The reality is most of these cats are going to show you much more subtle early signs, and you're probably going to take the cat to your veterinarian to have them checked—to have lab work or x-rays—whatever it takes to diagnose what the underlying problem is. So again, with that information and the advice of your veterinarian and their staff, a group decision will typically be made in reference to what treatment options are. Euthanasia is usually the last thing that we can do to ease their suffering. So once all other treatment options have been exhausted and there is no improvement or the animal continues to decline, that's when the time for euthanasia.

Euthanasia would be us as veterinarians easing the passing of said cat, or maybe not easing, but causing the passing. There are drugs that we use injectably that, there's no polite way to put it, but that will stop the heart of a cat. And obviously in their life, that way it's very humane. It's very quick. It's very peaceful. It is quite literally an overdose of an anesthetic. So there's no pain involved with it. It's just, again, when we know that an animal (a cat in this case) is at the end of their life and there's nothing else we can do, there's no point in allowing that animal to suffer and to die a long, drawn-out, painful death. There's no point in that at all. So it's our responsibility as veterinarians to ease that suffering. And that's how it's done.

Thankfully, that's not as grim of a question to answer. So pain can be as simple as vocalization. It can be carrying their body posture differently. If it's arthritic type pain, they will be carrying themselves differently. Maybe they're hunched back. Maybe they're walking with real short steps because it hurts to walk. Maybe it's that you go to pick them up or you touch them in a certain area, and they either vocalize or they try to bite you or something like that. If they have a tender or painful spot, they’re going to lick or bite at that area a lot because it hurts and they can't figure out why, and they don't understand it. So they just want to lick and lick and lick or bite at that area.

That's truly a good question. And I'll be honest with you. One that I had to look up myself to get the answer, but so the way I know it now, and the way I think of it is this. Palliative care is when you were trying to control the pain or suffering of an animal, but there is still hope of a recovery or a cure, whereas hospice care is still the ultimate goal is to try to make an animal comfortable, to remove whatever pain and suffering that cat might be going through. But with hospice care, typically there is no chance of a resolution or a cure. You have reached the end of your treatment options, and you're just trying to make the cat comfortable until they pass or can be put down.

That's a tricky one to answer. So I will simply say this. I'm going to focus on the literal act of dying. And I know that's grim, but if this question is intended to cover things such as maybe my cat is passing away at my home now with me, I would expect to see things like a cat that is no longer responsive, number one. They're usually laterally recumbent laying on their side, but you can't rouse them. They're breathing but you can't rouse them. They don't respond if you call their name. There may be what's called a palpebral reflex. You can touch by their eye and they should blink just like we should but they don’t. You start seeing a diminished or a lack of a palpebral reflex, things like that. Sometimes severe dehydration will be evident if can pick up their skin and they have a very prolonged skin tint. That's not an end of life sign, but most cats that are at that point usually are going to be severely dehydrated. And then I would think the last, and I mean the very last that you may see (hopefully you won't see it at home) would be what we call agonal breathing. That is anytime an animal passes, whether they're passing on their own or if that’s something that we've assisted them with, oftentimes they will take to take these very, very deep breaths right at the end as they're passing. Again, a grim topic but these are some of the things that you would be looking for at the absolute in stages of life.

So Mr. Mowgli with his shiny coat goes once a month. We actually use two different groomers in town. The dogs prefer different people just like we go to different hairdressers or barbers for our haircuts— Mowgli has his favorite. If you have a dog with a long coat you might need to go every two or three weeks. If you have a ranch dog that lives outside and jumps in the river like I used to, I never took him to a groomer because he would go straight in the river as soon as he got home.