What tips to look at, for a healthy cat?
INTRODUCTION:
So do you have a very lovely cat? Cool! Because you have a very nice friend and an excellent pet.
This new addition to your family will come with a lot of delights and happiness.
There is no doubt a pet-like cat adds more exciting energy to your house.
Such a nice friend is the center of attraction and a powerhouse of cuteness for everyone. But how would you keep your cat joyful and healthy?
Maybe it is true that cats do not require much maintenance, but of course, they need a little of your attention to live a healthy life ahead for a long and long time.
One should always take out time to look after his/her cat. Yes! cats need to be taken care of.
Here are some important points that you should remember as a cat owner to give your cat the best healthy life.
Provide your cat with a sufficient amount of water to keep it healthy:
To keep your cat healthy you should provide them with sufficient amounts of water. The cats living in the wild can have sufficient amounts of water by the moisture of their food that is the prey us mice, birds, etc.
Unfortunately, the house cat usually consumes dry cat food. However, this is a healthy cat food but is not provided with enough water and the water content of such food is much less.
The dry food has very little water content in it as compared to the canned food. So canned food should be preferred for the cats to keep them healthy.
If your cat doesn’t want to feed completely on canned food then give they you may give them a mixture of both dry and wet food.
For complete care of a cat, you should also look after the quality of water that you are providing to your cat.
Fresh and clean water is so essential for all living organisms to carry out their daily metabolic activities.
Therefore you should take care of your cats and should make sure that your cats are not thirsty and not panting.
If you notice that your cat is not drinking from a bowl then do bring for her a glass that is tall so that the cat does not need to bend down because some cats don’t like to bend don’t and thus they avoid drinking water.
After all, water is very essential to live long.
What’s best for the cat to eat?
What should you give your cat to eat? What should not be given as food to cats? How much should my cat eat in the entire day?
These questions may arise in your mind when you want to keep your cat healthy.
The best you can do now is to create a specific timetable, feed your cat twice a day, with a gap of 9 to 10 hours to keep your cat healthy.
Making such a schedule can help your cat to have food at the right time which is very important for their daily life cycle.
The best advice could be given by your vet based on the size, age, and activity of your cat. They also use cat weight charts by age. So feed your cat with vet-recommended food.
The vet can tell you how much you should feed your cat. After all, who could tell better than the vet what should or should not be given to the cat to eat?
Kittens and grown-up cats don’t have similar nutritional demands. Their demand for food varies.
Give your cat limited food and don’t just present all food before your cat, because this will make you eat as much as it wants and this could make your cat sick.
Taking too much food for any organism can be harmful to them. Always choose good quality food for your cat. As quality matters the most.
Giving low-quality food to anyone means risking someone’s life. So be it can or someone else quality should be the priority.
Milk is not always beneficial:
To keep your kitten healthy you should not give much milk to it for drinking.
It is observed in many television programs especially in cartoons that kittens love to drink milk but in reality kittens lack lactase.
Kittens don’t have these specific enzymes i.e lactase to digest lactose which is present in cow milk.
So to keep your cat healthy you should avoid giving cow milk to your kittens.
Feeding your kittens with cow milk can cause diarrhea and dehydration.
It can also make cats stomachs upset as milk that is not digested can prove to be harmful.
Products related to milk could also prove to be harmful to kittens like cheese, cream, chocolates having milk, and other dairy products.
To take good care of your care you must also have enough knowledge about what the cats should have in their diet.
Some other things that could harm the cat's diet are vegetables like onion and garlic.
Such food items can be junk to the cat diet.
One more thing, never feed your cat with the dog food as dogs and cats are different animals having different health and hence have different requirements for their diet to ensure a healthy life.
Supply of litter box:
According to Werber, it is necessary to have one litter box per cat, along with that you should have an additional one.
This means if you have four cats then you should be having 5 litter boxes.
That is a very good approach towards making your cat happy and healthy.
It is observed that pet owners usually put the litter box in some corners of the house, like some dark places, under the staircase, or some other such separate place, where cats may not use them willingly.
Maybe it’s not according to the nature of your cat.
You should have some special and happening areas of the house for the cats.
Such area where they could carry out daily activities of life and could realize that this area is their own with a scratching post, a litter box, and a bed.
It’s not only enough just to have a litter box. Along with that you should also keep the litter box clean and should scoop the box regularly at least once a day.
By the smell, you could realize that the time to clean the box had come.
You could easily observe any change in the cat’s stool or urine if you are cleaning the box regularly which could tell about some health issues.
You should notice the cat poop that may be too soft, too hard, or has blood in it. The mentioned conditions could be an indicator of your cat's health problem.
Scratching behavior:
Scratching is a part of a cat’s natural behavior and we should not discourage them from this act because scratching helps the cats to remove the old layer from their claws. S
cratching would not only keep the claws in better condition but will also be a part of daily exercise which is very beneficial for cats to stretch their muscles.
However, scratching on an inappropriate surface could be frustrating for them.
Don’t want your furniture to be scratched by a cat’s claw? Then you should train your cat to use scratching posts.
By that neither your valuable furniture would be harmed nor your cat would get frustrated.
