Does your beloved cat spend an inordinate amount of time grooming?…the same spot over and over again? What’s up with that?

Some cats just groom a lot—not to worry—unless that one spot starts to look like the back of your husband’s head, all fuzzy with thinning hair (you know the look). In some...

Sophie and I would like to wish all of you a happy and safe Halloween! Stay away from your little brothers' and sisters' chocolate and other candies (especially the xylitol-laced variety!). Wear reflective clothing if you're going trick-or-treating. And send me your best Halloween costume pics...

Last week I received another issue of the glossily produced, University of Pennsylvania Vet School quarterly magazine, The Bellwether. Its last two issues have sported Barbaro, the school’s most recent poster child for its success in cutting edge medicine, on its cover.

As you might expect I have...

Did you know? The White Rhino is on the endangered species list for one primary reason—its horn is prized as a potent aphrodisiac. I’d venture to guess this horrible trade in animal-product sex potions would dry up mighty quick if Pfizer would just spread the love around. For the love of God...

At the outset let me just say that our hospital performs low cost feline spays and neuters ($30 for neuters and $50 for spays) almost every day of the week. We do so as a special service to our clients—people we know well and whose work in the community trapping cats is something we choose to...

Ever pick up one of those foul, fake, Sara-Lee sugar-free cupcakes? It contains a substitute for a surrogate of a stand-in for sugar whose danger to dogs confirms a belief I`ve always held dear: once we humans start to simulate things, a certain number of generations later we’re bound to f--- it...

If there’s one class of client that gives us pause more than any other it’s the human physician (and his or her spouse/partner). This may sound profoundly unfair (and is certainly not a hard and fast rule) yet many vets agree they are among the most difficult group of clients to handle.

While I...

Sometimes you’re picking through the millennia of Web logs (as I try to do on a regular basis) and come up with some truly horrific stuff posted there. Most sane people reading the occasional ignorant thing posted on a random blog simply laugh and move on. That’s me—usually. Today, however, I...

As a vet I completely understand why someone might have to rely on a kennel to manage their dogged lives. Not every dog nor every home is amenable to a pet-sitter’s ministrations. Friends and family can be flaky or non-existent. I understand.

Where I live there are NO high-end kennels. I`ve even...

There’s nothing more frustrating for a cat owner than a cat that urinates inappropriately all over the house.

The corollary: There’s nothing more frustrating for a veterinarian than dealing with a exasperated client who wants nothing less than a cure for this complicated, potentially cure-less...

OK so let me say this at the outset: IMHO it’s an icky way to make some extra cash. Taking one’s clothes off for general consumption in a sex-themed magazine is not a moneymaking activity I’d choose for myself.

That said, I once posed in the nude for a polite audience of MIT photography students...

To continue the series on indecent exposure (there will be three installments) I’m going to tell you all about the amazing things our clients tell us about themselves and their lives.

As vets we are in the unique role of hearing things we wish we’d never heard. Ever heard the three-letter...

From the annals of strangest clients ever in small animal veterinary medicine comes the sad story of a woman convinced that every vet she tried was utterly blind to her cat’s true problem.

A well-dressed, older woman arrives at his hospital with her cat, Ginger, bundled in a large blanket. She...

The declaw, a surgical procedure where the first bones in a cat’s front toes are amputated, is perhaps the most controversial routine procedure in veterinary medicine. Sure, most cosmetic procedures have their foes, but nothing seems to scream "cruelty!" like multiple toe amputations.

I embark...

I’ll bet you didn’t know this but veterinarians are in a unique position to see things they wish they hadn’t. I’m not referring to the obligatory blood, guts and gore—that’s acceptable and usually fascinating, as a matter of fact. I’m referring to the unnecessary exposure to human flesh that...

Dr. Allison Cannon is one of those idealistic, hard-working super-women we’d all love to be. Young and energetic, she just completed her internal medicine residency at the University of California at Davis (a top-tier vet school and an impressively grueling program) and has just started her...

I adore my neighborhood specialists. Not only do they make my life more pleasant and educational with their open-door policy, they also make me look like a rock star when a client receives a special procedure or amazing, state-of-the-art care. I love that.

