What is a Heart Worm?

Welcome to my first official blog post of 2020! I am very excited for what is to come this year. I have a lot of fun stuff planned so make sure to subscribe to know when I post something.

By Rodeo Warhola on flickr.com

Today’s post is all about those pesky heart worms. These parasites live in the heart, lungs, or blood vessels of dogs and cats and can create serious problems. They restrict the blood flow to the rest of the body causing the heart to work a lot harder than normal to try and compensate for it. With this constant hard work the heart can easily get overworked and become strained. It’s kinda like if you were to do a lot of exercise without stopping- you would eventually get tired and overworked.

The scientific name of heart worms is Dirofilaria immitis and is a kind of parasitic worm. It travels between animals through mosquitoes. Baby heart worms (called microfilariae) are small enough to get sucked up by the mosquito when drinking blood from an animal where they can then grow and thrive before getting passed into the next victim.

By Mendy Lindsay on flickr.com

These tiny, string like worms can be found in blood tests taken from an infected animal.

Treatment is no fun. It is a two-step process and can be very dangerous. The veterinarian will start by giving a medication that will kill the adult worms, but this may cause the arteries to block up with the dead worms. After that, a medication is used to kill the baby heart worms, which is not as dangerous as they are so small.

Luckily, there are ways to prevent heart worms before the animal may get it. Using heart worm tablets given daily or once a month and a topical medication applied monthly the chance of an animal get heart worm is taken down significantly.

By Debra Garrison on flickr.com

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I got most of my information from my class on veterinary assistant on ed2go.com.

What Vaccines Should You Give Your Cat?

By anwar hu on Flickr.com

I wrote a post a little bit ago about each dog vaccine and why you should give them to your dog. Now, as I promised, I will tell you guys about cat vaccines. 

For cats there are 4 vaccines that are typically recommended by all veterinarians and are what we call core vaccines. These are given to cats typically when they are young so that they can have the correct antibodies they need to fight off diseases throughout their lives. There are five other vaccines that are for different situations like if a cat lives inside or outside and for each one I will tell you why you might want to consider it. 

Let’s start with the core vaccines:

Vaccine	How it is transmitted	Illness without the vaccine	Treatment
Panleukopenia	Is spread through contact with contaminated feces	Causes vomiting and diarrhea	Treatment consists of a lot of medications and fluids inserted through the veins. Most often picked up by kittens but older cats survive better
Rhinotracheitis	Transmitted through contact with contaminated snot from an infected cat	Causes eye infections and sneezing and coughing	There really isn’t a treatment for it but a secondary infection can occur but can be helped with antibiotics. Kittens can often die from this disease
Calicivirus	Same as Rhinothracheitis	——–	———
Rabies	Can be transmitted by a bite from an infected animal of any type	Creates cats to have nervous signs	There is no treatment

The next five are more important if you have cats that are going to be going outside on occasion. 

Vaccine	How it is transmitted	Illness without the vaccine	Treatment
Chlamydia	Snot	Causes cat to sneeze and cough a lot and have awful eye infections	This is not usually fatal but it’s not fun. The symptoms can be tamed with antibiotic eye drops and the occasional oral antibiotics
Feline Leukemia	Transferred through bites and grooming of cats	Causes them to lose some immunity and triggers tumors to form	There is no treatment
Feline Infectious Peritonitis	Scientists do not currently know how it is transferred	Causes high fevers and fluid to build up in the chest and abdomen	There is no treatment
Feline Bordetella	Snot	Causes excessive coughing and sneezing	Antibiotics can help but do not work perfectly
Feline Immunodeficiency Virus	Passed between cats through bites or scratches	Causes the cat to lose immunity	There is no treatment

As always I am not a professional vet and I got all of my information from a class about becoming a vet assistant on Ed2Go.com. Before giving anything to your cat make sure you talk to a vet that you trust but this is a good base on each vaccine. 

I hope you liked today’s post. Please like and subscribe for more! 

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Cat or Small Dog Food Stand Offer!

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By Ann Vasilkova on flickr.com

Meet My Cat Pepper!

Pepper in front of another one of my animals cages (introduction soon to come)

When I was a child I had a major problem with sucking my thumb. Like, I did it until I was 9 years old. So to finally get me to stop, my parents offered me a reward: a new kitten that I could call my own (but I’m pretty sure that my parents were just ready to get another cat). 

