How to deal with cat dehydration in hot weather?

Some cats have a health conditions like kidney disease for example where dehydration is quite bad for them. This might be worthwhile. So, how to deal with cat dehydration in hot weather?

First: wet food.

The thing to do and just a small note about wet food while normally we say that it’s okay to leave wet food out for 24 hours. You don’t really need to worry about having wet food in a dish all day.
If it’s a really blazing hot day, it might not be great to leave wet food out all day long. So, in those cases what we suggest you do is you break up the cat’s daily portion of wet food into two, give them half in the morning put the other half in the fridge, and then in the middle of the day or whenever their dish looks kind of empty.

Second: diseases that you have to watch out for when the weather gets hot.

Ones that affect the cardiopulmonary system like asthma and heart disease and then anything where dehydration is critical. Primarily kidney disease patients with asthma can sometimes struggle to breathe when the weather is really hot.

So, if you see your cat panting or open-mouth breathing, it’s always a bit of a red flag. But particularly, if you have like an obese cat in hot weather who’s open mouth breathing, there might be a sign of heat stroke or asthma attack. It might be a good time to check in with your veterinarian and see if they want to see them. Because you know cats really should never pant the exception maybe being like a kitten who runs around really like crazy and plays really hard. Sometimes they’ll pant a little and they’ll sometimes do it when they’re anxious in cars, but in general terms, you should not see cats doing open mouth breathing.

So, if your cat is doing open-mouth breathing in hot weather, that’s a pretty big red flag and of course, if your cat has previously been diagnosed with heart disease and they start showing any signs of congestive heart failure, of course, your vet would have educated you. You might want to do a check-in with a vet and really just if you know your cat has heart disease be a little bit hyper-vigilant for signs of anything going wrong and might be better to take them to the vet. Because you know better safe than sorry and at least vet clinics usually have an air conditioning for cats who has kidney disease.

You just want to make sure that they stay hydrated. So, just making sure they have water available at all times maybe do that trick by adding a little bit of water to their food may bring it to them once in a while to make sure they get at least a few mouthfuls.

Definitely, cardiopulmonary stuff asthma heart disease, and kidney disease do require a little bit extra attention. That’s probably all that needs to be said about helping cats deal with hot weather. They’re pretty good about dealing with it on their own but there are just a few things that we can do to make them a bit more comfortable.