July is Lost Pet Prevention Month. The things you can do for your cat fall into two categories: prevention and preparedness.

Lost Pet Prevention

The best way to keep your cat safe is to avoid your cat becoming lost.

Keep Your Cats Inside

Indoor cats are less likely to be lost because they aren’t as likely to fall victim to misfortune outdoors. If a kitty is indoors, he isn’t going to be hit by a car, attacked by a predator like a coyote, or exposed to disease from other cats.

The indoors is a safer place to be, and the average lifespan of a cat who lives indoors is ten years longer.

Many people find that it’s difficult to keep a determined cat indoors, but spaying or neutering can help with a cat’s drive to get out any open door and reproduce. Spaying and neutering can also help with other behaviors that make some people hesitate to keep their cat indoors, like spraying.

Tell Guests Cats Aren’t Allowed Out

It may sound obvious that you need to let guests who come into your house know that your cats aren’t allowed outside, but everyone who comes into your house may not keep their own cats indoors. They also may not have cats and not be accustomed to closing the door when they go outdoors for just a moment or two.

In the chaos of a holiday visit from your family, it helps to enlist everybody’s help to make sure there aren’t any feline escape artists at work!

If you are having work done on your house, like plumbing repair or other trades, it is safest to close your cat in a separate room with litter, water, and other necessities so that he doesn’t make a run for the door while the plumber goes back and forth to the truck a dozen times an hour. Even with kitty safely locked up, letting the plumber know that any cat asking to go out should be kept in is safest in case your kitty makes an escape from the safe room.

Make Safe Places for Indoor Cats to Look Outside

You can make it safe for your cat to enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of the outdoors without the danger by providing access to windows with secure screens. Even better, cats enjoy spending time on a screened porch or other catio enclosure where they can be somewhat outdoors but are still kept secure from outdoor hazards.

A small screened porch in your entryway can also serve as a safety measure for keeping especially determined cats inside. If you treat it like an airlock where the door to the house is never opened until the screened door is closed, even determined door dashers can’t get outside.

Be Safe While Transporting Pets

One of the times that indoor cats can become lost is while being transported outside the house, such as to veterinarian appointments. Always transport your cat in a secure carrier, and in the car, don’t open the carrier unless all windows and doors are closed.

Check cat carriers carefully before each use. On hard plastic carriers, screws or clasps that hold the top and bottom halves together can loosen. You can use zip ties as a backup security measure to help keep the top and bottom portions of a carrier together in case a screw works loose during transport.

Also, the plastic on many carriers can age and become brittle, especially if you store them in an attic, garage, or basement where they are subject to extreme temperatures. Look carefully at the plastic near the carrying handle, by where the door fastens, and where the main parts of the carrier come together to be sure that there are no signs of fatigue in the plastic, and don’t trust them to bear weight if you see damage.

Lost Pet Preparedness

No one wants to think that their cat could get lost, but the best way for your cat to get home safely is to be prepared.

Have Proof of Ownership on Hand

If your kitty is lost, the person or organization who finds your cat may ask for proof of ownership. This can be frustrating when it happens, but you wouldn’t want just anyone to be able to say they own your cat and take him away. Be ready by having photos of your pet. Photos of you with your pet are even better! Copies of vet records can also serve as proof of ownership, and they are also useful in case your cat is lost and is in the hands of a veterinarian who wants to know his history. Your cat’s ID is also part of your proof of ownership.

Make Sure Your Cat Has Identification

Without pockets, your cat can’t carry a wallet with an ID card. The two main kinds of identification your cat can carry are a collar and microchip, and they work together to help your cat get home to you.

Collar with ID

A safety collar with ID is a way for your cat to be identified on sight as being an owned cat. There are many  collars available with breakaway clasps that will release if your cat gets the collar caught on an object or in a fight with another cat.

ID on the collar with current contact information allows anyone who finds your cat to quickly find you and reunite the two of you. If you or your cat don’t like the traditional, dangling tags, there are many other options, including tags that slide onto the collar and even collars that include your cat’s information stitched on.

Microchip

Identification in the form of a microchip implanted under your cat’s skin that you update with a registry when your contact information changes is a great, permanent way to identify cats, especially since safety collars can be lost. Animal shelters and veterinarians can scan a lost cat and read the chip, then get the information from the registry to help reunite you to bring your lost cat home again.

