Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Welcome to our "Frequently Asked Question" collection. For several years now we've been gathering questions from our users regarding the ins and outs of shelter animal health care. These expand on some of our basic information pages and represent many hours of thoughtful research on the part of our shelter medicine residents. If you haven't found the answers you seek elsewhere on the site, a little creative searching of this section of the site may do the trick.

Recent FAQs

January 13, 2012
I am a vet and I work with a small animal welfare group in Athens (Greece) that spays feral cats. I wonder if you have any good suggestion for anti-parasitic treatments. I usually put a spot on of selamectin before the surgery to cure both ecto and endo parasites but it is quite expensive for large scale spaying projects. We are mainly working with feral cats that we trap, so there is no possibility to touch them after of before anesthesia. Thank you very much!
December 20, 2011
Do you reccomend performing spay or neuter on  heartworm positive animals?
January 13, 2012
I am a vet and I work with a small animal welfare group in Athens (Greece) that spays feral cats. I wonder if you have any good suggestion for anti-parasitic treatments. I usually put a spot on of...
December 20, 2011
Do you reccomend performing spay or neuter on  heartworm positive animals?
December 20, 2011
I am the new operations manager for our local humane society.  In the short time I have been here, we have had a large outbreak of ringworm and have worked very hard to overcome the issues that...
January 13, 2012
We have had a few bouts of enteritis which isn't totally unexpected as we deal with 70% ferals. After reading your articles we vaccinated a new lot of kittens at 5-6 weeks.  Four weeks later one...
October 11, 2011
We are designing multiple shelters and need some information regarding dog doors.  The kennels are going to be double compartment indoor/outdoor kennels.  We were originally going to use...
October 7, 2011
Since Immiticide is currently not available, could you please offer alternative treatment methods/options for treating Heartworm positive canines in shelters?  We checked with the Heartworm...
October 7, 2011
The shelter I work at wants to spay/neuter kittens at 6wks (1.5#) and place them up for the public to "foster/adopt" in which the first 2 weeks are consider a foster and when they are 8 wks they are...
October 7, 2011
I am a recently graduate and a full time veterinarian at a shelter.  This is the first time in several years they have had a full time veterinarian on staff. I have been charged with trying to...
October 7, 2011
What I am seeing:  Kittens and queens with kittens are kept in a separate room. They are housed in stainless steel cages approximately 2X2X2ft. Queens with kittens get a 4X2X2ft cage. ...
August 31, 2011
We have been struggling with kitten food protocol for some time.  After trying many variations, we have decided that feeding small weaned kittens Science Diet Kibble that has been soaked with...