My mom knew someone from work who had found a kitten in their yard and were looking for someone to take him in and find him a good forever home. So my mom and dad talked about it, and later that week we were on our way to pick the little guy up. 

I was so in love with him the second I saw that furry fluffball. I picked him up and soon after that we were on our way to the vet. Since the people had just found him outside we weren’t sure if he had any of the right vaccinations, how old he was, or if he was healthy. Our vet checked him over and minus a few worms and some fleas he was healthy and ready to go home with us. We still don’t know his exact age but we think he was about 6 weeks old when we got him, so he was super young and still should have been with the mother for a bit longer. 

For the first day we kept all of our other animals away and decided to let the new guy check the house out a bit so he wouldn’t be too overwhelmed. My parents gave me the task of naming the cutie and although we bounced a few things around I ended up falling in love with the name Pepper. 

Santo (my other cat who already had an introduction) and Pepper cuddling on my bed

9 years later and now he is a giant goofball. He has an adorable pink nose and loves to chase his tail. We like to call him Gizmo (from Gremlins) because he really gets playful and gets into stuff at night. And he was so tiny for so much of his life that we also called him Little Baby and both nicknames have stuck. So now he responds to all of those names. He knows to come when we call for him and is super afraid of ceiling fans (wait for a story on that later to come). 

Pepper loves to chase his tail and play and constantly tries to push everything off of all the tables, including many cups of milk that have made messes everywhere in our house. His favorite food is cheese and if we have popcorn out he better have some because otherwise he will throw a fit. 

At bed time he always expects his pets and us to love all over him but he also likes to bite us at random times for no reason (typical cat). And he doesn’t really like Knox unless it’s bedtime and Knox isn’t really moving. But his favorite part of bedtime is when we make the bed. He loves to go under the sheet and play with us as we attack him through the thin blanket. 

Pepper cuddling up on my dad’s chest

Pepper is one crazy kitten and we have so many stories that I can’t wait to tell later on this blog. Look forward to more of this crazy kitten soon and let me know what your cats are like in the comments below!

If you want to meet my other cat Santo or my dog Knox check out my previous Meet My Pets and also look forward to seeing my other animals.

Meet My Cat Santo!

If you’ve seen my cover photo then you might be wondering who the cat is. That’s our cat Santo! And if you’re wondering, he was named after the baseball player Ron Santo (not my choice). 

We adopted Santo about 10 years ago from a local animal shelter and we couldn’t be happier with him. When we first saw him he was chasing his mother’s tail and playing so fiercely that we just immediately fell in love. He was a little naughty guy just like most kittens, but we were so happy to have him. I don’t remember much of the little kitten but that first meeting has stuck with me for forever.

Santo’s a pretty big cat and is obsessed with food. Every morning he waits outside of our door at 6am until someone comes out and feeds him. He also gets UTI’s (urinary tract infections) very easily, so we have to buy a special kind of food from our vet that prevents that. But he also refuses to eat without getting at least three servings of canned food per day. And boy is he a meat lover. He’d do anything for a small piece of sliced ham.

Even for a somewhat overweight cat he is a dart. Once you get the laser pointer out his eyes get big, he gets down low, and is ready to pounce. And he is very good at chasing away the mice, however, he’s getting to be a little bit more lazy. He is 11 years old and gets tired easily. But man is he adorable!

Santo is such a loveable cat, but he’s not much of a cuddler. Only when it’s cold outside and it has to be on his terms. But occasionally he will let us lay on his stomach and take a small nap. Recently he’s started to sleep with me at night and loves being in my room. And I’m always down to cuddle!

Santo also loves my hair. He likes to get on his hind legs, put his front paws on my head, and rub his paws there. He does this whenever he has access. Then he will rub his head on my head and then flop on the ground. He will lay belly up and roll around in such adorable ways. He’s one of the few cats I’ve ever known to like belly rubs. And if I’m laying on the ground with my hair out he will not hesitate to come and lay on my hair, trapping me there until he says otherwise.

He might be stubborn and give you a look that obviously says “don’t talk to me,” but I love him so much. And every once in a while he will come when he’s called……. as long as there’s food.

