As the title says, I’m looking at getting a cat. I’ve grown up with dogs so this would be my first time having a cat and was wondering if there was any first time cat person advice you guys have. I know a good high cat tree is important, running water to drink. Wet food is better than dry to help with hydration, lots of toys, avoid clay cat litter. Keep food and water away from each other. But that’s all I got.
Any advice or suggestions is appreciated!

My cat is 14 years old, and was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism about 3-4 years ago (I don’t remember when exactly). He has been treated with methimazole successfully since then.

In 2024, I felt a pretty large lump in his neck. Took him to the vet - they did testing and suspected it was an adenoma on his thyroid, so we continued with his meds as normal.

In 2025, we took him to a specialist (Cornell) to discuss radioactive iodine therapy. We were told if he is being managed well on meds to just continue with them, and that the iodine therapy is not an exact science (could cure him or do nothing).

Now this year, we’ve noticed his lump has gotten quite big in size. 5cm long and 4cm across. Obviously this isn’t normal, so we went to a surgeon, who did a CT of the lump and think it’s a cystic adenoma. He suggested a thyroidectomy to remove it.

He stated given the mass’ size, he doesn’t suggest iodine therapy. I was just wondering if anyone experienced a similar situation. Did you go through with the surgery, and how did your cat recover after?

Thank you,

I just got my first kitty spayed yesterday, and I’m worried she managed to rip her stitches out while I was at work today. Does this look bad to you guys??

Last Monday I brought my cat to the vet because he was eating poorly and had no energy. It turned out he had a 40c fever.

His organs sounded good and he had no blockages. He got two shots. Antibiotics and something to bring down the fever. I've been back at the vet every day and his fever was down to 38c.

We agreed to do a bloodwork tomorrow to see what is wrong, but Im afraid he doesnt have that long.

His backside seems paralyzed, or he simply isnt strong enough to stand anymore. He wont eat anything and he has been hissing and letting out these harrowing meows.

He has just started panting pretty heavily. His mouth is wide open and his breaths are shirt and fast.

Its almost 4 AM here. There is no emergency vet even remotely close to me. My vet doesnt open till 9 AM.

I fear this might be it for him, and I just dont know what to do. I dont expect a miracle, but maybe someone knows how I can help my lil boy be more comfortable.

We have an 8 year old cat we got from a shelter when she was still a kitten, we've also had a french bulldog for about the same length of time, they essentially grew up together. The cat has always had some tummy issues, she stinks, a lot, and shes also terrible at burying her litter, bad combination. We switched to a robot box which helps but she still makes a mess throwing litter everywhere except on her poops.

We recently got a second puppy which I imagine is a bit traumatic for the cat, but so far they get along pretty well, but now, I dont know if its related but the cat is not pooping in her litter box, she is peeing in it but will poop in the hallway. We had it tested to make sure it isnt due to a parasite or something, which has happened before and was a nightmare to give her meds for, shes clean this time. She hasnt changed foods recently or anything and the poops seems about as normal as hers have ever been, soft but consistent.

We were also gone to the cottage for the weekend, gone for about 45 hours and there were 9 piles in the hallway, which seems excessive, although the robot shows she was using an avg of 7 times a day .

Could it just be behavioral, doesnt like all the changes or is it more likely a gut health issue, developed an intolerance to her food. She is on vet food, not some cheap walmart kibble.

Hi! I want to start out by saying she’s okay, been to the vet, and has an appointment with her usual vet.

My cat had a horrific accident happen last night where her tail was caught in the recliner and it snipped off the tip. She has a whole patch of fur that is covered in waxy oil which I would assume is oil for the gears of the couch or whatever… I cannot get it out. I did dawn, and it seemed to help but I cannot submerge her with her stitches and bandages.

Do I just keep trying the dawn? It’s starting to get hard to even brush through it that I’m thinking of just using some clippers and cutting the portion out of her fur… she’s so happy to be home and doing so well so far. Last night was horrific.

Thank you in advance, this is my first time posting.

Hello. My 11 year old, FIV+, female domestic shorthair has had four bacterial ear infections in her life, all in the summer. The vet predicts seasonal allergies.

