The post Pet Telehealth: How Does It Work for Your Cat? Vet Approved Facts & FAQ by Nicole Cosgrove appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com. Click to Skip Ahead How Pet Telehealth Works Types of Pet Telehealth Where It’s Used Advantages Disadvantages FAQ Pet parents are more cautious and attentive than ever nowadays, leading more of us to overreact when things seem amiss with our cats. While some issues genuinely demand immediate care, many concerns are minor, making us sometimes feel we wasted our time and our vets’ time, as well as stressing our cat out, with what probably could have been an email or phone call. Thankfully, we now have a middle ground that saves us that effort while providing valuable peace of mind: pet telehealth. Virtual vet visits are growing in popularity, streamlining the healthcare process for everyone at home and in the vet’s office. Let’s explore how pet telehealth can work for your cat and why you may benefit from these cost-effective services. How Does Pet Telehealth Work? Many companies offer pet telehealth services, which connect users with veterinary experts through a virtual portal. Users set up an account for their pets and schedule virtual visits or connect immediately with a professional. Some telehealth services use websites, while others have iOS or Android apps or a combination of all three platforms. Many provide 24/7 vet access to assist owners at any time of day, helping them potentially avoid emergency vet visits. While televisits often involve video calls, you can usually also chat with vets or call or text them on the phone to exchange videos and pictures. Telehealth services give cat owners an easy route to answer medical questions by connecting them with vets, behavioral specialists, nutritionists, trainers, and other experts. Typical pet telehealth offerings include: Cat-raising advice regarding nutrition, exercise, enrichment, and training Medical information about diseases, allergies, and other concerns Teletriage: Providing remote health assessments to recommend treatment or provide emergency referrals First aid guidance Telemedicine, the branch of telehealth dealing with diagnoses and treatment, depends on the service and your state’s laws. Vets can sometimes prescribe certain medications without requiring in-person visits. Many services add further convenience by connecting you with vets who write prescriptions and provide prescription shipping all in one place. Image Credit: Prostock-studio, Shutterstock What Are the Different Types of Pet Telehealth? Telehealth platforms vary in the services they offer and their payment structure. Individual visits can range from being completely free to costing a few hundred dollars. It all depends on the extent and quality of the service and the vet. Some platforms work on subscriptions, where a monthly or annual fee provides multiple virtual vet visits and account management features like personalized care plans, pet health trackers, and reminders. You can use telehealth services to get general advice from a remote professional or connect with your usual local vet on a remote platform. Popular telehealth services include: Pangovet Chewy Connect with a Vet Pawp Dutch BondVet If your vet uses telehealth as part of their practice, you can schedule check-ins and ask questions from your home. You can enjoy many benefits of a regular visit, including refilling prescriptions. Pet telehealth is also popping up as a perk for membership with different groups. Walmart, for instance, added a Pawp plan for its Walmart+ customers. Meanwhile, AirVet began specializing in working with businesses to make pet telehealth an employee benefit. As cat parents increasingly prioritize their pets’ health and quality of life, more organizations are leveraging offers like pet telehealth, paw-ternity leave, and pet insurance to entice customers and quality employees. Speak To a Vet Online From the Comfort of Your Couch! If you need to speak with a vet but can’t get to one, head over to PangoVet. It’s an online service where you can talk to a vet online and get the personalized advice you need for your pet — all at an affordable price! Click to Speak With a Vet Where Is It Used? Pet telehealth services are widely available. Users can access them for general health help from anywhere, though telemedicine options are much more limited. While vets can offer advice and information on a telehealth service without previously examining an animal, they can’t diagnose or prescribe medications if they didn’t establish a veterinarian-client-patient relationship (VCPR) in an in-person appointment. A VCPR is crucial for vets to become familiar with your pet, keep records, and supervise follow-ups and ongoing