Keeping my cats cool

Fellhand

It gets hot in my apartment. I have two fans and I put ice cubes in their water, but what are other ways I can keep my cats cool during the summer? They're not paticularly long haired, but my place does get toasty.

bowen

In all honesty, I don't think it's going to affect them that much, if at all. Our cats are perfectly fine in our 90+ degree apartment and they just kind of lazy around the dark parts. Just make sure you keep plenty of water for them, other than a cool place to lay down, I think you're fine.

Isn't it bad for animals to put ice cubes in the water?

Deathwing

Unless you're really dealing with insane heat (which I assume you're not, in Vermont), the cats should be pretty much fine with what you're doing already - keep the fans going, with space where they can lay down in front if they want, and keep cool fresh water available all day. Normal body temp for a cat is higher than ours, around 101-102 F.

You might want to also keep your bathroom open so they can go in and lay down on the floor, bathtub, toilet, or other various porcelain/ceramic surfaces - before we moved into a place with central AC, one of our cats used to do this all the time. If you don't normally let them in there, make sure you have all medicines secured, especially Tylenol.

EggyToast

Your cats should be fine. I had to take one of mine to the vet for a minor eye infection on saturday, and we were hit with 95 degree heat, over 100F in the car. The cat's pretty fluffy and was whining about the heat, and actually started panting. Which looked ridiculous, but yeah, that's the sign of a hot cat. If your cats aren't panting, and are drinking water, they should be fine. They'll probably stretch out more and flop around, that's all.

Mim

Though your mentioned they're not particularly long haired, you can (if you want to) get their fur shaved down to keep them cool. We took our dachshund to PetsMart to do this and he is now very cool. Granted he's a long hair. That and I do have fans blowing on the highest setting when my dogs are in the room so they can feel some breeze. It's especially nice now that we have our AC units.

OdinOwnsYeAll

You can buy some marble or stone tiles from home depot and lay them down for the little guys. They will stay a good 10-15 degrees cooler than the surrounding area and pets love to lounge on them when they need to cool off. (I've seen this successful with dogs and rabbit, don't know about cats though.)

Hewn

OdinOwnsYeAll wrote: »

You can buy some marble or stone tiles from home depot and lay them down for the little guys. They will stay a good 10-15 degrees cooler than the surrounding area and pets love to lounge on them when they need to cool off. (I've seen this successful with dogs and rabbit, don't know about cats though.)

This is a great idea. My dogs would always gravitate straight to the tiled areas of the house on hot days.

Aoi Tsuki

Every cat I've ever owned in the grand fucking heat-trap of Texas has spent summer days sprawled out on the kitchen or bathroom floors, where there is *drumroll* tile. Or wood, which is the floor of my current place. For lulz, get down there yourself to cool off. They'll look at you funny, but it works!

Soggychicken

Wet a towel and spread it out somewhere. My cat loves to sit on that when it's hot.