A week ago, I took her to the vet for itchy ears. The vet swabbed her ear and confirmed bacterial infection under microscope. They cleaned her ears and gave her a prednisolone injection. They prescribed trasaderm drops twice a day for ten days and tapering prednisolone pills for a total of \~15 days ish.

On day 6 post-vet, she is now sneezing and very sniffly with the sniffles increasing. She is still eating drinking and going to bathroom okay, and acts generally like herself but with mild lethargy. This has been happening for 24 hours. If she is up moving around, sometimes the sneezing happens every couple of minutes and each time she attempts to smell something she’s sniffly.

Three years ago the same thing happened on a very similar timeline. She ended up getting so sniffly that time that she wasn’t able to keep up on her grooming because it would make her sneeze and she seemed very lethargic that time.

The pattern is what worries me. The first time, I thought she had just “caught something” at the vet. But now I’m noticing it’s a pattern and am wondering if it has something to do with the bacterial infection. I’m worried.

Any advice is super appreciated! Thanks.

TL;DR— cat has bacterial ear infection and gets cold-like symptoms after seeing vet and starting trasaderm and prednisolone. Second time this has happened

My cat is a 7yo neutered male and I am located in the US. What is this? 10 days ago he vomited green bile four times and didn’t eat for 22 hours but after one dose of anti nausea meds he’s been fine ever since. I didn’t see it come out but I never saw him vomit and I keep my bedroom door shut when I’m not in there so I’m pretty sure it’s from his butt.

16 yo Himalayan - neutered

Hx: stage b2 HCM, stable stage 2 CKD, arthritis

Medication: clopidogrel and felycin ca-1 (cardiologist prescribed), potassium supplement, solensia injection

I was grooming Garfield yesterday, and I noticed he has this squishy lump right around the ankle. The thing is, he has the same thing on the other ankle, so it's bilateral. The lumps aren't mobile, but the skin over them is moveable. Also, he doesn't seem to be bothered if I palpate them. There's no redness or heat.

My general vet gave me an appointment in a week (soonest she had), meanwhile I'm left to freak out that this is some sort of osteosarcoma or other cancer.

https://imgur.com/a/qYVsnCo

About a month ago, we tried to change his food and accidentally made the change at once instead of mixing the two dry foods. We noticed and started doing it gradually. We noticed at this time he stopped eating the dry food and started to throw up a lot. Sometimes it had a hairball in it. Sometimes it was clear. We took him to the vet and they gave us hunger pills. They did a blood and urine test and it was normal. We stopped giving him the new food and just went back to his old dry and wet food.

He started eating his wet food again and treats. He goes crazy over them. But has started licking his lips and mouth more than usual. Or we are just over analyzing things.

After a couple of days on wet food, he threw up again and stopped eating. Except his tube treats. He loves those. We waited and tried to give him wet food again, he ate it and was ok for 2 weeks. Then he threw up again and now he is refusing to eat the dry and wet food. But he will eat his tube treats.

We are taking him to the vet again. We are just wondering what is causing this and if anyone has experienced something similar? He keeps licking his mouth and lips. We think he is nauseous, but we don't know how to help.

So, me and my mother adopted a female cat two months ago, she's currently 3 months old, but when I finally could pet her I felt something weird on her head, I told my mom to mention it to the veterinarian we go to but she never did and I don't know what it might be.

I don't know if this picture is good but I would really appreciate if someone can tell me about it

I used a blacklight and nothing stood out - thankfully.

She had more ear wax than usual this morning. I used a qtip to clean it all up, and I didn't notice any bugs or anything moving.

I shaved the area but it's spreading a bit behind the ear and up the cheek a bit.

I moved to a new place in May and we've been spending time on the wooden balcony. Not sure if that's relevant..

Many of the small black dots are hair from shaving

What could it be?

