Learning For the Love of Cats
This section collects our cat care resources for Hickory, NC families: nutrition and weight, behavior, grooming and hygiene, and some breed-specific health considerations we watch for.
Cat Nutrition and Weight Management
Cats are quietly good at hiding how they're doing, and weight is where it often shows up first. A cat who has put on two pounds hasn't changed much to look at, but on a ten-pound frame, that's twenty percent, the equivalent of a fair amount of person. It happens slowly, indoors, one generous bowl…
Understanding Cat Behavior
Cats have a bit of an unfair reputation as aloof and unknowable. They're neither. They're a small predator that also gets predated, which explains almost everything they do: the hiding, the hunting, the sudden 3 a.m. laps of the house, the strong opinions about their bathroom. Once you know what a cat is actually telling…
Cat Grooming and Hygiene
Cats are famously self-cleaning, and for the most part, that's true. A healthy cat spends a good part of the day grooming and does a thorough job of it. So the point of cat hygiene usually isn't to do the work for them. It's to notice when something's changed, because for a species that's this…
Cat Breed Health Guides
Most cats in America are wonderful mixes with no particular pedigree, and they make marvelous companions. But breed still tells you something, even in cats. It shapes temperament, what a cat wants from a home, and, here and there, the health conditions worth keeping an eye on.