As far as food goes, as long as it has the AAFCO label on the side of the bag and it's labeled for all life stages, that should be a good diet. We definitely have a few diets that we recommend above others, but there are thousands of different pet foods. If you have questions, we can give you our list of recommended foods.

If the surgery is performed correctly, your cat shouldn't be in severe pain. We provide multimodal pain control to manage discomfort post-surgery. They are given pre-surgery medications, medications during surgery, post-op pain medications, and medications to go home. In certain cases, we can use laser therapy to help alleviate pain as well.

We communicate a lot with our clients through text messages and phone calls. We generally don't use email as it's not a fast enough mode of communication.

Yes, ideally, all our patients are intubated for surgery. Intubation means that we place a breathing tube down their trachea and inflate a cuff to make sure that we protect their airway and if they do regurgitate or vomit, nothing gets down into their lungs. We're protecting those lungs. If something does happen,we want to ensure we have control of the pet’s airway. If there is an intubation tube and we need to administer CPR, we know we are getting oxygen directly into the lungs.

Yes, your cat will be under anesthesia during the surgery. Unfortunately, we can't use local anesthetics on pets as we can't ask them to hold still.

You should ask about the length and date of the surgery, the drop-off time, how to decide the pick-up time, and the cost. It's also important to ask for a treatment plan to avoid surprises later on. If there's anything additional that you want done while your cat is under anesthesia, please make sure to communicate that to the technician checking you in in the morning. Keep your phone with you. You'll receive updates about when the patient has been given their pre-meds, when they're in prep, when they're moving into surgery, and when they're in recovery. If anything unexpected happens during the procedure, we need to be able to contact you quickly.

You can get them from your veterinarian clinic's office. We can also write you a prescription for an outside pharmacy, but once that prescription has left our building, we have no involvement. We also have our own online pharmacy store where we can guarantee that things are stored appropriately. It's always best to go through your veterinarian and it's also good to support local businesses.

The best way is always with food, if labeled to be given with food. You can also use a pill wrap, marshmallows, American cheese, peanut butter, cream cheese, a piece of bread or even canned food.

Anti-inflammatories, pain blockers, certain narcotics and some holistic alternatives can be prescribed depending on the injury.