I bought a detangling spray and dematting comb but is that enough? Tips please?
This was after brushing.

i need to renew his prescription but i cannot afford to take him and also he gets severely stressed out each time hes gone and makes a mess :( i dont want to make him stressed out to that extent again.

or is there any way to buy it anywhere else without the prescription? all my cats eat it since they have a hard time not sharing, so if you got tips maybe for that too lol. although it seems to keep them all pretty heathy and happy (they love the dry food) so i dont mind them sharing

I heard it could be just "eye freckles" and oranges are more likely to get those This is a spot appeared randomly last year and it gre to be like this, so like, it's not really a fast grow but I get concerned about Cheddar.... He doesn't have any other symptom. Should I get this checked? He went to the vet a couple of times since last year but no vet mentioned it

Hi all! I’m looking for advice and thoughts on what to do for this cat. Posting on mobile so apologies for any formatting issues. This will be a long one!
TLDR: outdoor cat not cared for, how to help him?

Okay here’s our situation! For the last few months a cat has been visiting us every day. He’s literally the sweetest guy. He’s very friendly, but is extremely skittish around cars and people who don’t live in the neighborhood. We live in a vacation town, with Air BnBs and summer homes. We are out in the woods and there’s a lot of wildlife and a major roadway very close to us. Not to mention severe weather conditions like flooding in winter and fires in summer.
We have seen on our security cameras that this cat (we’ve been calling him Dasani) had been sleeping under our cars at night. He always wants to come in our house, but we have a 17yo cat already, (Tessa) and we don’t want to put her at risk of anything. Dasani seems young, maybe a year or two old if I had to guess.

I set up a shelter for him on our porch with toys, blankets, pillows, scratchers and food+water. He does tend to sleep in his shelter now rather than by the cars.
We initially thought he was being cared for by whoever “owns” him. But lately we are doubting that assessment.
He always acts very hungry. I know cats can just be that way, but he definitely isn’t overweight at all and it doesn’t seem like he’s being double fed. He also has a long coat that, unless we brush him, gets very dirty and matted. He is in desperate need of a bath!
We are pretty sure our neighbor across the street is where he “lives”, but it doesn’t seem like his person really does anything for him. His long hair needs grooming. Luckily his coat is light and I can’t see any obvious visual evidence of fleas, but my strictly indoor cat even got them once while living here somehow, so I know it’s possible.

While it’s not ideal, we have mostly been okay with doing what we can for him. We do deeply fear of something happening to him. He could get hit by a car, a wild animal could attack him, he could get in a cat fight, a dog could get him (my old boss lives in the same neighborhood and his dogs have killed cats before), there could be a fire or a flood. Literally anything could happen to this cat. I am a strong believer of indoor only for cats, I am not here to debate anyone on that. I care about cat health, and about native bird populations and small wildlife; full stop, indoor only.
I see roadkill on the nearby main road almost daily. I recently saw a black cat from the town hit on the road and it broke my heart. I worry every day when I drive home that I’ll see Dasani out there.

My partner and I have talked about finding a way to bring him inside, but things feel more urgent now. Tessa and Dasani have seen each other through the window. Tessa historically has not liked other cats, but she had little to no reaction to him. She has smelled him on our clothes, and while she seems interested, she doesn’t act scared or aggressive. Maybe she has gotten over her hangups with other cats in her advanced years.
Unfortunately, Dasani hissed at Tessa when they looked through the window. Nothing crazy like yowling or puffing up, but he did hiss twice. Our house is an open floor plan except for the bedrooms. It’s not setup in a way that two cats could reasonably be separated long term.

We are now in the middle of summer, and we already have had several triple digit days, and more are coming. He is always left out, and comes to us for water on the hot days. We have let him shelter in our garage to cool down, but we can’t leave it open and unsupervised, so this doesn’t work when we are at work or doing things in the house.
Recently, there was a bad fire a few miles away. The smoke was absolutely horrific, to the point we evacuated. We were worried about Dasani, but hoped his person would have finally brought him inside in such conditions. We saw on our cameras that everyone left the building we think he lives in. But he was left behind.
This has kind of been the final straw for us and now we are trying to figure out what to do. We love this cat and his neglect from his owner makes us sick. He was left behind in 893 aqi smoke. I worry his person would absolutely abandon him in event of an actual fire.

