What to Keep in a Pet First Aid Kit

A pet first aid kit is not a way to treat your animal at home, and it is worth being clear about that from the start. It is a way to stabilise, protect and transport safely while you get to somebody who can treat it.

Built with that in mind, the list is short, cheap and mostly unglamorous. It also fits in a shoebox.

The most important item: the information

Write it down and keep it in the kit, on paper, not only on a phone that may be dead or lost.

• Your vet's number and address
• What happens outside their hours, and the number for that
• The nearest clinic that can do emergency surgery
• The nearest clinic that keeps antivenom
• Your pet's HMO ID, microchip number, and vaccination dates
• Any existing conditions and current medications
• Who to call if you cannot drive

Finding all of that takes twenty minutes on an ordinary afternoon and is close to impossible at 1am with a bleeding animal.

Wound care

• Sterile gauze swabs, several packs. For pressure on bleeding and for covering wounds
• Conforming bandage and self-adhesive cohesive bandage, which sticks to itself rather than to fur
• Non-adherent dressing pads, which do not stick to the wound surface
• Micropore tape
• Blunt-ended scissors
• Sterile saline, in single-use pods, for flushing eyes and wounds
• Antiseptic solution, dilute povidone iodine or chlorhexidine, for cleaning around wounds
• Disposable gloves

The practical items

• A digital thermometer and lubricant. Normal for dogs and cats is roughly 38 to 39 degrees
• A tick hook or fine-tipped tweezers
• A muzzle, or a length of bandage that can serve as one. A frightened animal in pain bites its own owner, and this is not a reflection on the animal
• A blanket or towel, for warmth, for wrapping a cat, and as an improvised stretcher
• A torch
• A collar to stop licking and self-damage
• A syringe without a needle, for flushing and for giving liquids
• A carrier that is accessible, not buried under other things, especially for cats

What not to keep in it

• Human painkillers. Paracetamol, ibuprofen and aspirin all cause serious harm, and having them in the kit invites their use
• Leftover antibiotics from a previous illness
• Leftover eye or ear drops. Steroid eye drops can cost an eye if there is an ulcer
• Hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting. Whether vomiting should be induced at all is a veterinary decision, and for caustic substances it causes serious additional damage
• Human antiseptic creams and ointments, which get licked off and swallowed
• Tourniquets, which do more harm than good in almost every situation an owner will face

A first aid kit that contains medication tends to become a reason to treat at home instead of travelling, which is the opposite of what it is for.

Two techniques worth knowing

Pressure for bleeding. Clean gauze, firm direct pressure, held for a full five minutes without lifting to check. Lifting to look restarts the clock. If it soaks through, add more on top rather than removing what is there.

Checking gums. Pink and moist is normal. Press, release, and colour should return in about two seconds. Pale, white, blue or grey means go now, whatever else is or is not happening.

Keeping it usable

• One box, clearly labelled, somewhere everyone in the house knows
• Check expiry dates twice a year, and replace what you have used
• A duplicate in the car if you travel with the animal
• Update the phone numbers when anything changes

Our free pet emergency and first-aid checklist is printable and gives you the list plus space for the numbers, which is the part worth filling in tonight.

Nothing in this kit treats anything. It buys you the twenty minutes between something happening and reaching a clinic, without the animal losing more blood, doing more damage to itself, or going to the wrong place first.

Emergency treatment at any vet clinic in Nigeria is covered on Skeepy Pet HMO plans, so the decision the kit is buying you time for, whether to go at all, is one you do not have to weigh.