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Old April 18th, 2008, 03:33 AM
chinakitten chinakitten is offline
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: China
Posts: 7
Thanks so much for your advice on the spaying Dr. Lee, I really appreciate it! I will wait and see how often my cat goes into heat before deciding what to do.

As for your question about finding good veterinary care in China, yes, it is a challenge! I live in one of the most modern parts of China and I'm actually taking my kitten to the best pet hospital in a city of 5 million people. I don't think that my vet is a total dummy, he certainly has experience and knowledge, but he's not thorough or careful, and his ethics are highly questionable. He appears to be fond of animals, but more fond of money. What unfortunately happens is that he takes advantage of the fact that many pet owners will just believe anything he says. Luckily, he is much more careful with me now since he knows I double check everything he tells me.

This is the case with normal human doctors in China as well. For example, once I went to the doctor for a UTI (which I get once every two years) and he told me I needed surgery (when I well knew that I only needed a few doses of antibiotics). The legal system here doesn't exactly protect people from bad doctors. These are just the normal kind of things you have to deal with in any developing country, but probably more so in China because of its incredibly large population. Not only the Chinese government is guilty of human rights abuses, but the general population (particularly in big cities) doesn't exactly care about the rights of the individual. Nor do most of the individuals (especially lower class people) expect to have human rights.

Vets are not rare in my city (Shenzhen), there are surprisingly quite a lot of them. China's middle and upper class is growing, so small purebred dogs are very popular here. Cats are a little more rare. But I think a lot of them are probably not really vets. Hospitals here are highly profit driven, so hospitals and clinics pop up everywhere, the care is just not very good.

Friskies and Fancy Feast (as well as Dog Chow) sells in China and I also see some Japanese and Chinese brands. Its not widely available, but there is dog and cat food. I heard Friskies and Fancy Feast are like the bottom barrel of cat food though and its hard to know if Purina would have the same American quality control standards (not that they are necessarily that good in U.S. anyway) in their cat food for the China market, so that is why I'm considering alternatives. What do you think about these two brands? Do you think it would be okay to just give my cat Fancy Feast canned food?

One more question - I suspect my kitten might have roundworms, since she has a slight pot belly. Do I need to confirm her having worms though some kind of fecal test? My fear is that if I ask for a test, the vet will just tell me she has it, even if she doesn't. What kind of medicine would you recommend for roundworms and is it harmful to take if she doesn't have it? She is almost 4 months old.

Thanks!!
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