Paul D. Pion

Pedigreed cats are roughly divided by experts into two groups that are distinguished by body type and activity level: Oriental and non-Oriental.The breeds in the first group, the Oriental, are notable for their long, sleek bodies and active participation in the world around them. They’re not happy unless they’re supervising dinner, climbing to the top of the bookshelf, teasing that dopey dog, or seeing what every member of the household is up to.

Some signs of a healthy cat or kitten are obvious to anyone; others require a veterinarian’s help to pinpoint. Before you settle on a promising kitten or cat, perform your own health check, and be sure to follow up with your veterinarian within a day or so.Don’t fall in love with a sick cat. With so many kittens and cats available for adoption, it just doesn’t make sense to take a chance on one who may cost you a great deal of money in veterinary costs—and may not be with you long, anyway.

Veterinarians see every imaginable problem a cat can get into. Although every animal lost is a tragedy, some of those are a little harder to take than others. Into this class falls those cats whose deaths were the results of something an owner could have done to protect them but didn’t know about.We want you to know about them, so we’ve assembled in this list of the most common household dangers your cat may face.

With the evolution of the cat from semiwild hunter to loving companion animal has become a change not only in how cats are loved but also where cats are kept. Increasingly, more cats are living indoors (see the following figure).Still, even though litter boxes can be easy to care for and odor-free, some people refuse to deal with them.

If cats ran the pet-food industry, the recipe for a good, nutritious meal would read as follows: "Take one small mouse from the freezer. Thaw. Put in a blender and hit frappé. Serve at feline body temperature on a clean plate." Yuck, you say. That's probably why you're going to give your cat a dry food, where the label lists the first five ingredients as corn gluten meal, ground yellow corn, chicken, brewers rice, and wheat flour.

Ensuring healthy teeth and gums for your cat is one area where you and your veterinarian must work together. Dental scalings and polishings by your veterinarian are an important part of preventive medicine, and keeping teeth clean between veterinary appointments is something that can — and should — be done by cat lovers.

When people think about adding a cat to their lives, they seem to automatically think "kitten." And why not? A kitten seems to make perfect sense, a little fluffball who'll grow into your household and your heart. For some people, though, an adult cat is a better option. And even if you're perfectly set up for a kitten, you ought to consider an adult as well, for you can find many wonderful pets among the ranks of grown cats, and most never get a second chance to show how perfect they can be.

The hardest part of clipping your cat's claws is getting your cat to cooperate. Sometimes this task requires a tremendous amount of patience. But remember, if you get only one claw done a night, don't worry about it, because you can get through them all soon enough. To clip your cat's nails, push gently on his pad to expose the nail, as shown in Figure 1.