trouble keeping her claws trimmed, so regular nail care will help to keep her feet healthy.

This is not usually a problem for a house cat, but without the ability to hear, she is vulnerable to serious injury outdoors. Indoor cat lead longer, healthier lives and keeping senior cat indoors may extend her life by many years.

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Thinking of welcoming a new cat into your home?

It is important to recognize, first and foremost, that a cat is not like a toy or luxury item, but rather more like a baby. Children have needs you’d expect to meet and support. Cats are living and quite intelligent creatures that have needs as well. Your cat, especially an indoor cat, will be wholly dependent on you to fill those needs.

Your kitten will be totally dependent upon you

In order to thrive, there are some fundamental basics that a cat needs, such as good food, water, a litter box, scratching post, the occasional bath (yelp!) and a place to sleep. Oh yes, and don’t forget – appropriate cat toys (and no laser pointers are not appropriate cat toys as they confound and frustrate the cat but never afford it the gratification of succeeding.) A bored kitten will tend to wreak havoc on your home.

Cat toys are also beneficial to the kitty because they afford it the exercise and stimulation it needs. Using your fingers to taunt and tease them is a bad idea due to the fact that when they get older, and those teeth get bigger and sharper, it won’t be quite as much fun when they think it is OK to bite your hand.

Other items to consider for the cat’s new home are:

• a cat collar
• cat furniture, cat condos, cat trees
• a warm, cozy cat bed or even a heated cat bed
• an Automatic Water Dispenser: keeping a steady supply of moving water will keep the cat well hydrated.
• cat litter box

Your kitten will not arrive out-of-the-box litter trained.  Even if it understands the concept, it won’t necessarily understand the layout of your home.  This makes litter training top priority. The litter box should be large enough for your cat to enter and exit with enough space inside (if it is covered) to turn around. Adding newspaper, scraps of carpet or similar will aid in acclimating the cat that this is the proper place for them to take care of business.

Be sure not to overfeed your cat wet food which can be akin to fast food. It is of value in the kitten’s earlier years as it needs some fat to grow, but as the cat matures it is preferable to switch to a primarily dry food diet. Visit our cat supply store to find some incredible dry cat food choices from a variety of health and ecologically conscious manufacturers including (Paul) Newman’s Own organic brand.