care. Remote VCPR through a telehealth platform is only legal in a handful of states, including: Arizona California Idaho New Jersey Vermont Virginia Rules vary by state, and some prescriptions are unavailable through telemedicine visits. Laws have been evolving rapidly in recent years, and more states will likely ease restrictions to allow remote VCPR to expand pet treatment options outside the clinic. Advantages of Pet Telehealth Telehealth services are affordable solutions for cat owners who can’t pay for a vet visit or live too far away to make the trip. After hours, being able to contact an expert can also provide reassurance so you don’t have to make unnecessary trips to the emergency vet. Telehealth helps clinics and pet parents. Owners get faster assistance and can schedule earlier appointments if their usual vet is booked out. Plus, cats avoid the stress of car rides and vet offices. As you use these services, you also reduce the number of patients waiting at the vet, helping them receive better, faster care for their cats in the clinic. Pet telehealth can provide answers and advice for minor and severe health concerns, with some offering at-home care suggestions and OTC treatment options. With telehealth services, more cats can get better care, particularly those who wouldn’t typically go to the vet at all. Image Credit: imtmphoto, Shutterstock Disadvantages of Pet Telehealth Though many have seen the benefits of pet telehealth following its wide use during the pandemic, some experts oppose expanding the power of telehealth vets. An essential issue is telemedicine and VCPR. The AVMA and other industry associations advocate for in-person visits before they can perform remote diagnosis and provide prescriptions. The concern is that vets can only rely on an owner’s assistance and interpretation of health issues during remote visits. Cats can’t communicate their problems. Owners can easily misidentify an issue as a result, causing them to waste money and prolong their pets’ suffering. With an in-person VCPR, vets can evaluate cats and meet their caretakers to understand unique challenges and formulate optimal treatment plans. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Does Pet Insurance Cover Pet Telehealth for Cats? Since pet insurance providers reimburse you after you pay the vet up front, coverage depends less on which telehealth service you use and more on which pet insurance you pick. Several companies provide coverage for telehealth visits up to a certain amount. Others partner with telehealth companies or have in-house telehealth services they give customers free of charge. Meanwhile, some companies don’t cover telehealth at all. As more owners opt for telehealth’s flexibility, more pet insurance companies will look for solutions for their customers. If you’re in a position where telehealth makes more sense for your cat, research which pet insurance companies offer the best value. Image Credit: Dmytro Zinkevych, Shutterstock Which Medications Can Pet Telehealth Vets Prescribe? Getting prescriptions through any telehealth service primarily depends on where you live and your relationship with the vet. Generally, vets can make remote prescriptions if they have already established a VCPR in an in-person appointment and have seen them in person in the last 12 months. Since state laws differ, vets may be unable to offer certain medications or treatments without seeing the pet in their office. Your telehealth vet won’t prescribe medications if you don’t have a VCPR. A few states allow you to establish a VCPR through telehealth communication, but the laws vary and limit what your vet can offer. For instance, telehealth vets can prescribe flea and tick or heartworm medications. Controlled substances, antimicrobials, and other more powerful or targeted drugs require in-person visits. Still, places like Idaho don’t allow any telehealth prescriptions with a remote VCPR, so it’s helpful to be aware of the legal details for your state. Conclusion Pet telehealth is creating a new era of customer convenience and improved pet welfare. Connecting with an expert who can assess your cat, provide information, suggest at-home care, and direct you to the most effective solutions takes minutes. You save time, effort, and money while your cat enjoys a faster path to relief. Though they don’t replace the value of in-person vet visits, telehealth services fill the gaps to answer questions and promote a better quality of life for our pets. Sources AVMA Open Veterinary Journal Featured Image Credit: Pixel-Shot, Shutterstock The post Pet Telehealth: How Does It Work for Your Cat? Vet Approved Facts & FAQ by Nicole Cosgrove appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com.