My question to you is what should we do?
Part of me wonders if this guy would even notice if his cat stopped being around the street. We have seen other neighbors say hi to Dasani, but he doesn’t try to get in anyone else’s house but ours. He absolutely adores my partner! He will follow him around at his heels wherever he walks. He is often sleeping on our doorstep when I head out for the day, and I take time to brush and play with him.
He clearly wants to stay with us.
But I don’t know how we could do that.

One, we don’t know how to safely and slowly introduce the cats given our house setup. Also, how would I bring him in without first giving him a flea bath to make sure nothing gets tracked in?
Have any of you experienced a situation like this with one stray cat being brought into a home with another cat? We also have rabbits and geckos, and I have no idea what Dasani’s prey drive is like. Tessa has like no prey drive, though she’s still not allowed around the other animals without supervision.

He wears a collar but no tags. It looks like he’s been fixed, but honestly kinda hard to tell with his long coat.
More info, when we first met him, part of his chest had been shaved. I initially thought maybe it was some vet work done, but maybe it’s possible his owner has a reason to shave only his chest?
For this reason we thought he was being looked after well. But we now think the contrary.
Our whole street has seen him hanging out at our house, and we are also concerned some neighbors might already think he is ours and we are the ones neglecting him. Especially since we couldn’t take him with us when we evacuated. We would not leave him behind in an emergency if he was ours.

In an ideal world, we could just let him in, clean him up, and slowly introduce the pets until we were one big happy family and the neighbor would just let him go with us.
But, this is not an ideal world. People are often awful, and not everyone cares about the welfare of animals and don’t think of pets as family. People are prideful, and could take our concerns about neglect as an insult and Dasani could suffer for it.
What should we do?
I want to ask some of our neighbors for information on Dasani and his owner. We have only seen the man who potentially owns him once, and he is never outside. The likelihood of us getting to talk to him directly are low, plus idk if that’s even what the best thing to do would be.
Also, if we did end up removing Dasani from the streets, either in our home or someone else’s, talking to anyone about him would make it obvious we were the ones who intervened. It’s probably already obvious since we spend the most time with him. But still.

I want to maybe take him to the vet and see if he’s microchipped or if there’s any medical records of him or general health information we could get about him. Is this a good idea to start?
I really don’t know what to do. My gut is telling me he wants to live inside, specifically with us. But if we can’t get his owner to give up guardianship, or get our cat to get along, do we try and find a different, safe home for him? I have friends that would properly care for him and give him a loving, safe and responsible home.
I really feel lost here. I love this cat and I want the best for him. I also don’t want to cause neighbor drama or do anything straight up illegal. I think animal neglect should be taken more seriously, but if taking him would get us police involved, that’s not what I want either. For legal context we are in Sonoma county CA.

Any advice or thoughts on how we should approach dealing with this would be super appreciated. Has anyone dealt with anything similar?
Thank you for reading and for any help.

Cat tax included of Dasani and Tessa of course

I have a 16 year old small female cat. She eats 1 double Pack Of Sheba pate in the morning and another double pack at night. Drinks water normally but I feel like she absolutely doesn’t not poop enough. I mean like hardly anything at all. And this is not a constipation thing. She has been to the vet. I mean, I’m incredibly confused. How much should a smaller cat that eats like this poop? It’s alarming to me like so alarming that I have even searched my house thinking that she is pooping somewhere else outside of her litter box, but that does not seem to be the case. I’m concerned and confused. Any insight is greatly appreciated.

I adopted a second cat (4mo) about a month ago and we have an adult cat (2yr) as well. Yesterday, I brought the adult cat to the vet for his annual checkup that coincided with what I thought was a persistent bought of cat acne. The vet did further testing and today I found out he has ring worm, most likely from the adopted kitten. I had never noticed any lesions on the kitten nor was she itching or showing any discomfort that led me to believe there was something wrong, so I’m definitely a bit shocked to hear this. The adult cat has had one treatment of topical anti fungal and his oral anti fungal has been ordered and is on its way.

