Marlene’s Vet is All Wrong to Refuse to Get Vectra for Her Cat
Marlene in Florida is a listener who adores her two kitties and worries about their health, what to feed them and fusses over them with a bushel basket of love. On my advice, Marlene asked her vet about ordering Vectra for cats, the anti-flea product that kills all life cycles of the dreadful flea without risk to the cat, which I talk about often on my shows. [I am proud to have Vectra (and Vectra 3D for dogs) as sponsors of the Radio Pet Lady Network and I know they have protected the health of tens of thousands of pets, like my own, from parasites.] I was so sorry to discover that her vet is uninformed and closed-minded, refusing to carry Vectra “because Vectra is only for fleas and does not protect against heartworms carried by mosquitoes, like the products I carry: Revolution or the Advantage Multi.”
I was both discouraged and angry by how misinformed this vet was because it is common knowledge that all dogs and cats should be on a targeted monthly heartworm medication, which is the best available way to manage the possibility of heartworm infection. Also, this vet did not spend time educating himself about how different and superior Vectra is because of the way it destroys all three stages of the flea life cycle. Clearly he wanted to protect his relationship with older products he knew — not learn what newer technology has to offer. I turned for comment to Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins, my co-host on CAT CHAT®, who is also Veterinary Services Manager at CEVA, the internationally respected French pharmaceutical company that makes the Vectra products.
“As it turns out, both the products this listener’s veterinarian uses do a poor job of controlling fleas in cats. Neither have any activity that deals with the 95% of the total flea burden that lives off the cat in the home environment. This means that pets (and owners) have no protection whatsoever against any life stage of the flea except the adult. Further, neither of those products have anywhere near the speed of kill for adult fleas (2-6 hours for Vectra) that Vectra has, so they are both inferior flea products for achieving integrated flea control for cats. Totally ignoring the immature life stages of the flea is medically unjustifiable. Today, veterinarians must abandon the search for any one product or drug that is ‘one size fits all and treats all.’ Medicine simply does not work that way. Products that attempt to do everything seldom do anything in the best possible way, but rather represent a set of ‘half-way’ measures that do not address the pet’s needs in the best way and may well over-medicate the pet.”
–Tracie Hotchner
[iframe src=”//www.facebook.com/plugins/follow.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ftraciehotchner&width=600&height=21&colorscheme=light&layout=button_count&show_faces=false&appId=178828585527299″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:600px; height:21px;” allowTransparency=”true”]
photo credit: pei.lei via photopin cc
Vectra is a sponsor on Radio Pet Lady Network, by our invitation.