After suffering a series of losses before the U.S. Supreme Court, leftists in Congress are once again trying to remake the court to suit their own political purposes. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on Thursday introduced the Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act, which would expand the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 15 over the next 12 years, radically reshaping the federal judiciary. According to the provisions of Wyden’s legislation, federal circuit and district courts would also be expanded, adding 60 new circuit judges and at least 100 new district judges. “The Supreme Court is in crisis and bold solutions are necessary to restore the public trust,” Wyden said in a press release. “More transparency, more accountability, and more checks on a power-hungry Supreme Court are just what the American people are asking for.” But they’re not, according to polls. A survey published late last month revealed that nearly 60% of Americans oppose adding justices to the Supreme Court and agree that efforts “to expand the membership of the U.S. Supreme Court are primarily motivated by political objectives.” Additionally, 57% of Americans believe that a separate branch of government (such as Congress) imposing an “ethics code” on the Supreme Court would undermine its authority and threaten the independence of the judiciary. Yet an “ethics code” is also part of Wyden’s proposed legislation. His bill would force all justices to respond publicly to recusal motions and forcibly recuse a justice from a case “upon the affirmative vote of” his fellow justices. The bill would also demand “the public disclosure of how each justice voted for any case within the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court” and would give the Internal Revenue Service sweeping authority to regularly audit justices and publish the results of their audits. Furthermore, the legislation would require either the Supreme Court or an appellate court to have a two-thirds “supermajority” in order to reverse congressional acts found to be unconstitutional. Democrats have been working to undermine the Supreme Court’s authority since last year, when several smear campaigns were launched in the media, primarily targeting Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both of whom were part of the court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Thomas and Alito were accused of unethical conduct related to expense-paid vacations with wealthy friends and Republican donors. Alito was subsequently targeted for his conservative political views and the political views of his wife, including the publication of secret recordings in which Alito and his wife discussed their Catholic faith with a reporter who was posing as a conservative at a Supreme Court Historical Society dinner. The reports were met with calls from Democrats, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, for Thomas and Alito to resign from the bench. Earlier this summer, President Joe Biden introduced his own plans for weakening the nation’s highest court via constitutional amendments: enforcing an “ethics code” devised by Congress and imposing 18-year term limits on justices, which would immediately take effect and remove Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts from the court. Biden also introduced plans to undo the court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. In her dissent from the court’s majority opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor controversially suggested that Biden might order a Navy SEAL team to assassinate former President Donald Trump. Two weeks later, a would-be assassin shot Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Conservatives in Congress have pledged to oppose Biden’s Supreme Court “reform” proposals, many of which are similar (though less expansive) than Wyden’s. Indirectly responding to the Democrats’ designs on the court, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked last month, “The independent judiciary … what does it mean to you as an American?” Gorsuch continued: “It means that when you’re unpopular you can get a fair hearing, under the law and under the Constitution. If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights—you’re popular.” He asked again: “Don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn’t that your right as an American? And so I just say, ‘Be careful.’” Originally published by The Washington Stand The post Dems Hatch Another Plot to Pack Supreme Court appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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When Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men — who were all strangers to each other — he was unaware that each man had a criminal history. Rittenhouse was simply defending himself and Kenosha from a left-wing mob. “What are the odds of three strangers with crazy perverted independent criminal histories being together like that on the street?” Liz Wheeler of “The Liz Wheeler Show” asks. “It seems like that’s an insane amount of creeps and criminals to be gathered in a small area all at the same time,” she continues, noting that “most things involving leftists tend to attract a pretty nasty crowd.” Now the suspected would-be Trump shooter's son, Oran Routh, was arrested on Tuesday after police searched his Greensboro, North Carolina, home “in connection with an investigation, unrelated to child exploitation.” Allegedly, the police found “hundreds of files depicting child sexual abuse.” “It’s really an odd twist in this saga that nobody saw coming,” Wheeler mocks, explaining that Routh claimed his father hated president Trump and was quoted saying that “every reasonable person does.” “The son sounded just like his father, who sounded like an indoctrinated leftist activist, who sounded exactly like the talking heads in the mainstream media,” she adds. However, as always, it’s innocent until proven guilty — as it should be. “We shouldn’t just believe the authorities automatically,” Wheeler explains. “We know for a fact that the Department of Justice lies for political and self-protecting purposes all the time, but that doesn’t seem to pass the smell test here.” “If you dabble in evil ideology, evil leftist ideology, it will invariably lead you to evil of the most twisted kind.”Want more from Liz Wheeler?To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Democratic President Joe Biden didn't ease concerns about his mental capacity when asked to comment about military strikes in Yemen. 