Now, my final health care tip isn’t so much health care tip. It’s more of a survival
tip for you and your cat. And that’s how to deal with physical care. As you can see, Jill
isn’t probably the ideal model for this situation being quite a passive cat but some cats
can really get funny if you’re trying to do things such as trimming their nails or give them
worming tablets.

And I’ve got three different tips which will help you if your cat is a little bit of a
problem. Now, the first one might sound a bit strange and it involves a clothes peg. And
what you need to do, if your cat is playing up, is simply apply a clothes peg gently to the
scruff of the back of neck. It will sit there and it gives the cat a sense of security as if its
mother is holding there and that calms the cat down. You can see that I just pop it in my
fingers. Now, Jill is just staying in one place because she’s being held by the scruff and
this reminds the cat when it was a kitten and its mother would be holding it in its teeth
there, holding the scruff.

If a clothes peg won’t do, you can hold the cat’s scruff. You can hold it nice and
tightly like this. This limits the amount of movement the cat has in the head and also
protects your hands. It’s hard for them to get around and bite you, hard for them to get
claws on you. So, a good firm scruff – it’s not going to do the cat any harm as long as
you’re not doing it for any length of time. You’re not lifting the cat by the scruff so, just
holding on to the scruff firmly.

And finally, if you’re still having trouble, you need to get a towel and wrap the cat
up. Now, this is favorite technique of vets all across the country and we deal with
difficult cat quite commonly like this. If you take a towel, and you literally wrap the cat
up like so, leave the head out and then you have got a much more manageable unit there.
So, if you need to give a worming tablet, you could take the head pop a worming tablet
down. If you’re trimming a nail, you could take a leg out and trim the nails. So, that’s a
pretty good way. It protects you; it protects the cat and if you do that kind of thing, take
care.

If you’re really worried, if you’re having trouble, if the cat is too much to handle,
it’s worth just popping down to vets because that’s what we’re paid for; risking our
fingers and our hands dealing with these troublesome cats.

If you’re confused by all these health care tips, then don’t worry, this is my health
care diary just to summarize all the things you need to do of your cat once a year. So, on
a weekly basis, you need to groom your cat, checking through that fur to make sure there
are no lumps and bumps. On a monthly basis, you should apply flea treatment just
depending on exactly what product you use and the exact treatment. It’s generally about
once a month.

Every three months, you should be worming your cat, more perhaps if they’re
regular hunters but three months is general. And then, on a yearly basis, you need to take
your cats to the vet for their annual vaccinations.