Cats Health Expert
Maha Aj is Petfinnly's Cats Health Expert, writing evidence-based cat and kitten care guides for pet owners.
Most cats exposed to FHV-1 carry it for life. It hides in nerve tissue and resurfaces during stressful stretches, and it's the leading cause of feline corneal ulcers.
Most calicivirus cases are a rough week of sneezing and mouth ulcers. Very rarely, the virus mutates into a systemic form with a mortality rate up to 86%.
The standard pregnancy advice about litter boxes is real, but it's often stretched into "get rid of the cat," which the actual science doesn't support at all.
A dewormer that doesn't fix persistent soft stool is a common sign of giardia, a single-celled parasite that ordinary worm medications don't touch at all.
A pale, weak, uninterested cat may be dealing with a bacteria living directly on its red blood cells, one that untreated can be fatal in as many as one in three cats.
Cats are now the domestic animal most often diagnosed with rabies in the US, ahead of dogs, almost entirely because of vaccination gaps rather than anything else.
"Cat scratch fever" sounds like an old wives' tale, but the bacteria behind it lives in roughly a third of healthy-looking cats without ever making them sick.
Tail position, ear angle, and the slow blink all mean something specific. Here's how to read what your cat's body is actually telling you, backed by real behavior research.
A dead mouse on the doormat isn't a message about your hunting skills. Here's the real instinct behind it, and why even well-fed cats still hunt.
That gentle head bump has a name, bunting, and a real biological reason behind it involving scent glands most owners never think about.
Twelve to sixteen hours a day isn't laziness. It's tied to a crepuscular hunting schedule and a sleep cycle built from many short naps rather than one long stretch.
The curl, the loaf, the belly-up sprawl: each sleeping position says something different about how safe and comfortable your cat feels in that moment.