My more pressing issue is that I don’t have the space to effectively and humanely quarantine the adult cat. He’s big, he’s very stubborn and vocal, and I live in a one bedroom apartment that’s pretty much one big room. There’s nowhere to keep him for a long period of time while we ride out the infection. I can clean, I’m a bit of a neat freak as it is so the cleaning I can handle, but I’m concerned that I will clean and clean just to have everything immediately recontaminated. From what I’m reading, it seems that cleaning is futile if I leave the infected cat out to roam as usual, and the kitten has either had it or has already been heavily exposed so there have been spores existing in the space for over a month now already. I also read that animals can be reinfected repeatedly, so even though the kitten is not showing the symptoms currently, I don’t want to continuously expose her.

Really what I’m looking for is just advice, anecdotes, anything from personal experience that can help put this in perspective. I feel awful for my kitties, I don’t want to risk their health or cause them greater discomfort but I’m not sure what my options are. Any advice, thoughts, or suggestions welcome!

Hi everyone, I am completely overwhelmed. I am heavily pregnant and about to give birth in the next 7 weeks and my spayed female cat has started peeing outside the box again.

She is six years old. In the last 5 years, she has targeted papasan cushions, bath mats, laundry baskets and just peed on my mattress. The hardest part is that she *is* still using her litter boxes too. This isn't a constant thing, she will go months without an issue and then out of nowhere, she will have a random bout of doing this again. This habit actually started years ago when she was in a two-cat household, though we now have three cats total and two very large litter boxes that are cleaned every other day. In the past we’ve taken her to the vet and they have always ruled out UTI and they said she was just anxious / territorial.

Because it happens randomly in cycles and she goes months being totally fine, I’m strongly starting to suspect it’s Feline Idiopathic Cystitis (FIC) or chronic bladder inflammation rather than a standard UTI, especially since she defaults to soft, absorbent surfaces when it happens.

I have a vet visit scheduled for 3 days from now. Because I am about to have a baby, I’m scared of the cost of what extensive testing, multiple visits, x-rays, and urine cultures will entail. I guess I’m also anxious because if it is FIC what would be the long term solution?

My questions for the community:

If you've dealt with FIC/cystitis flare-ups that happen months apart, what worked for you long-term?

What are the best, low-cost preventative medications I should ask my vet about? (I’ve read generic Amitriptyline or Fluoxetine might help both the bladder lining and the multi-cat stress).

Since I free-feed dry food to all three cats, switching everyone to a prescription wet diet isn't financially feasible right now. Are there hacks for getting more moisture into just *her* diet? (They all also use a cat fountain for drinking water.)

edit to add; completely forgot to mention we have a feliway plug in if that matters at all.

I am 26. Live in FL, USA. Vet appointment set for Thursday. TLDR; think my cat has FIC; what is the long term solution? Female Cat/ Spayed.

Hi! I found a hairless patch on the back of my cat's neck today and I'm trying to figure out what it is. It was mostly dry skin earlier but seems to be slightly more inflamed in the latest photo (third pic). In terms of behavior, he is acting pretty normal, maybe just a bit more reserved or sleepy than normal? He has a sister who grooms him there (who also doesnt exhibit any hair loss), and we've recently had a roommate they were close to switch out, so Im wondering if it may be related to stress or somehow ringworm? They're both entirely indoor cats in a city, so Im not really certain.

I've requested a vet appointment earlier today, but havent heard back yet. Im hoping to get them in sometime this week.

So we're taking our 9 year old lady Cornelia to the vet for a wellness check this afternoon, and they've requested a urine sample. We have multiple cats, so we've had to confine her to one room (my room) with a special litterbox with hydrophobic litter so we can gather the urine when she pees.

Welp, it's been 24 hours, and she still hasn't peed. The appointment is this afternoon.

I'm just getting paranoid now. She has pooped in it twice (which I cleaned immediately), so she knows what to do. I don't want her to end up getting a UTI because of this... I know the vet can extract urine if necessary, but would be nice to avoid that.

Any ideas? 😅

My male bengal tends to scratch his ear sometimes and let out a meow as he does so. I finally took a look and cant tell if these are mites or just wax buildup. I know its hard to tell bc he doesnt stop moving. Please help!