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Research and further reading

American Animal Hospital Association Pets Matter, Keeping Cats (The #1 pet in America) Healthy
Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, Longevity and mortality of cats attending primary care veterinary practices in England

Image credits

depositphotos/ysbrand
depositphotos/darzyhanna
flickr creative commons/ari
depositphotos/HighwayStarz
depositphotos/markhayes

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Yesterday was FEMA’s National Animal Disaster Preparedness Day. By disaster, they don’t mean when your cat knocks over a vase; they’re talking about when an emergency strikes that causes you to have to be ready to leave your home with your cats.

You probably know whether your house is in an especially disaster-prone area, but as the terrible fires in Canada this past week have reminded us, emergencies can happen anywhere, to anyone. Not only do we live in Florida where we need to be ready for hurricane season, but part of the cost of having our beautiful view from our back windows is also living in a 100-year flood plain. So we try to be ready for disasters.

Carrying ID

Even cats who are normally safe indoors are at a higher risk of being displaced during an evacuation. Making sure they have ID can help you be reunited if you are separated during an evacuation. A visible collar with a tag that includes a contact number that isn’t your home phone number is important, since you won’t be at home during an evacuation.

Making sure your cat has a microchip with up-to-date information is important, too, since collars can be lost, but a cat can’t drop their microchip. Think about what information is registered with the microchip company and be sure that they will be able to reach you during an evacuation if you and your kitty get separated.

Your Disaster Kit

We totally redid our disaster kit this year. Last year, I stored everything in a plastic bin, but I got to thinking about the last time I did anything like an evacuation: a cross-country move. Carrying supplies for the cats while I was also carrying cat carriers up and down motel stairways at midnight isn’t something I wanted to try to do with a big bin, so instead, I have shifted to a bag for most of the supplies. I had messenger-style bag that Solv-It had sent me last year during a miscommunication in which they thought I was a dog blogger, so I grabbed it and started to restock.

Since both Ashton and Newton eat raw food, the emergency kit includes freeze-dried raw food for them. It also upgrades Pierre’s food from cans as I had in the emergency kit last year to pouches, which weigh less. They all fit inside the bag. This bag has pockets for things like a thumb drive that is of photos of the cats and critical veterinary information like proof of recent vaccines that might be necessary if the cats have to be boarded unexpectedly. My thumb drive also includes written instructions on meals, but you could include that information about medications, too.

Dividers inside that let me to organize the enough pouches, freeze-dried food, and paper plates separately for at least five days. Having them in nicely divided sections is fun, but but you could put them in any kind of bag that you can carry hands-free.

The cats’ Torus travel bowl fits perfectly into the mesh outside pocket on the back of the bag. Again, if you had another type of bag, like a backpack, you could keep you water bowl inside.

Don’t forget the water! FEMA recommends having five days’ worth on hand for every human and cat. We keep enough on hand that we do store in a bin because one of our stored gallons sprung a leak in the spare bedroom closet last year. I didn’t include a photo of the water bin because it’s too heavy for me to move by myself, and I’m not letting anyone see the inside of that closet!

Cat litter and disposable litter tray stay outside the bag. I use a big, disposable turkey broiler pan for a travel litterbox. Check the sale aisle of your grocery store the week after the big family-eating holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas to stock up on these aluminum pans for your emergency kit.

I shared this pet emergency kit checklist a while back, but I am including it here again to help with your planning.

Where to Go

Not everywhere you might go in an evacuation is pet friendly, so it’s a good idea to ask around before you need to find a place to go in an emergency.

Local Evacuation Centers

Do the evacuation centers in your area allow pets? More shelters are making arrangements for them than used to, but be sure to check rather than assume your cat will be welcome there. Your local emergency management agency will have contact information so that you can plan ahead.

Friends or Family Members

Do you have a friend or family member in a nearby region or state who might accommodate you? It’s always better to ask now rather than showing up in their driveway in an emergency!

Pet Friendly Hotels

Did you know that some hotels and motels welcome pets while others don’t allow them? Our friends at GoPetFriendly have a great listing of pet-friendly accommodations you can use to find a a place to stay during an evacuation. Lodging fills up fast when evacuations start, so knowing how to find a place and calling ahead may make a big difference.

What if You Aren’t at Home?

One of the most unthinkable scenarios is an emergency happening when you aren’t around to get your cats out to safety. Talk to a trusted friend or neighbor in advance about helping evacuate and meet you with your pets in a safe location away from the disaster. If they are willing to help you and you are willing to help them in this scenario, both of you have a backup plan for disasters.

We all hope that disaster won’t strike us, but it’s best to be prepared and not need the plan than need a plan and have no idea what to do!