Cat Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook, Fully Revised and Updated

Review by for Cat Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook, Fully Revised and Updated
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Sometimes it is difficult to buy a book off the internet if you are unfamiliar with it and are not sure if it’s really what you want. With a book like this, you really need to browse through it to see if it’s worth the money. Well, I’m an owner of an elderly cat and decided it was time to have a book like this handy in case symptoms arose. This is, without a doubt, the best cat care book there is! Trust me, you don’t need to look through it first before you buy it ~ it covers every area, illness, ANYTHING you need to help you when you are concerned about your cat’s health. It explains everything in easy-to-understand text and gives you information about cats in general. I’m so glad I have this book..it is a great reference.

Review by for Cat Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook, Fully Revised and Updated
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As a librarian, I have access to many books on cats and their health problems; as the owner of 14 cats, I find myself consulting those books frequently. This book is the one I go to first and I am never disappointed. The quality and quantity of information is wonderful! If you only buy one book on cat health, it should be this one. If you already have a collection of books on the subject, this book will provide valuable, useful information that you won’t find in any of your other books. It is an *excellent* book.

Review by Gesine – cat rescuer for Cat Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook, Fully Revised and Updated
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We do cat rescue and have recommended or given this book to many people. It’s a good basic book, helps explain when to go to vet, not too hard to read. I disagree that the “gross pictures” shouldn’t be in there — You don’t have to look at them, and they’re there to teach what some things may look like. We’ve found some of the pictures quite useful.The argument that “if my cat looked that bad we’d be at the vet” is kind of off the point — this book is good because it is a great COMPANION to your vet — Anyhow, very good book. I too wish there was a more recent edition, but much of the most changed stuff since 1995, is at a higher technical level than this book.For the next level up, Feline Husbandry, and Feline Diseases by Niels Pedersen are great…

Review by Anne Jablonski for Your Cat: Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life
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For so many years, it seemed that a lot of the sanity when it came to advice on how to properly care for, and especially FEED, a small cat, was only to be found in books published by non-vets. There are many great books out there with fabulous advice, but, sadly, many of them were never taken seriously by the mainstream veterinary community because they were written by people who lacked the ‘DVM’ credential.

Dr. Hodgkins’ book has, thankfully, changed all that. As a lay person, I’ve spent years now running a website on cat nutrition and steadily beating a noisy drum to draw attention to the folly of feeding the carnivores we choose to live with foods that have no relationship to what Mother Nature intended. It’s been fabulous having the support of so many people, but I’ve longed for — for years — to have a book out there by a real, live veterinarian that spoke the truth about the dangers of feeding dry food to cats and articulated precisely how it is that so very many feline diseases are entirely avoidable if we simply get the diet right.

This book is a dream come true. Aside from the wonderful, easy-to-understand style with which Dr. Hodgkins writes, it’s jam packed with answers to the questions that so many of us have sought for years. Personally, I’m especially thrilled with the emphasis throughout the book on nutrition, as that really is the brick and mortar of health for cats. It’s been astonishing to me over the years to see veterinary clinics fill up with more and more patients and more and more oversized bags of meat-flavored cereal (i.e., prescription dry food), with no one sitting up and taking notice of the relationship. Dr. Hodgkins’ book is an extraordinarily welcome breath of fresh air.

Every veterinarian ought read this book and keep a copy or two in the reception area to educate clients. It’s written by someone with impeccable credentials, after all, and there’s no easy way to dismiss what it has to say. This bell can’t be un-rung.

The tragedies that unfolded in earl 2007 with the massive pet food recalls began to wake people up to the dangers of blindly trusting what the pet food industry offers. But the pet food recall is only the tip of the iceberg. Even without the conspicuous problems associated with poor quality control, the sad truth is that the lion’s share of commercial pet foods sold today–even when they’re not ‘tainted’–are terribly inappropriate for our cats (and dogs!) and contribute greatly to illness.

So if you have a cat (or three), you really owe it to yourself to invest in this book.

If I could give this book more than five stars, I would!

Anne (www.catnutrition.org)

Review by me for Your Cat: Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life
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Finally, a book that is NOT simply a recycling of the same old information, or vague mumbo-jumbo. This book is full of useful facts presented in a way that the lay person can easily understand, yet backed by the latest veterinary research and facts of feline physiology.

Finally, a book that breaks it to the public that most commercial cat foods are recipes for obesity, irritable bowel disease and diabetes. Dr. Hodgkins explains how to evaluate a commercial cat food and how to choose a food that will promote a long and healthy life. Your cat’s diet is fundamental to health – and as a specialized obligate carnivore, the cats’ unique dietary needs are explained in this book.

Dr. Hodgkins presents open-minded and logical discussions of choices that every cat guardian must make, such as indoors only or to allow your cat outside, how to choose a veterinarian, and a detailed discussion of common feline diseases and how to PREVENT them before they occur.