Generally we say between four to six months is a good time for a kitten - male or female - to get spayed or neutered. We tend to wait until six months in females, but males can be done as early as four months of age. One quick tip I want to give you guys as far as kitten care. The first thing we do is when we get the kittens and bring them home, we get a carrier. All cats should be brought to the veterinary clinic in a carrier because they can get scared and can jump and run away. What I recommend to people is don't put them in the carrier and bring them directly to the vet and then take them home, and that's the only time you use the carrier. Because they will hate going in the carrier and you will be fighting them the rest of their life to go in the carrier. So, what I recommend to people is when you get a kitten, put them in the carrier, give them food that they really want, leave the door open and let them go in and out, make it a happy place. Put them in, close it, walk around the house, walk outside and back in. Do that couple of times a week. That way when they're going in the carrier, they don't associate it with just going to the vet, getting shots and getting looked at, and your life as a pet owner will be much more pleasant...instead of having to come in with scratches on your arms for trying to squeeze them into that cat carrier.

So preventative care is a pillar of our clinic. This is part of our philosophy—strong, preventative care to just do that, prevent things from happening later in life...to prevent kittens from getting sick, prevent them from transmitting anything to the owner. So some preventative care is fecal testing or poop testing to check for any parasites. Because sometimes you can't see parasites that are worms on the stool. It can be eggs, and these can be zoonotic, or transmissible to people. We get them proper vaccinations to protect them from diseases that are common in cats. We administer blood tests to make sure they weren't born with that with a virus that sometimes some kitty cats can get. We check their heart, their lungs. So, regular veterinary appointments are going to be very important. Do not forget flea and tick control. Cats are very good at hiding fleas, as they groom often.

You should definitely ask about prevention, testing and lifestyle changes, when we can get tested, when to put them on prevention, and I think those are the main questions you should be asking.

Heartworms are not visible like other parasites, how people think, "Oh, I could see a worm on a fruit from a dog or a cat or something to that extent." No, they're not visible. They travel in the blood. The only way they're visible is with imaging, x-rays, and ultrasound. But otherwise, no, they're internal. They're inside the body.

As we said, inflammatory conditions of the lungs. That's the number one in cats is that, yes, it's a worm that may live in the heart, but it causes severe inflammation, respiratory signs in the lungs.