Adopting vs Buying

aapfarrington from flickr.com

If you read my last post then you know about my dog, Knox. I got him from a breeder that I thought was reputable and I didn’t think much of what I was doing. And although I love Knox and am so happy to have him, I have now decided that I will never go to another dog breeder again. Why? I’ll tell you. 

In the future I want to be a breeder, but not for dogs or cats. I love puppies and kittens to death and my dream would be to be around them my entire life, but there’s a lot of animals in shelters that need homes. My goal is to breed animals that are not found in shelters for people looking for a companion that is a little bit more rare.

I don’t think that dog and cat breeders should be breeding at all. 

My first reason is because some of the “reputable” breeders that you find are actually doing a lot of bad things. Just like the one that I got my dog from. You may be getting a dog from a puppy mill even if you don’t think so. Puppy mill owners are good at hiding the fact that they are doing something wrong. They know what they are doing and know how to get away with it. However, not all breeders are just in it for the money. Some really do care about their animals and I believe the best way to sort through the massive amount of breeders is to ask to see the parent dogs when you go to see the puppy. If you see that the parents are in good health then they are most likely a good breeder, but if they come up with excuses then they are probably hiding something and you should report that immediately. It can’t hurt. 

In America alone there is an estimated 2.11 million dogs from puppy mills sold in a year, while about 3 million get killed in shelters that can’t take them in. There are a lot of dogs and cats in this world and a lot of the most amazing pets get killed because there simply isn’t enough room for them. By adopting a dog from a shelter you can save multiple lives; one of an animal you adopted, and one of an animal that was otherwise going to be put down because there wasn’t space.  A lot of these dogs are going to be so loving towards you because they may not have gotten that in their previous home. 

Joe Kurtz from flickr.com

If I could save all of the animals in the world I would, but that’s simply not possible. If you want to save a life don’t go through a breeder, even if you believe they are running something bad. That will just give them funds to continue what they are doing. The best thing you can do is report it and go through professionals. And even some kill shelters I would suggest that you stay away from. Just let them go bankrupt so they can’t continue to hurt any more animals.

There’s a common saying, “I never know what I’m going to get at a shelter.” Well, there are ways to make sure that you know exactly what you’re adopting. Some shelters have volunteered, trustworthy fosters that take an animal into their home to give them full attention. So they can tell you in detail about the animal you are looking at. And if you want a certain breed there’s an easy solution to find one! A lot of shelters have a waiting list for specific breeds that come through the shelter. They will save that dog for you if you just ask. 

If I haven’t convinced you yet then maybe this will: it normally costs less to adopt! So, take this information and come up with your own idea of what to do, but I highly recommend that you adopt. 

Friend’s of Manchester Animal Shelter from flickr.com

Here is where I got most of my information from

https://www.petfinder.com/pet-adoption/pet-adoption-information/misconceptions-pet-adoption/

https://www.animallaw.info/article/what-puppy-mill

https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-puppy-mills

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! Thanks for stopping by. I created this blog as a way for me to get information out about the animals I love and to learn some more facts about animals myself. I plan to write about anything and everything animals: facts, how to care for pets, my opinions on products and companies, and stories about animals that I have encountered. I’m excited to grow this community into something that can be fun, educational, and a place to discuss some things more controversial in a non-hurtful way. 

 

Let me tell you a bit about myself. My name is Jo, I’m female, and I am OBSESSED with animals (but hopefully not in an annoying way). Throughout my life I have cared for a lot of injured or abandoned animals; some of those including baby raccoons, turtles, cats, and more (stories on those to come). I volunteered at my local zoo for a couple years as a zookeeper’s assistant and right now I have a pet sitting business. I am going to become a breeder of animals such as bunnies, ferrets, hedgehogs, and more and plan to foster animals in need of my help, too. Right now I am on a path to possibly become a veterinary technician or veterinary manager. There’s a lot of things that I want to do in my life, but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to do everything I want. 

 

I would like to finish off by saying that I am hoping that this can be a community to ask questions and if you believe I have some wrong information please let me know. The last thing I want to do is to spread false information. I am not an expert on all of the things that I am going to be writing about. I would love any interaction from the public, however, I will not tolerate rudeness, explicit content, or anything of that nature. Please refrain from swearing.

 

Thanks for being here and I hope you have a pleasant experience.

 

Photo taken by a friend of my cat!