National Take Your Cat to the Vet Day!

This post is sponsored by Royal Canin™and the BlogPaws® Pet Influencer Network™. I am being compensated to help share information about National Take Your Cat to the Vet Day, but I am the Maven® only shares information we feel is relevant to our readers. Royal Canin is not responsible for the content of this article.

That time a kitten crashed a block party.

A few weeks ago, on National Night Out, a kitten crashed our street's block party. A very smart grey tabby kitten who must have seen the sucker sign on my forehead. I’m a self-proclaimed cat lover and have been since I was a little girl. When this scrappy young kitten came running up to me, we asked around. No one knew where he came from.

Who was this young kitten? No collar. A plan began to take place. A temporary “quarantine” was set up to keep “Mr Kitten” separate from our cats until we could take him to the veterinarian to be scanned for a chip and screened for illnesses. We felt it was necessary as responsible pet owners to make sure he was healthy.

The next morning, my kids and I took Mr. Kitten to the vet’s office. After unsuccessfully scanning him for a chip, we paid to have him screened for common cat diseases so we could start him on the path to good preventative care. Mr. Kitten received a clean bill of health, but it was also determined he had been on his own for quite some time as he demonstrated some feral behaviors at the veterinarian. Poor Mr. Kitten.

But Mr. Kitten got lucky. He clearly started out on the streets, but half of all cats WITH owners do not see a veterinarian on a regular basis. In fact, only one cat is seen by a veterinarian for every five dogs, despite the fact that 10 million more cats are owned in the U.S.

Why don’t cat owners take their cats to the vet as often as they should?

Here are the results from a survey by Royal Canin.
Sixty-eight percent of cat owners feel that cats are healthier than dogs.
Forty percent say financial burden is the primary reason
Thirty-one percent of people responded it's because they believe their cat doesn't need to go. •
Two-thirds say they would take their cat more often to the vet if it was easier to do so.
Men are actually more likely to be found at the vet’s office than women.
Thirty-four percent of male cat owners visit the vet more than once per year, compared to just one in four women.

August 22 is National Take Your Cat to the Vet Day.

If you haven’t taken your purrfect companion to the vet lately, now is a good as a time as any. Throughout the month of August, share a photo your cat or tips for taking their cat to the veterinarian on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #Cat2VetDay. For each social share, Royal Canin will donate to Frankie’s Friends. Frankie’s Friends provides grants to help with the cost of life-saving or life enhancing emergency or specialty care for pets whose families cannot afford the full cost of treatment.

With one checkup under his belt, Mr. Kitten is now known as Winston in our house, and he already has more vet visits scheduled. This past weekend he was neutered and microchipped at The Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Project before heading to our regular Veterinarian. We’re doing what we can to ensure he stays in good health, he deserves it.

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