I HAVE A WONDERFUL MEMBER OF TRACIE’S CLUB, Charlotte in Texas, who adores her two kitties and worries about their health, what to feed them and fusses over them with a bushel basket of love. She joined Tracie’s Club so she could feel free to write to me as often as she wants and get a fast, in-depth reply. Charlotte asked her vet about getting Vectra for cats, the first and only anti-flea product that kills all life cycles of the dreadful flea without risk to the cat. I was so sorry to discover that the vet she uses is both uninformed and closed-minded. Here was their interchange:
Hi Tracie – I just talked with my Vet and he said that he did not recommend the Vectra because it does not protect against heart worms carried by mosquitoes. I know that Vectra only protects against fleas and that concerns me as well. Here is what his office staff wrote me:
Hi Ms. Ward,
I got the information from you on the Vectra. Unfortunately we will not be able to sign the agreement from Summit Vetpharm. We would have to sign a contract with them in order to receive the product and this is something that the owners of the clinic are not willing to do. We will however approve any online pharmacy prescription for you. I am sorry we were not able to help you. Dr Doherty does feel that the best flea & heartworm medicine for your pets would be the Revolution or the Advantage Multi. Remember you are not getting the most protection for your pet by using the Vectra it is only for fleas. Please feel free to call me with any questions or concerns.
I was utterly depressed by the total ignorance this vet and staff showed in understanding how these products work — and what can be expected of them. All dogs and cats should be on heartworm medication like Heartgard — no other management tool can give assurance that your pet won’t get infested. Also, this vet did not spend any time educating himself about what Vectra does to the flex life cycle and how different it is to any other product out there. He wanted to protect his relationship with the products he knew — not learn what the newest technology has to offer. I can’t tell you how frustrating and maddening I find this — so I turned to Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins, the Official vet of Cat Chat®, to get her feedback and here is what she wrote:
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 her chosen 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. Owners should understand that the efficacy of all currently prescribed heartworm preventives is under review by veterinary experts at the present time because many if not all have shown troubling product failures in the recent past. No owner should feel securely safe from heartworm infestation in their pets merely by the use of any of the currently available products labeled for heartworm prevention.
The claim that any monthly parasiticide is good for ear mites is irrelevant because ear mites are not an ongoing problem for dogs or cats the way fleas are so treating a cat EVERY month for ear mites is tremendous overdosing in terms of the need for insecticide for the problem. There are several very effective products for ear mites that do NOT involve monthly medication unnecessarily administered. This can also be said about using any product that deworms pets on a monthly basis. From a “best medicine” standpoint, such an approach is unnecessary and unwise. No cat needs deworming every month (after kittenhood, indoor cats consuming quality diets seldom become reinfested with worms, and certainly not monthly). To administer monthly drugs for a problem that does not require this amount of treatment, while 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 overmedicate the pet.
Hopefully in the future, this caller’s veterinarian will have an opportunity to hear more about Vectra and to see that many of her present perceptions about parasite control are, in fact, misperceptions.
Elizabeth Hodgkins DVM, Esq., Veterinary Services Manager, Western Region, Summit VetPharm
