Cat Care - Microchips

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Hi, I am Dr. Candy Olson from Greenbriar Animal Hospital. Were shooting video on how to take care of your cat at home. This section is on microchips for your cat. This is Wellington, hes helping us out in this section. We just wanted to give you some basic information. First of all, this is an actual microchip here thats embedded, its just a little bit bigger than a grain of rice, and its actually put in with a syringe, its like a big injection. The whole process doesnt even take a minute. So, its highly recommended for all cats. If your cat ventures outdoors at all, its really important, but even if your cat is a stay at home kind of cat, its actually even more important for that cat. Because if something were to happen, if they were an accident or a fire or something like that, then your cat runs outside, its not going to be able to cope, its not going to be in familiar surroundings, and less than 30% of cats that are lost, if they dont have a microchip, ever find their way home.

Its about triple that for dogs, but it is a huge problem. The nice thing about the chip is its ID, they cant lose. Cats are scanned at all the shelters in this country, almost every veterinarians scans cats as they come in, and rescue leagues and that sort of thing scan them as well. The way it works, if your cat has a chip, is theyre scanned with a little scanner like this, and you just wave it over, it beeps, and you have a number here. So, they will call, theres a 24 hour service, and read off this number, and then as the owner you will get a call saying hey, weve got Wellington. The chips are good for the life-time of the cat. The only reason that you would ever need to get a replacement chip or another chip, for example, is if you decide to move to somewhere in Europe, because they us a different kind of chip, but this is a standard thing. One of the really important things though about a microchip for your cat is to make sure that the registration information is up-to-date. If you move or get new phone numbers, you have contact information, you need to make sure along with everything else that you update the registry there, because otherwise they may not be able to find you. When we put a chip in here we always include a prepaid registration so that the chip is registered from the minute we put it in the cat. But, we often find when animals come in and we scan them -- when they first come in that they may have a chip, but its not registered, if its not registered they cant find you, and so thats a really important thing to remember. When we put a chip in, you will get a letter in the mail in a couple of weeks that gives details about how to register, and how to give them updates, and make changes in the database, and thats real important to keep in your I might be moving file.

So, thats the important thing about microchips and how easy they are. Its actually literally put in as an injection right here, not a difficult thing at all. If you have any questions about it, ask your veterinarian. There are a couple of chips that have now been promoted that are not commonly read by the scanners that are in use, so that is an important thing to check. You dont want to go to the extra step of having a microchip put in, and find out that your cat has got a chip that cant be read everywhere in the country.

So, thats it on microchips. Next, were going to go over some information and some tips on how to help care for your cats teeth at home.

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