- Joined
- Feb 21, 2015
- Messages
- 72
- Purraise
- 5
Hi all,
So at our last wellness appointment, vet left me with a bottle of gabapentin to give my 2 cats prior to subsequent visits.
I struggle overall with many aspects of veterinary & western medical practices. There is strain involved in working with our current vet and getting through these visits with our different communication styles -- I didn't challenge her at the time, figured I'd look it up and deal with it in a year and was focused on what needed to be managed in the present. Well, now here we are coming up on the next visit. I have done some research, including on here, and while this rec doesn't seem at all out of bounds for cats who cannot/will not submit to an exam without some sedation, my cats aren't that terrible about it. They're not totally docile but they're able to be worked on and restrained and haven't had any aggressive fits that I've seen even if they might express displeasure at something like a vet exam or while I cut their nails-- this is normal/expected to me. At the last visit she barely examined them because she deemed them not subdued enough, and even her veterinary asst seemed to side-eye this and suggested that she could examine them for xyz and the vet was snappy (she is snappy -- this was not news to me and is one of the issues in working with her, I've just deemed her my best of available current options). I know she doesn't know my cats like I do, and I surely am not comfortable handling unfamiliar cats as I am with my own, but expert cat handling isn't fundamental to my work.
Just interested in experiences of others, and whether it is more commonplace then I'm aware to manage pet exams with anti-anxiety meds versus reserving it for extreme cases. I will add that one of my cats was recently examined by a different vet, and I had to wait outside the clinic due to COVID so I couldn't be present as a comfort or to actually verify this, but reportedly the vet did all the aspects of the exam without issue, and the feedback given when I asked was that he hissed at one point after having his teeth examined, and after having his belly palpated, but they still got through these experiences, and got through everything else without complaints. Thanks.
So at our last wellness appointment, vet left me with a bottle of gabapentin to give my 2 cats prior to subsequent visits.
I struggle overall with many aspects of veterinary & western medical practices. There is strain involved in working with our current vet and getting through these visits with our different communication styles -- I didn't challenge her at the time, figured I'd look it up and deal with it in a year and was focused on what needed to be managed in the present. Well, now here we are coming up on the next visit. I have done some research, including on here, and while this rec doesn't seem at all out of bounds for cats who cannot/will not submit to an exam without some sedation, my cats aren't that terrible about it. They're not totally docile but they're able to be worked on and restrained and haven't had any aggressive fits that I've seen even if they might express displeasure at something like a vet exam or while I cut their nails-- this is normal/expected to me. At the last visit she barely examined them because she deemed them not subdued enough, and even her veterinary asst seemed to side-eye this and suggested that she could examine them for xyz and the vet was snappy (she is snappy -- this was not news to me and is one of the issues in working with her, I've just deemed her my best of available current options). I know she doesn't know my cats like I do, and I surely am not comfortable handling unfamiliar cats as I am with my own, but expert cat handling isn't fundamental to my work.
Just interested in experiences of others, and whether it is more commonplace then I'm aware to manage pet exams with anti-anxiety meds versus reserving it for extreme cases. I will add that one of my cats was recently examined by a different vet, and I had to wait outside the clinic due to COVID so I couldn't be present as a comfort or to actually verify this, but reportedly the vet did all the aspects of the exam without issue, and the feedback given when I asked was that he hissed at one point after having his teeth examined, and after having his belly palpated, but they still got through these experiences, and got through everything else without complaints. Thanks.