Feline Care Guides
First Aid and Your Pet
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Dealing with an injured pet can be scary and frustrating. In many cases, you don’t know how bad the injury is, and your pet may not be acting normally. If your pet is injured, the first thing you need to do is try to remain calm. If possible, try to determine how severe the injury is, but remember that caution is extremely important when approaching an injured animal. Any pet, no matter how calm or friendly he or she may usually be, can bite or scratch when in pain.
Read More Fluorescein Stain
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A fluorescein test is a test that can help detect injuries to the cornea, which is the clear, thin layer of tissue that covers the front of the eye. The cornea must remain transparent to support vision, but this transparency makes detecting scratches or other injuries on the cornea very difficult because they are invisible.
Read More Fructosamine Testing
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Fructosamine testing involves checking the level of fructosamine in the blood, and this testing is one of the ways a diabetic pet is monitored. Fructosamine is a protein that binds very strongly to glucose (sugar) in the blood. Because fructosamine occurs in proportion to blood glucose, it can provide an accurate estimate of the amount of glucose in the blood. When fructosamine is measured, it helps determine the average glucose level for the previous 2 to 3 weeks.
Read More Fungal Culture
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A fungal culture test is a method of identifying a specific fungus that is infecting an animal. Fungal infections are relatively common in cats and dogs and include conditions such as ringworm. Ringworm can cause hair loss, itching, and a skin rash, but in most cases it is treatable and not life threatening. However, there are other fungal infections that can cause serious illness (such as pneumonia) and death in cats and dogs.
Read More Gastrointestinal Parasites in Cats
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Gastrointestinal (GI) parasites include any parasites that live in the stomach or intestines of a host. A variety of GI parasites affect cats. They range from roundworms and tapeworms, which are visible with the naked eye, to microscopic organisms like coccidia and Giardia. Regardless of their size, GI parasites can cause serious illness in cats and sometimes even death. Some parasites are even zoonotic, which means that humans can become infected.
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