Kitten Wellness Package

When you come here and you use our kitten pack, which is sort of a package of all the things they're going to need over the first couple months of their life. We're going to take time to visit each one of these topics, you know, sort of in a slow progression so that we don't overwhelm you at first.

Hi, I'm Dr. Michele Drake of the Drake Center for Veterinary Care. Moki and I are here today to talk to you about kitten care and the importance of seeing us early on. Most people get kittens in various ways, some from the shelter, some from a box in front of a grocery store, some from a friend who didn't get their cat spayed early enough, and now they have a batch of kittens.

Regardless of how you get them, it's really important to come in here as soon as possible. Quite often, these kitties will come to you with parasites. Intestinal parasites, generally, the worms stay inside the intestines, and they'll just pass eggs. We really want to check out a fecal because some of these parasites are actually zoonotically transmitted to children and we want to make sure that we take care of those for sure.

Also external parasites like fleas especially but also there are some dermatologic issues that may be of concern, such as ringworm that kittens can have. Actually kittens are the most common ones to have ringworm. You want us to have a thorough physical exam which includes checking the fecal and doing a good thorough skin exam to check for fleas and things like ringworms or mites, also ear mites and some other types of mites that can be infesting the kitten. That's a good way to start.

At this visit, we're gonna review sort of what's the plan for the cat's lifestyle, is it going to be indoor or outdoor cat. Most of our kitties around here we recommend being indoor because coyotes are a reality in just about most of the areas that we have and we really don't want these kittens getting attacked by a coyote.

Once we have kitties that are indoor and cats really are meant to have a lot of stimulus in the environment, such as hunting abilities and being outside and investigating and if they don't really get much of an opportunity to do that then behavioral issues are really important. You have to enrich your cat's environment. A super important thing to get started early on and avoid some behavioral issues, which can include things that are really unpleasant, such as urinating in the house or having signs of aggression. We're gonna review a lot of those things with you.

When you come here and you use our kitten pack, which is sort of a package of all the things they're going to need over the first couple months of their life. We're going to take time to visit each one of these topics, you know, sort of in a slow progression so that we don't overwhelm you at first. Most importantly we're going to make sure that we get on the right vaccine protocol, that we get on the right de-worming and intestinal and external parasite control also. Sometimes it's gonna include checking things for like feline leukemia and feline AIDS. We may want to do a blood test. Just depends on where the kittens come from and whether or not they've had any of these things done already and we're gonna make sure all of those things are done properly and that we get them on the correct schedule and then we get them set up for a healthy life.