my cat's test was negative - was it worth it?

I can remember the very first practice I worked at. Every veterinarian does.

And I can remember a comment the receptionist made about the veterinarian who was there before me. She said that when the veterinarian was telling someone that their test results had come back negative, she always started with:

“It's good news...”

This has always stayed with me because, as a veterinarian, getting a negative result back really can be good news.

It's good news that the internal organs are functioning normally, and the anaesthetic can go ahead.
It's good news that the skin test didn't find any signs of mites or parasites.
It's good news that no cancer cells were found in the fine needle aspirate.

A negative test result can provide peace of mind. Without doing the test, there would always be the question of whether something was there that we didn't know about.

We didn't know it was normal until we checked.

And even when a cat is still unwell, a negative test result still tells us something. It can rule things out, narrow our train of thought and reduce the field of possibilities — allowing us to focus our resources in one direction rather than scattering them widely.

A negative test result doesn't mean we found nothing.

It means we know more than we did before.

Stuart Ralph BVSc
Veterinarian and founder of WellCat