The heartfelt thanks my clients shower...

Friday. What a sorry end-of-the-week experience I`ve just had. Fridays, as usual, never fail to disappoint. After waiting nearly 45 minutes (after-hours) for my emergency patient, he arrives. Covered in blood and saliva, Huey makes a spectacular entrance.

Huey is a long-haired housecat of...

One blogger I just discovered made a great statement on her blog (Girls Who Wear Glasses) yesterday. OK, I wear glasses too so perhaps I just like her for her style. Nevertheless, her post was a well delivered (if exasperated) sermon on the stress of socialization—her puppy’s…and hers.

Years...

A growing movement spearheaded by the American Bird Conservancy and other environmental groups has taken the issue of cat overpopulation by the tail. They have a descriptive (if not terribly catchy) name for it, too: Cats Indoors.

This primarily environmental PR campaign for promoting indoor...

Illegal drug intoxication is more common than you think. While most pets won’t consume alcohol (willingly) in sufficient quantities for intoxication, other mind-altering drugs don’t provide the same degree of safety. Some vets in Canada are now becoming increasingly alarmed about the rising tide...

I’ve wanted to be a vet since I was seven years old. This seems pretty typical if I’m to believe all the smarmy stories my vet friends tell of their first pets, first jobs, first loves, etc. (I tell those smarmy stories too).

Most of us were simultaneously encouraged by our families and goaded...

A collector, in the world of human psychiatry, is an individual who takes an obsessive approach to animals, often strays, typically collecting far more animals than they have the capacity to adequately care for.

A twenty-first century version of the "Crazy Cat Lady" there is nothing remotely...

You may have heard the old adage: 20% of clients bring you 80% of your business. The somewhat converse statement is also true: 20% of your clients provide 80% of your stress.

In our hospital both pithy versions apply. We love our top 20% for their willingness to pay without fuss, make their...

One of my earliest memories is of my father slumped in a chair with his head in his hands. I was four years old and had accompanied him to the vet hospital with our cat, Marsha.

Marsha was my first cat. She was a stray Siamese who had borne her young the same day my mother delivered me into the...

Friday. The day began inauspiciously with my son’s cracked braces and an impromptu visit to the [ever-vacationing] orthodontist (I should have been an orthodontist. It’s not as sexy as being a vet and you have to touch people’s mouths—but that Maserati!). Next up was the death of my beloved,...

Yesterday I spent more than fifteen minutes on the telephone with the owner of a diabetic, severely arthritic, nine-year-old Schnauzer discussing the merits and pitfalls of Rimadyl. Gruffy has been taking Rimadyl twice a day for more than a year. If Mom doesn’t give the medication, Gruffy can’t...

Imagine my shock and dismay when one of you, a dear reader and knowledgeable cat owner, had no idea that pain medication was available for her felines. Perhaps that’s because pain control in veterinary medicine has come such a long way in the past five or ten years. I’m sure she’s not alone. How...

One of my veterinarian colleagues at work, an older vet perhaps not so in touch with pop culture as he should be, recently adopted one of his client’s sick pups. This pup needed special care due to his cleft palate, a congenital defect in which the embryo doesn’t fully develop, leaving a wide...

Do you ever wonder why it is you administer heartworm medication to your dogs (and some of you, to your cats)? If you’re reading this I know you’re not illiterate. You can surely tackle the print on the side of a box with ease. However, did you ever wonder how common these wormy creatures are...

Heartworm is a tricky thing. This long white worm vets proudly display on their exam room shelves (nestled within those lurid plastic models of dog hearts) is a wily beastie. It not only has the ability to wreak havoc on your dog’s heart and your cat’s lungs, it can have a similar effect on your...

Friday is always busy, especially in the afternoon, what with the mad rush of OMG-I-just-noticed-Fluffy`s-been-vomiting-all-week-and-I-don`t-want-

to-end-up-at-the-emergency-clinic-over-the-weekend emergencies.

Yesterday was no different. We had two critical cases come in simultaneously (different...