'Never forget the Democratic Party hid this. Kamala hid this.' Biden shuffled over to reporters shouting questions at him while he was boarding Air Force One on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base on Sunday. He responded to a reporter asking him to comment about Israeli strikes on sites controlled by Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. “I’ve spoken to both sides. They gotta settle the strike. I’m supporting the collective bargaining effort. I think they’ll settle the strike,” Biden said. The president had apparently mixed up the Yemeni strikes with a looming union strike by dock workers against automation. The massive strike is scheduled to begin Monday at midnight and includes about 45,000 dock workers at ports on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast. Video of the interaction was posted to social media by the Republican Party, where it garnered more than 2.7 million views. Many pounced on the incident to mock and ridicule Biden. "Listen to this. He should be feeding pigeons on a park bench. We have no president," replied radio host Gerry Callahan. "The Houthi Local 1645 is known to be the toughest union to negotiate with," joked commentator Joel Petlin. "You’re kidding. It’s funny but it’s also very scary. Never forget the Democratic Party hid this. Kamala hid this," read another critical tweet. Others defended Biden by pointing out the noise on the tarmac might have prevented him from hearing the question clearly. The union Biden may have been referring to is demanding a total ban on automation on gates, trucks, and cranes. The strike could cost billions depending on how long it lasts, and Biden has the power under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to suspend the strike. However, he has signaled that he is unlikely to do so. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

NCAA volleyball player Brook Slusser said she doesn't agree with having a male athlete on her team and knows it's not right. Controversy has swirled at San Jose State University since it was revealed that the undefeated team features a 6-foot-1-inch male player named Blaire Fleming, born Brayden. In response to this situation, Slusser has joined a lawsuit against the NCAA that asks the collegiate body to stop allowing male athletes to compete against females and to keep them out of female locker rooms. The lawsuit stems from women's aquatic competitions that included Lia Thomas, the "trans woman" who dominated the 2022 NCAA swimming championships. In an exclusive interview with Blaze News, Slusser explained that she had "no idea" that she would be playing with a male when she transferred to San Jose State University from Alabama last year. While Slusser noticed during her first practice at SJSU that there was "something different" about Fleming, she never imagined that there would be a man on the team. "The way I was raised, I've never had to second-guess if someone is male or female," the Texan said. "The power [of Blaire] was just something that I'd never seen before." "I was like, 'That's insane, but okay,'" she laughed. Slusser said she wasn't going to ask questions about why Fleming was hitting so hard because, at that point, there was no reason for her to believe there was a male on the team. Rooming with a man When she got to SJSU, Slusser said her coach told her there were "three girls on the team that are looking for a roommate." "That would be amazing," Slusser recalled thinking, not knowing that one of those alleged girls was Fleming. The senior saw it as an opportunity to get to know her teammates while living off campus in an apartment. She jumped at the chance for the experience. After rooming with Fleming on road trips, Slusser became suspicious as to why she was routinely being roomed with him despite her teammates rotating with other people. She later found out that Fleming was asked specifically whom he "felt comfortable" to room with and that Slusser was one of those people. This was just one instance in which the male athlete's feelings seemed to be placed over the rest of the team. "I found it very odd that everyone else was getting switched around on away trips and I somehow kept getting roomed with the same person. Usually you get switched around ... and I just kept getting roomed with [Fleming]." After two months at SJSU, Slusser said she found out that Fleming is a man, at which point everything started to make sense. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brooke (@brookeslusser04) However, staff at SJSU have seemed completely disinterested in how the majority of the women's team feel about the situation and instead have chosen to focus on Fleming's well-being. "We've had meetings, and it's a lot of just checking in on Blaire. ... We were like 'what about us?'" Slusser said. "It's mostly just saying you can't be the person to ... identify Blaire's gender identity. 'Blaire needs to do that for himself,'" the girls are told. Slusser said the most frustrating aspect of the ordeal is that team management knows how much this bothers the female players and that for seniors, their last chances to play volleyball at a high level are being whittled away. "Everyone above you is telling you you shouldn't be talking for Blaire, you need to make sure the other person is okay; and [the management] is not thinking about, 'Are we okay?'" Slusser explained. When asked whether Fleming is in the locker room with the women and if it's uncomfortable, Slusser simply said, "Everyone's in the locker room." "So ... that's that. It's a team locker room," Slusser said with a look of disappointment. 