 Pet Talk by Dr. Fran Good, DVM Ketchikan, Alaska April 02, 2002
The first is, that if you take responsibility for the life of a cat, you need to keep him inside. Always. No exceptions. As an ex-emergency veterinarian, I can tell you first-hand the dangers cats face when they're outside. The first, and worst, is cars. Surprisingly, we would see a lot of cats hit by cars in the emergency clinic in which I worked. You would think that something that small would just get smushed when it came in contact with something that big, and we'd never see it in the emergency room. But cats are exceptionally well put together, very lithe and fast. But they seldom come away unscathed from encounters with moving vehicles. The most common thing we'd see would be spinal fractures - paralyzed cats - or pelvic fractures, rear leg fractures, rearranging the bones in amazing ways. If the cat was facing the other direction when it met the car, the head would be the thing to take the brunt of the impact. And you'd be amazed at the ways a car can reshuffle a cat skull. If a cat manages to be lucky and not get run over by a car, he's still not out of danger yet. Cars leak an interesting substance called antifreeze. It's yellow, it's sweet, it tastes good, and it takes a teaspoon to kill a cat. I'll take a full column to talk about that one someday. People always tell me that their cat knows to stay out of the road. And I tell them that's horse hooey. Their cat no more knows what a car is or what it can do to them, than the average citizen understands quantum physics. We probably should, and it would be nice if we did, but we don't. And they don't either. They don't have the language necessary to grasp the danger they're in, so if you have a cat that goes out side, and it hasn't encountered something dangerous - and run you up a substantial vet bill if he survives the encounter - that makes you and your cat lucky. It doesn't make your cat preternaturally smart. So do yourself and your cat
a favor, please. Keep him inside.
Digital photo of Willa Bea Three-Paws by M.C. Kauffman.
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I told you I thought cats were the
easiest of pets to have. But in order for that to be true, there
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