Yesterday, I spent the day packing. Weather reports show the temperature in Goa, Delhi, and Mumbai to be in the high 80s and possibly low 90s, so I’m just bringing shorts. I’ll have one pair of long pants, and those will be the pants I’ll be wearing on the flight. The Mission Rabies handbook says that I’ll need long pants…
As the date approached, I began receiving occasional e-mails from the Mission Rabies volunteer coordinator detailing the finer aspects of the mission. For example, we were gently reminded that many of Mission Rabies’s projects take place in warm countries, so that we should avoid risks like sunburn, heat stroke, or heat exhaustion. I looked up, on the internet, the average…
Cats are meticulous about their appearance. They take grooming seriously, and most cats maintain a beautiful, spotless hair coat. Occasionally, however, cats will develop (horror of horrors)… dandruff! Of course, dandruff – dry, dead skin cells that flake off from the skin – isn’t a cause of social embarrassment in cats that it is in humans. They couldn’t care less. In most cases, dandruff…
In my last posting, I told how I discovered, applied to, and was accepted for the Mission Rabies project. Well, the paperwork and preparation for a mission like this is considerable. Before I can travel to Goa and work with the team, Mission Rabies needed a lot of documents. Veterinarians and veterinary nurses need to submit a “letter of good…
When I retired last year, I thought my life could be divided into my “professional identity” and my “civilian identity”, and I was happy to leave my professional identity – and all of the stresses that arose from that – behind, and just live happily with my civilian identity. But being a veterinarian is not like being a toll collector…
Few things are more frustrating and irritating for humans than the common cold. The sneezing, the congestion, the runny nose, and the watery eyes can make us truly miserable. Unfortunately, our feline counterparts can relate; they, too, can fall victim to this annoying malady. In cats, we tend to be a little more technical with the terminology, preferring to call the condition…
A successful examination begins with the owner. If you think about it, being a cat veterinarian is not very different from being a pediatrician. We can’t ask our patients what’s wrong. We just have to figure it out.Nowhere is the role of a cat owner more important than at the veterinarian’s office, where a good history can sometimes mean the…
Cats can be tricky to medicate. Veterinarians know that it is difficult to medicate a cat consistently with a medication that is required twice daily, and almost impossible to administer a medication reliably and unfailingly three times daily. Most veterinarians, when dealing with cats, try to strike a balance between efficacy and ease of administration, prescribing the most effective drug…
The brain is the main organ that comprises the central nervous system of the cat. It is the control center for receiving and interpreting information that comes from the cat’s own body, and from the outside world. Learning and perception takes place in the brain, and all of the sensations – sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and pain – are…
They say that big things come in little packages, and nowhere is this more apparent than the feline pancreas. This small organ, often weighing no more than 6 to 8 ounces, plays a huge, multifaceted role in maintaining your cat’s health. The pancreas is shaped like an upside down V. The left lobe of the pancreas is nestled up…
Feline lungs are remarkably similar to a human’s lungs. For example, the lungs occupy most of the space in the chest cavity, lying on both sides of the heart, just like they do in humans. In my mind, I think of the lungs as being divided into two portions – the airways, and the lung tissue. An easy way…
In a past blog post, I described the important role the kidneys play in a cat’s overall health. In addition to making hormones and regulating the blood pressure, the kidneys filter toxins from the bloodstream, creating urine in the process. So where does that urine go after it is manufactured by the kidneys? Anyone who’s waited in line for the…
Body Parts – The Spleen Ask most people what their cat’s heart does, and they’ll tell you it pumps blood. How about the lungs? They breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. The kidneys? They filter toxins from the blood stream and put them in the urine. The spleen? That’s easy. It… it… Admit it: you have no idea what…
Body Parts – the Feline Heart The heart is the main organ in the circulatory system. Its job is to pump blood throughout the body, supplying oxygen and nutrients to the tissues. Similar to the human heart, the feline heart has four chambers. The two chambers on the top of the heart are the atria (plural for atrium). The…