Oh, no! Why is my cat scratching? Does my cat have skin problems or allergies? My poor baby is miserable. If you are a first time cat owner, do not panic; calm down, relax, and observe.

Cat Care Secrets Revealed

The beautiful fur coat of your kitten or cat should be soft, clean and slightly lustrous. If the coat has been dry, dull or oily, help your feline with additional grooming. The skin being dry may have your pet itching and scratching.

Cats are excellent with their personal grooming hygiene. Perhaps, your cat has not been feeling well. Or is she possibly being lazy about her grooming.

How you can stop the scratching can be as easy as brushing her fur. Remove any long, loose, hairs and untangle any matted hair. As you brush your cat, search for any abnormalities present in the skin or caught in her fur.

If you discover dry skin, add humidity to her environment. The climate control in your home or the outside environment may be drying the skin of your cat.

Cats scratching? Here are some questions to help detect what may be causing this behavior:

1. Is the appetite good or bad?
2. Is your cat drinking water?
3. Is elimination appropriate?
4. Are the urine and stools appearing normal?
5. Is the mouth and butt healthy in appearance?
6. Is your feline under stress or anxiety?
7. Do you see evidence of fleas or mites?
8. Do you see raw, red, irritated or bald areas of skin?
9. Is there a skin infection?
10. Does the skin appear dry or oily?
11. Do you see any scratches or abscessed areas on the skin?
12. Has your cat been coughing, sneezing, or having eye or nose discharges?
13. Do the eyes appear normal?
14. Does your cat have a fever?

If after reviewing this list and having brushed your cat, then decide if your pet has an emergency that needs attending by either a cat vet or will a natural home remedy solve the problem.

Natural Home Remedies for Cats

Cat owners are turning to natural remedies for their kittens and cats as an alternative because it is more affordable. Many of us feel that vet costs are either too expensive or not affordable for our household budget.

Many of us have natural products available in our homes and this would save us an unnecessary or an inconvenient trip to the local store or to the vet, especially if a natural product will take care of the condition.

Most of the natural products have no man made chemicals for ingredients, and you are less worried about possible side effects from medicines.

Without naming a particular human medicines that is advertised on television, do you ever listen to the side effects that they recite at the end of the commercial? The side effects seem worse than the disease.

As cat owners we are scared of side effects from ingredients made from chemicals and synthetics. And I believe that this is why many pet owners have turned to natural remedies for both their cats and dogs for healing minor health issues.

Are you looking for natural products which have been time tested for centuries and are proven to correct minor problems that our cats are experiencing?

These traditional natural pet remedies are much more effective for treating most common ailments than the commercial chemical and synthetic treatment methods.

They certainly contain less risk for any harmful side effects. If you are like me and very concerned about health remedies we use on our cats check out http://www.infotrish.vpweb.com/ for traditional and time tested natural remedies for cats.

If you live with a cat sooner or later you will hear the charming sound of retching late at night somewhere in the house. You will quickly learn the value of wearing slippers as you stagger around those cigar-shaped masses early in the morning. Yes, kitty has hairballs.

Yep, out side of litter boxes, this is usually the thing most non-cat owners find the least attractive about our feline friends. The sudden gagging and elongated neck movements, I admit can be startling when first viewed. But hairballs are a common part of cat owner’s life.

What causes hairballs?

Basically cats are the neat freaks of the animal kingdom and will spend up 3 hours a day just licking and primping their coats. All this grooming continually pulls hair tufts loose, which your cat promptly swallows down.

Since cats are predators of all things small and furry, you would think that any swallowed hair would, uh…pass out the other end. And most of the times it does, but seems cats have developed sensitive stomachs over the thousands of years of mooching…I mean, living with us humans. All that soft living seems to make hairballs more prevalent.

So over time, these fur masses get bounded up in the feline intestinal tract and can not comfortably pass in the accepted manner. Hence the near death experience to bring up a hairball.

Can hairballs hurt my cat?

Normally no, most hairballs will pass harmless out of either end of your cat or the other and pose no health threat, although human disgust is an unfortunate side effect. Occasional hairballs, 1 to 4 times a month are considered normal.

But you should pay attention if your pet experiences frequent retching or straining without visible results (no hairball). This and staining at the litter box may indicate a possible blockage in the bowels. Take your pet to a vet’s office immediately since a blockage is life threatening.

How to prevent hairballs?

As long as cats groom themselves, this will always be an issue but there are some things you can do lessen the frequency and severity of the problem.

1) Combing or deep brushing your cat. For short hair cats you can use a fine tooth flea comb available from the pet section of a department store. For long or fine hair coats, I have found that instead of a comb that a good wire tooth coat brush (made for long hair dogs) seems to pull out loose hair tufts better than a comb on my pets.

2) Add fiber to your cat’s diet. Cats who travel outdoors often try to remedy this problem themselves by munching on grass. But if your pet is an urbanite or you don’t have access to a grassy enclosure, you can try adding a few teaspoons of canned pumpkin to the nightly dinner bowl. Or switch to a higher fiber dry cat food.

3) Add a lubricant. There are a number of good tasting commercial hairball remedies available. Most are petroleum jelly based and basically acts as both a lubricant and laxative for your kitty. Of course you can always just smear a dab of plain old Vaseline on the front paws of your pet. They in turn will rapidly lick the offending stuff off and into their stomachs.

But be careful that you don’t smear too much or else you will be washing gobs of petroleum jelly off the walls and lamp shades!