We try to make it as stress-free as possible, whether we are distracting by petting or using the catnip or treats if they're food motivated. Some cats are too nervous to take treats when they're here. And so, the proper restraint method is essential in protecting your cat from getting hurt, as well as protecting our staff from getting hurt. We don't want that to happen to either side, so well-trained staff goes a long way. If we know the pet is too stressed, then we stop. We also have the kitty comfort kits if we know we need to run tests, then you can give them something to calm them, to take a little of the stress off of them. Most of our cats do great, but we have those few that get too stressed. By giving them something to calm them, it helps everyone involved.

It is a needle poke, so the cat reacts as they might to a vaccine. We know some cats are over-reactors while others let us do whatever we want to do. It's not pain-free, but we make it as painless as possible. We like to use distraction and some other fear-free methods. We'll spray catnip. We spray catnip on a towel, sometimes hiding their head or letting them hide in a towel. They like that. They feel more secure. There are other things we can do, like leaving them in the carrier. We have a whole video on carriers that we like and don't like. But if the top easily comes off and the cat can stay in the bottom part of that, that's an excellent carrier for your cat because they feel more secure not being completely removed from that carrier.

We collect the blood through the cat’s vein. We often do that from the back leg or perhaps from the jugular. The latter’s advantage is that we can get it quicker and usually get a larger volume without stressing the cat out.

The pet’s age would determine that, along with the results of other tests that you do that might spur you on a different test. We usually do what's most common. We're looking for what's most common, but not all cats read the books, so sometimes we have to dig a little deeper to find an answer to these problems. We usually take it step by step. Owners appreciate it when we're not just running five tests at one time.

That's a great question. I think that most lab tests that we would choose to run, we would choose them because of their accuracy. We know that other factors can also call some values to be high when they're not. For instance, the heart test for cats, the BNP test—we know that if they have thyroid disease or something else going on, that could elevate that superficially or inadvertently, and it may not necessarily be an abnormal value.

We're looking at the physical exam combined with the history, clinical signs, and blood work. Let’s say we have a cat that's running a high fever, and they are dehydrated. We’re going to expect certain values, like perhaps some of the kidney values, to be elevated when this doesn’t necessarily mean kidney disease. But it is affecting the kidneys because of other problems. We would interpret that with everything else going on.

There are many different lab tests. We've talked about some of those. It may be a routine screen of infection for cats, which is very common—feline leukemia or FIV test. Lab tests can also be something other than blood work. We've talked about blood work, but other routine lab tests could be a stool check on your pet for parasites. It could also be a urine check, so there are many different lab tests that we can run.

I think that they're very effective. Lab tests give us answers to many of our questions. Even if everything is, quote-unquote, normal, then that means it rules out things. Normal can be good in certain situations. We think about normal being good. But sometimes we think that that was a wasted test, but it's not because we have ruled out certain things, even if the numbers and values come back normal. Stress can cause an elevation in blood sugar, which is why we wouldn't get too excited about it if we saw that in a stressed pet.