'I fully support Boise State's decision not to play us. If I was in their shoes, I'd probably do the same thing.' Canceled games Two teams have already pulled out of games against SJSU: Southern Utah and Boise State. Neither team has provided a specific reason for the forfeits, but Slusser said the reason is obvious. "I think we all know the reason the games are canceled," Slusser said. "I fully support Boise State's decision not to play us. If I was in their shoes, I'd probably do the same thing." Nevada, which plays SJSU on October 26, is another team that could potentially back out as well. The mother of Nevada's Carissa Chainey recently gave an interview to the Daily Signal and remarked that she is "scared for every single player" who plays against Fleming, due to the higher risk of injury. Slusser said her own family has been about as supportive as possible, adding that she couldn't ask for better parents. "My parents know this lawsuit is a lot bigger than just me," Slusser said. "This is a way I can use my voice." "What I'm going through ... is something, to my bones, I don't agree with. It's not right." Slusser concluded by saying that joining the lawsuit wasn't a difficult choice for her in the end, as she has felt the need to speak out on others' behalf for most of her life. The college athlete strongly asserted that she wants to help make sure younger female athletes don't have to go through the same thing. "Right now it's just about showing up to be the best you can for the team," she added. Slusser hopes other athletes will join the lawsuit. "You might be surprised." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Hillary Clinton is apparently not the only failed Democratic presidential candidate presently frustrated over the political establishment's waning narrative control. Former Biden-Harris climate czar John Kerry noted during a World Economic Forum panel discussion on trade and so-called sustainability last week that the First Amendment remains an obstacle to being able to properly clamp down on so-called disinformation. According to the WEF's "Global Risks Report 2024," the greatest threats facing humanity over the next two years are "misinformation and disinformation" and bad weather. Early in the conversation about sustainability, Kerry — to whom President Joe Biden just months ago awarded the Medal of Freedom — bemoaned the loss of a "truth arbiter" in the U.S., noting that "there's no one who defines what the facts really are." Having an authority equipped to decisively correct would-be climate heresiarchs would apparently help expedite elites' planned transition away from relatively cheap, stable, and reliable fossil fuels. 'If it wasn't for that pesky Constitution, these commies could just roll right over us.' When responding to a question about "tackling climate misinformation," Kerry said, "Everybody's wrestling with that right now." "I think the dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing and growing," said the former Obama secretary of state. "It's part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It's really hard to govern today." "The referees we used to have to determine what's a fact and what isn't a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree," continued Kerry, likely cognizant of the humiliation that regime-friendly fact-checkers have suffered in recent months. "And people go and self-select where they go for their news or for their information, and then you get into a vicious cycle." Kerry told the other World Economic Forum panelists, "You know there's a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you're going to have some accountability on facts, et cetera. But, look, if people go to only one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence." Kerry indicated that in the face of this constitutional obstacle, which Bill Gates recently intimated was only really a notional obstacle, "What we need is to ... win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you're free to to be able to implement change." Kerry characterized the 2024 election as an opportunity to "break the fever" and "bring ourselves back to a regular order." The Biden-Harris administration has worked feverishly in recent years to control the flow of information and decide for Americans what qualifies as facts. During the pandemic, for instance, the Democratic administration leaned on social media companies to suppress and sometimes outright censor Americans' free speech, even if the speech flagged by supposed arbiters of truth — such as those at the Stanford Internet Observatory — was accurate and possibly life-saving. The desire among Democrats to implement arbiters of truth was not unique to the pandemic. The Biden-Harris administration also established an outfit in 2022 for the purpose of "countering misinformation related to homeland security." The Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board, which was derided by many as a federal "Ministry of Truth," was fortunately short-lived. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to Kerry's comments, writing, "John Kerry is correct. The 1st Amendment DOES stand as a major roadblock to them right now." Country music star John Rich said, "Yea, if it wasn't for that pesky Constitution, these commies could just roll right over us. Thank you Founding Fathers, for knowing someday we'd have tyrants like John Kerry to deal with." Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote, "John Kerry and other elite democrats hate the Constitution. They see it as a road block to ruling over people. As a matter of fact, that is why it was written." The arbiters of truth for whom the former secretary of state longs would likely have taken issue with Argentine President Javier Milei's speech to the UN General Assembly last week, in which he characterized the brand of climate goals and other globalist initiatives favored by Kerry as "nothing more than a super-national socialist government program that aims to solve the problems of modernity with solutions that undermine the sovereignty of nation-states and violate the right to life, liberty, and property of individuals." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

If there's one sure way to combat the potentially sterile aesthetics of a sci-fi game set in space, it's to present that sci-fi game with hand-drawn visuals that lend a touch of human warmth to gleaming futuristic buildings or wholly unfamiliar alien terrain. This is the approach taken by Silence of the Siren, a new turn-based strategy that's come out in Early Access today and whose aesthetic and design framework call to mind Endless Legend, Stellaris, or (a less gruesome) Darkest Dungeon. Continue reading Hand drawn sci fi strategy game Silence of the Siren hits Steam today