“Why My Cats and I Love Laser Therapy”
Guest Post by Diane Miller
There is something about owning a cat that makes us different. It’s a cross between owning a pet and being owned by your pet. My dogs revolve around my schedule and are willing to accept it. I, on the other hand, am at the mercy of my feline friends and think nothing of working around them. I can’t begin to count the number of times I have held off on laundry because someone is in the basket sleeping, or making the bed, or working on the computer, and the list is endless. My cats make a wimp of me with their demands for attention, food, stimulation, etc., and I think nothing of providing it the moment they demand it. For a control freak like me, that’s a tough admission.
Binky and Orca are brothers and are 14 years old now and I call them “The Boys”. I raised them from a bottle when their mother was hit by a car. I am in an area where they can go out safely for a little while, hang in the sun, eat a little grass (to puke it up on the carpet when they come back in). A happy existence.
Taking The Boys out of their home for veterinary visits is like having two furry cannons in the car. Just one wrong move and they explodes in teeth and claws. Not to mention the caterwauling. Who ever thought they would create a word to specifically cover our cats yelling in the car. Dictionary.com says the word originated in “1350-1400; Middle English cater(wawen) (equivalent to cater tomcat (< Middle Dutch) + wawen to howl, Old English wāwan to blow, said of the wind) + waul, variant of wail”. Any of us driving in a car with our cat for longer than 5 minutes knows firsthand what it sounds like, even if you never knew there was a word for it. So taking them to the vet is done only when needed.
Recently we acquired a feral cat community in the abandoned house next door. It has definitely put a crimp in The Boys being able to go outdoors. They usually hang at the house but some of the feral gang do too, so if their paths cross, the end result is that The Boys get their butts whipped. I have become very familiar with the veterinary term of “wound of unknown origin”. Namely, The Boys crossed paths with one of the ferals and ended up with a puncture wound in the kerfuffle. If I notice it soon enough and get him to my vet, Dr. Kathryn, before it gets infected it is a beautiful thing.
Dr. Kathryn can treat these wounds with her Companion Therapy Laser. Getting our wounds treated using laser therapy is wonderful. Dr. Kathryn cleans the wound, and then we laser it. It’s non-invasive and the treatment only takes a couple of minutes. It looks like a magic wand passing over the wound, no contact, so The Boys don’t get too stressed in the vet’s office. When we start to laser, my cat will start to relax, and sometimes he’ll even purr (read more about how animals react to laser therapy treatments). Having laser therapy helps the wounds to heal faster, they often start drying up before I even get him home. I also noticed that he doesn’t bother the wound as much so it must feel better to him as well. It usually heals very quickly with no extra vet trips needed.
Laser therapy can be used for a variety of conditions – sometime it requires contact with the skin and others times not, like with wounds. My cats really like the way it feels, and there are many applications.
Contact your veterinarian to see if laser therapy is a good fit for your pet’s condition.
Thank you so much for posting this. I never knew there was laser therapy for cats, this is something I am definitely going to look into for our older girl Hammy! Her arthritis seems to be flaring up more easily lately and I’ve been looking into different options.