Emergency Signs That Mean Go to the Vet Now

Most things really can wait until morning, and most of the time the instinct to give it a night is the right one. There is a short list where it is not, and knowing which is which is the difference between a consultation and a loss.

The best time to read a list like this is now, on an ordinary day, while nothing is wrong. At two in the morning, with a frightened animal in front of you, nobody reads carefully.

Go immediately, any species

Breathing

• Laboured, noisy or open-mouthed breathing, which in a cat is always an emergency
• Blue, grey or very pale gums
• Stretching the neck out to breathe, or refusing to lie down
• Choking, pawing at the mouth

Bleeding and injury

• Bleeding that will not stop with five minutes of firm pressure
• Any road accident or fall, even if the animal gets up and walks. Internal bleeding is not visible
• A wound exposing muscle, bone or abdominal contents
• Any bite wound to the chest or abdomen

Neurological

• Seizures, particularly more than one, or one lasting beyond a few minutes
• Collapse, or inability to stand
• Sudden weakness or dragging of the hind legs
• Head pressing against a wall
• Sudden disorientation or unresponsiveness

Abdomen

• Repeated retching with nothing produced, especially with a swelling abdomen in a deep-chested dog
• A hard, distended or obviously painful abdomen
• Repeated vomiting with lethargy, or vomit containing blood
• Bloody diarrhoea in a puppy

Urinary

• A male cat straining and producing nothing. Fatal within a day or two
• Any animal unable to urinate, or crying when trying
• Blood in urine with straining

Whole-body signs

• Pale, white or tacky gums
• Body temperature that feels extremely hot, with heavy panting and distress
• Suspected poisoning, including any human medication
• Snake bite, or sudden unexplained swelling of the face or a limb
• A pregnant animal straining without producing, or exceeding the expected due date

Eyes

• Sudden severe pain, squinting, or an eye held closed
• An eye that looks cloudy, bulging or displaced
• Any injury directly to the eye. Eyes deteriorate in hours

Two checks worth learning now

Gums

Lift the lip. Healthy gums are pink and moist. Press a finger against them, release, and colour should return within about two seconds.

Pale or white means poor circulation, blood loss or shock. Blue or grey means insufficient oxygen. Brick red can mean heatstroke or sepsis. Slow refill means circulation is failing. Any of these means go now.

Breathing rate

Count chest movements for fifteen seconds while the animal is resting, and multiply by four. Learn your own animal's normal resting rate while it is well, because a deviation from its own baseline tells you more than any general figure.

Effort matters more than speed: an animal working hard to breathe is more concerning than one simply breathing fast.

Cats hide things, so lower the threshold

A cat that hides, stops eating, stops grooming or sits hunched and still is often seriously unwell. Cats conceal illness until it is advanced, so behaviour changes carry more weight in cats than the same changes would in a dog.

Prepare before you need it

• Your vet's number, and their out-of-hours arrangement, written where anyone can find it
• Which nearby clinic can do emergency surgery, and which keeps antivenom
• How you would get there at night, and who would drive
• Your pet's records, or photographs of them, on your phone
• A carrier that is accessible rather than buried, particularly for cats

Our free pet emergency and first-aid checklist is printable and gives you somewhere to write those numbers before they matter.

The judgement call

If you are unsure, call. No clinic minds this. They would far rather answer a question about an animal that turns out to be perfectly fine than see that same animal twelve hours later, and nobody will think less of you for asking. Describing what you are seeing to someone trained takes two minutes and costs nothing.

What stops that call is almost never indifference. It is the arithmetic of an out-of-hours consultation for something that is probably nothing, run at the worst possible hour by someone who is frightened and hoping.

Every Skeepy Pet HMO plan includes unlimited vet consultations and covers emergencies within the plan's limits, at any vet clinic in Nigeria, which removes the arithmetic and leaves only the question that matters.