It's a good idea to see a veterinarian at the time of diagnosis. During the pregnancy, there's seldom a need for it. Honestly, most of the visits are going to really come into play at the time of delivery or perhaps thereafter when we're caring for the kittens and also maintaining care for the mother.

Not really. The care for a pregnant cat is virtually the same as any other adult cat. One thing that I like to do, however, is to switch the moms-to-be over to kitten food. Yes, of course, I do understand I'm talking about feeding an adult animal kitten food, but the reason why is because kitten foods tend to be higher in fat, higher in protein, higher in calcium. These are all things that they're going to need when they're producing a litter of kittens and very shortly thereafter in order to produce plenty of milk. They're going to need some of those increased nutrients. I typically recommend that pregnant cats eat the kitten food until the litter is weaned.

Plan a visit to your veterinarian. Just a good physical exam will do, and then perhaps even taking a stool sample to check for intestinal worms. That is a problem that we will sometimes see with cat pregnancy. The hormonal changes that cats go through during pregnancy can cause them to begin to shed intestinal worms, even though they might've been negative before then. Those are good approaches to take when you first find out about cat pregnancy.

It depends on where the cat lives and what vaccines they've had prior to that, and the age they are. So let's say your cat got vaccinated at 10 weeks and again at 14 weeks, and maybe your veterinarian wants to do one more at 18 weeks. You're close. Can that cat go outside? I'll answer it this way. I usually err on the side of caution, so I would rather that your cat not be exposed until I can be more certain and you can be certain that they are protected.

If in my previously mentioned scenario, would I expected them to contract something that they were vaccinated for? No, I would not expect, but vaccines are not 100% foolproof. So when in doubt, keep them indoors until they are fully vaccinated.

The most truthful answer is people that don't handle vaccines for a living don't always know how you're supposed to handle a vaccine. The biggest example of this are feed stores—that's what we run into here. They deal with feed, with all due respect. They have a very important role, but their job is not to vaccinate animals. So when they get a shipment in, they don't know to look to see if that thing was stored below X degrees. The vaccines have to be refrigerated. They have to be stored under refrigeration without fail. Sometimes those things are not there when the vaccines are not from a veterinarian. On the veterinary side, we are ordering from veterinary specific vendors that ship and package them properly. They arrive refrigerated and at the proper temperature, we immediately know how to handle those things. And if ever there's a situation where that shipping process was not satisfactory, we send it back and we get the right shipment to us. So there's no way to get around that. I would never imply that the vaccines from a feed store are ineffective. It's just, I personally want the reassurance and peace of mind to know that they were handled by animal healthcare professionals.