With x-rays, I tell clients that it's a noninvasive test that we do. So physically, they're going to go into our x-ray room, and they're going to have to lay on a table. Usually, for cats, it's not terribly uncomfortable. They're fairly cooperative with that. When we talk about our dogs, sometimes we have really big dogs that are harder to get up on a table. We can see big cats too, but most of our cats are still within the ability to be able to pick them up and put them. We also have positioning trays available to make that more comfortable for them if needed, whether they're lying on their back or whether their leg might be extended in order to get a certain view for that. But usually, if they're not painful, they're fairly cooperative throughout the procedure.

Most of the time, no, but it is possible depending on if your pet is painful, and they may not want to get in certain positions, and if your pet is unhappy coming to see us and very stressed out. We want to try to minimize stress, so we might offer some relaxing, calming medication. It depends on the situation, but I would say the majority of the x-rays and ultrasounds that we do, we do not sedate.

The way veterinary medicine works, we may seek advice and get an interpretation from a radiologist, but you wouldn't actually have an appointment with them. If we need further study or referral, you would most likely go to either a surgeon or even an internal medicine doctor is how that would work.

Most of the diagnostic imaging, like x-rays and ultrasound or echocardiogram, we do right here in our clinic. Our certified veterinary assistants and technicians do those procedures themselves. We are directly involved in that procedure. They take the images, and then we interpret or evaluate them. There are veterinary radiologists available, but we would use them by sending images to them to be read. You wouldn't necessarily make an appointment directly with them to have your pet x-rayed or have an ultrasound done as you might in human medicine. It's not segmented like human medicine, where if you need blood work, so you should go here. If you need an MRI, you go there. We do it all.

We may ask that your cat be fasted. So you should withhold food, especially if we're looking at the abdomen, because if they come in with a full stomach, it can hinder some of the organs that we're trying to look at. And sometimes you don't know. They come in for an appointment, and you add that to their treatments. We may not know to ask you ahead of time to fast your pet. Also, depending on your cat's behavior, we may need some calming medication. So we may ask you to administer that at home. Again, if we know ahead of time, that would be a way to prepare and relax your cat to have the best diagnostic images. They don't really understand "lay down on the table, be still and stretch out."