My husband and I have never had a pet before. How much is the monthly expense to properly care for a cat?

Cats at shelter can cost at between $25 to 110, and kittens up to $200. Adoption at shelter is the best deal because most cats would be already neutered, vaccinated, dewormed, and vetted. Breeders rip you off and so-called "free" kittens will cost more than a cat/kitten from shelter

Vet visit charge you $50 for office visit and check-up and will cost more if she needs pills or fecal test or anything else if she got sick. Last time my cat got worms and I was being charged $75 for everything

I suggest you to get good quality clumping cat litter as this will save you money and all you can do is scoop clumps out and add more litter when the sand level is getting too low. Clay requires you to dump everything out and start all over again every 2 weeks. $10 for 35 lb Tidy Cat clumping litter at Target/Walmart which each pail can last up to 4 months for one cat. Generic brands are okay as long as they aren’t dusty and scented.

Toys and necessities can cost about $75 altogether and they should last her a lifetime unless toys are really worn out and you have to buy new ones.

Low cost vaccination at Petco in case if you have a kitten and she needs distemper combo booster which charge you $33. She will need booster 3 times during her kittenhood and another 1 a year later.

If your cat isn’t fixed, she can be spayed at low cost program at local shelter for $56 males and $80 females. Neutering is very important as it controls spraying, urge to run away, and cats overpopulation which is a very serious situation right now.

Don’t buy cheap grocery store food like Iams, Purina, Meow Mix, Frikas because they are in fact more costly and will wreck havoc. Instead, buy high quality holistic food like Wellness, Natural Balance, Innova, Indigo Moon, etc at Petco or locally owned pet shop. 5 lb of high quality food lasted my cat 3-4 months compared to same weight of cheap filler food which last less than a month. You will have less vet visits and less stools to scoop out of litterbox if you feed her high quality food! Crappy food have toxins and byproducts and grain fillers that cats can’t digest and their companies only care about $ not health of cats. Holistic food may cost at between $10 to $20 for 6 lb bag that last for 3-4 months and canned foods cost $1 to $1.75 each and you will need like 4 cans every month. Your cat will thank you as she will live longer, have beautiful fur that won’t shed and wouldn’t throw up and have diarrhea.

I spend about $20-30 on my cat every month for food and litter and this will change if she gets sick but it happened only once when she got worms!

Adult cats are much more cheaper than kittens and they are often being overlooked for adoption. You will feel good adopting an adult cat and give her forever home! Good luck

Games for older cats?
Games for kittens?
Games for two kittens?
Games for kittens AND cats?

I have two older cats ( 1 8 year old)
I have two foster kittens (6 months)

They have 50+ toys, but what are some things we could do together?

They like brown paper bags from the grocery store. Put it on it’s side and tear a small hole (so his paw will fit through it) where one of the corners is. When he goes inside, dangle a string or something….even your finger….out side the hole and he’ll probably try to get it.

They like cardboard boxes too.

I’m thinking of adopting two cats: a Birman and a Maine Coon cat…both of which will probably be around a year old! Does anyone know of any problems I could run into?

Of course, every cat has a different personality, but do either of these breeds not get along with other breed of cat?

Thanks!

when they finally meet, let them hiss or hide or whatever they are going to do. slowly as a day or two go by start to take away their hiding places so they are slowly made to be social without being forced. eventually they will at least accept each other. you never know they could hit it off right away hehe. make sure they have two food bowls so there are no fights over the dish.

She’s currently anaemic due to her spleen problem and is now in emergency care (had a blood transfusion done). Her spleen is overgrown and the vet is mostly sure that it has spread to the liver. (sounds like cancerous?) She will have her spleen remove. However, if much of the liver has been affected, the vet is recommending putting her to sleep, which I do not agree. This can only be done after the surgeory (which is soon), because we do not know how much it has spread. She is only 4 years old and is too young die… Please, if theres anyone that has experience the same thing, could help me? I would try anything. I’m thinking of homeopathy but its not available in my country (and I don’t know where to look for it). I hope it is only affecting her spleen, so that they could remove the whole of it (however, there are high chances that whatever that was will grow back).
I live in Singapore, if anyone knows where I can go for animal/vet homeopathy do inform me. Thank you.
Hi Old Cat Lady, I tried to email Dr. Jeff at the email address that you’re provided but I couldn’t. I do not understand the reason but I go an error that it couldn’t be sent out. Is there any other way?

She doesn’t vomit or anything. I don’t know, the doctor doesn’t mentioned cancer. Just that the spleen is continously breaking down the red blood cells and is blocking, hence the growth. So her blood count will always be low, unless they remove the spleen. But I have read that some pets do get better, even with liver cancer.

Thank you for suggestions.. I will try to be strong but its so difficult. And its so hard to make the life or death decision, especially when I don’t know what she really wants. I know she’s still fighting.

If it is cancer AND it is in the liver and the spleen, then I’m afraid the vet is right-that would mean your cat has terminal cancer, and will die. Since the spleen and liver are right next to each other, your vet will be able to tell how bad it is pretty much immediately. Death from cancer is terribly painful, and death from liver failure comes with a lot of nausea and feeling generally piss-poor. I really really don’t want to come across as cruel or heartless, because I know she’s your baby and you are terribly upset right now, but the cold hard truth is euthanasia would be the biggest kindness you could do for her, IF she does have cancer in her liver and spleen.

Looking forward to getting a cat!
Do you also have any suggestions where I could by a kitten from a shelter?

Dont know about your area, but in mine there are several pet stores which invite pet rescue charities to showcase their adoptable pets every few days. Also, there are ads in the classifieds asking for homes for cats and kittens, and a lot of vets in my area will have a bulletin board of people looking for homes for cats or kittens they can’t keep.

