How to Restrain Your Cat to Administer First-Aid

Series Summary

Your pet cat is much more than just an animal. Our pets are our loved ones, our friends, and sometimes our children. For almost a thousand years mankind has been drawn to cats for their affectionate and dignified nature, companionship, and keen hunting skills. Properly caring for cats is important, since we have domesticated these animals from the wild and taught them to expect to have their needs met by humans. In order for the pet-human relationship to work, we have to do our part.

In this free instructional video series you’ll get easy tips for basic cat health care, including how to treat some of the most common feline afflictions. Giving pills or using ointment can be a tricky business; learn some simple techniques for restraining your cat and administering medication. Also get information on treating chronic cat health conditions like kidney failure or diabetes. Our expert will tell you what can be treated at home and what is best left to a professional veterinarian. She’ll also give you some basic diet and nutrition information to keep your cat healthy. The advice in these video clips will help ensure your cat lives a long and happy life.

Video Transcript

" Hi! I am Dr. Adrienne Mulligan and I am the owner of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic and I am here today on behalf of expertvillage.com to talk to you about cat first aid and administration of medications. First, I am going to show you how to restrain a cat for simple things like inspecting small wounds that they might have or finding little burs or splinters or things that might be causing them to lick at their paw. Most of the time, if a cat is limping, it is probably something higher up but if it is in his paw he is probably going to be licking at it a lot. So if the cat is paying a particular attention to a place on his body, you really want to look at that area and the best way to let a cat, let you do that, to help a cat let you do that is to learn how to use their scruff. The scruff is this part between the ears and the shoulder blades that the mother uses to pick a kitten up and carry them around. Now you… I do not have ?? (0105) for you to pick him up by his scruff and carrying him around once they are this big but you can certainly use it to restrain him, so that he will let you do things. Now when you restrain a cat with the scruff it is not a mean thing to do, it actually releases endorphins and it makes a cat kind of remember how good it felt for mummy to carry him around and it is not particularly a bad thing, it actually is a comforting thing. So basically I am going to scruff him and if you are scruffing appropriately, the ears should come together because you should be close to the ears and you should feel their shoulder blades right there. So you want to hold hand of a scruff and you want lots of scruff in your hands and you can lift him but not up off the ground and when they are like this you can look at their toenails and you can see if they have a broken toenail. You can see if they have a toenail that has grown in, you can look under their paws. Occasionally, it takes a little help with this even because it takes two hands to really explore things. So if someone else is scuffing them for you, then it is easier but you can check between the toes and remove things and you can do the same thing with the back feet and also if you turn them over on their back and scruff them and roll them over you can usually check them over really good for anything under here. But scuffing is extremely important when you are trying to look at places your cat seems to be having some troubles and usually they will let you know that by licking. "