No, I would say it's not optional. It's something that we need to do for every pet that we have, whether it be a dog or a cat, or maybe you have some pocket pets or a ferret. But the wonderful thing for these guys is that I know cost is a big thing with many owners. Sometimes finances are a little tight, but everybody loves having a snuggly little kitten like this. And we love those who carry pet insurance, or we work with this pet insurance provider called Pumpkin. And the thing that I love about Pumpkin is that they have preventative care packages. So they have insurance programs that help with those annual wellness visits and that wellness blood work. And they have a lot of options that can help owners out with all of this preventative care management when it comes to the vet.

The biggest thing you can do at home is to make sure that your cat has a good diet. Your veterinarian will be the best one to give you advice on that for your cat, but good nutrition is essential, as well as good enrichment, so making sure that they have areas to play with and toys to play with. You probably want to have a cat tree or a place where they can kind of perch or look outside and watch birds out through the window. And that they've got a good cozy place to sleep and that they have plenty of litter boxes with a type of litter that they like to use where they can feel comfortable to go to the bathroom. And then the other thing that we can do at home is keeping them up on things like flea and tick prevention. And a lot of those also prevent ear mites, and we want to do some intestinal parasite prevention.

As some cats get older, I like to be proactive about their dental health. And so we carry these little dental treats here that work great for cats to work on that dental tartar and help with their fresh breath. And those are some things that you guys can do at home to help cats out.

A lot of times we like to start with exams. On Mr. Dwight here, I want to look at their eyes. I look to look at their ears. I like to open up and look in their mouths, make sure that their teeth look healthy and their gums look healthy, and we do not see any concerns. And then we work our way through the body from the tip of their nose, all the way to the tip of their tail, and just look at every single little body part—their legs, belly, all of that good stuff. And then, as cats get older, we'll recommend some wellness blood work just to make sure that we do not see things like kidney disease or liver disease, or perhaps something like an overactive thyroid or diabetes. We want to rule out those kinds of common older cat diseases.

It means that everything that you're dealing with provides your cat with a long, healthy life, and that ranges from the food that you feed your cat to housing and enrichment. Preventative care also means bringing the cat to the vet every year when they're older or this size, every couple of weeks to get their kitten boosters series. It also covers those annual checkups and following the recommendations of your veterinarian, and keeping them up to date on preventatives against fleas and ticks, ear mites, and intestinal parasites. There's a whole lot that goes into cat preventive care.

So once your dog has given birth and you make sure that mom's healthy and the puppies are healthy, the biggest thing you're going to want to do is make sure mom has plenty of puppy food available because she's going to be producing a lot of milk for a lot of puppies. And that will take a lot of energy. And you'll want to take each of the puppies and weigh them on a little kitchen scale so that you know how they're gaining weight. So at least once a day, preferably twice a day, you can keep track of which puppy and how they're gaining weight so that if there's a problem, or if you suspect a problem, we can track it that way.

It depends on the dog and her experience level, but many of them will take care of everything themselves. They'll open the sack; they’ll lick the puppy and stimulate it and tear the umbilical cord. So they'll do all the work for you. Some newer moms or nervous moms may need a little bit of extra help. And so that's when you want to ride the line between being helpful but also giving her space so that you're not all up in her space at the time. But, if you're concerned that she might not know what she's doing, that's when you keep a close eye, and you might have to intervene.

So ultrasound is only about 30% accurate for determining the number of puppies that she'll have. So when you ultrasound, it's more to determine if she's pregnant and if you need to start changing plans. And if you only see a couple, it might put on your radar that there may be fewer, and that can cause problems down the road. But the proper way to count puppies is to do an x-ray around the last week of her pregnancy when all the puppies’ bones have formed so they'll show up on the x-ray. And that's the best way to count all the tiny skeletons and see how many puppies to expect.

With smaller litters, the signal for the body to go and start delivering puppies depends on something produced by the puppies. And so, when there aren't as many puppies, they may not produce enough. And so, the mom might not start labor on her own. So that's more something to watch out for. But, it's something we just keep on our radar. It's not guaranteed there'll be issues.