When you're traveling to the vet, the less stress you can provide for your cat, the better off they are. If they don't come in stressed, they often require less sedation for certain procedures. And then also, we'll talk to you about perhaps withholding food the night before a procedure of anesthesia.

Yes, the physical exam is vital. We are listening to your pet. We are examining everything about them to see if they are healthy. We would typically always want to do blood work too. There might be certain situations if your pet is young and it's a quick procedure that the pre-exam may not be required. But the more information we know, the safer we can keep your pet.

I look at that as the different levels of consciousness for the pet. And so sedation might be taking the edge off or calming your pet. We use that a lot for cats whenever they are nervous coming into the hospital, and they may not allow us to do the physical exam or the procedures we need to do. We may send something home that you can give by mouth, which would be a mild sedative to take the edge off. They're still aware, able to walk around, and respond to you and know what's going on. The other part that you asked was general anesthesia, and that would be full loss of consciousness and awareness in response to pain, which would be for a complete surgical procedure.

This might involve surgery or something painful that we want the cat to be still and not feel that pain. We use anesthesia for dental procedures. If they come in and need to be sedated to take x-rays, that might be another reason.

The main types of anesthesia that we use are gas anesthesia for a procedure or even injectable anesthesia. Those are the two main types of anesthesia.