Most of my cats I have (almost literally) stumbled across. My first little boy was under a bush in my grandmother’s backyard near a wildlife refuge, had two boys and one girl come to me nearly full grown and wanting to be tamed and adopted (they were afraid, but were making the effort themselves to approach me and my family lol), one little boy in a parking lot in an industrial area, and one girl that another client of my vet just turned to me while I was taking my parking lot boy home and asked if I wanted a "Simeez" cat. That girl is the only one I have ever had that I found through the intervention of another human being.

i m realy bored annd i wanted to know if anyone knows any GOOD animal or dog/cat games?

Easy 10 points for the best answer!i!i!i!

Umm .. do you accept downloads ?? ^^;

http://www.fenomen-games.com/pet-games.htm

http://www.girlgamesnow.com/games/pet_games.html

sorry if it’s not the answer you’re looking for (

What strikes me as odd is the variation in dog breeds as opposed to the variations in cat breeds. We see dogs as small as can be (smaller than a cat) to insanely huge Great Danes that approach near 200 lbs.

Now we do see a variation in cat breeds: hairless, personality, etc. But we don’t see the kind of physical variations we see in dogs.

Why hasn’t somebody come along and bred only their smallest cats to get them tinier and tinier? So we have ones the size of large rats?

By the same token, why hasn’t someone constantly bred the largest of their litters to eventually, after scores of generations, have a super large breed of cat; similar to a medium sized dog?

Don’t give me some answer like: "a large cat would be too dangerous or impractical." This is a moronic answer. Humans have been doing moronic and impractical things since the beginning of time. People have pet tigers which is impractical, and especially moronic every-time you read about somebody getting mauled by their pet.

And don’t give me a link to some house cat that’s recently been crossed with some larger, wild cat. I’m only talking about the breeding of purely domesticated house cats to gain a variation in size.

Is there a genetic reason this is not achievable?

Hi Franco. As a breeder of Maine Coons, which are the largest recognised breed of domestic pedigree cat in all international cat registries, one of the main reasons that breeders are reluctant to breed too large a cat in the genus Felis Catus (without having to cross breed with other larger genus of cats, such as the Caracal, Serval and Asian Leopard Cat) is for health reasons. Because the domestic cat (Felis Catus) has it’s own separate and individual genetic make-up, it has a limit to the size that can be bred from and to, before health begins to be compromised. The larger the cat is in size the greater the burden on the vital organs, especially the heart, where greater strain is put on it to pump the blood around the body. Studies and tests have been done and found that larger domestic cats are at greater heart risk and brain haemorrhage. This is one of the reasons that care is taken not to breed a cat that is too large where health and function of the cat as a whole is not put under undue pressure.

Dogs, have been genetically manipulated by us humans for our own use and side effects of doing this over decades have started to show weakness in some breeds where their genetic constitution has been bred to the limits.

Cats have been lucky in that they did not fall into our every day needs as a working animal, except for mousing. So, this has safeguarded the cat from our profuse genetic breeding and manipulation. And, because of this, cat breeding has been able to learn from the pattern and in some instances mistakes, that have been taken in the dog breeding world.

The larger pedigree cat breeds, such as the Maine Coon, Norwegian Forest Cat and Siberian Forest Cat have all ended up being larger through natural selection of the strongest, hardiest and intelligent, as they are all naturally occuring wild domestic breeds of cat that have been around for centuries and their ancestors would not have survived the harsh climate and terrain that they lived ( and still live) in without producing larger and hardier offspring.

All the best.

I found a homeopathic remedy that claims to suppress a cat’s appetite. There are a lot of ingredients and I just am not up to researching all of them!

I know some believe that homeopathy is nonsense and doesn’t work. But not working isn’t the end of the world. What I’d like to know is, is there anything in here that can hurt?

The ingredients are: abies canadensis, ammonium bromatum, ammonium muriaticum, anacardium orientale, antimonium crudum, argentum metallicum, calcarea carbonica, capsicum annum, cinchona officinalis, ferrum metallicum, fucus vesiculosus, ignatia amara, kali bichromicum, lycopodium clavatum, mercurius solubilis, natrum sulphuricum, oleander, phosphorus, phytolacca decandra, sabadilla, staphysagria, sulphur, thyroidinum, veratrum album.

Who is making that garbage? Like 35 "homeopathic remedies all together! Every one of them would be possible for at least that many "conditions".

Why do you want to suppress your cat’s appetite?

It is entirely false to say that homeopathic remedies used this way (or even single ones) are 100% safe.

If you want to treat your cat homeopathically it is best to consult a qualified homeopathic veterinarian or a veterinary homeopath.

Need help taking care of stray cat and please I need some tips very badly. Thank you. Kira K.

Put some food and water out. It also depends on what you plan on doing with it. If you want to keep it, then you should trap it, and take it to the vet. And if you have other cats already, dont let it around them until you have it combo tested for feline aids and leukemia, because your other cats could get it. If it is positive for either, then you might want to think about euthanizing it. But hopefully its all negative. And you should definitely get it spayed/neutered. At the clinic I work at, if someone finds a stray and traps it, we will sedate it will in the cage, combo test it, and then spay/neuter it all in one day, then its done. Also, vaccines, of course.

I want to know if anyone knows any just cat games

Get a laser light – keeps them entertained for hours, and they’re fun to watch!

Little fake mice, balls with tinkly bells inside, fishing pole-style toy with feather on the end of it, round plastic things with ball in it so they can push it around, scratching posts/perches with balls or feathers hanging off, CAT NIP! Just pour some on the floor and watch your cat go! lol Crack-up to watch!