The thing you run out of first in a first-aid kit is gauze. It is what you use to clean around a cut, to hold pressure on a bleeding pad, to spread ointment without getting it over your own hands, and to pad a dressing before the bandage goes on over the top. A hundred swabs sounds generous until the first real incident uses forty of them.

These are absorbent cotton gauze, low-lint, produced and packed in clean conditions. Low-lint is the specification that actually matters: gauze that sheds leaves fibres behind in a wound, and fibres in a wound are what a vet then has to pick back out again. Three combinations are made, varying by size and by ply, so you can match the swab to the job rather than folding a large one down.

• Highly absorbent, low-lint cotton gauze
• Produced and packed in clean conditions
• 5 x 5cm, 8ply
• 10 x 10cm, 8ply
• 10 x 10cm, 12ply
• 100 swabs per pack
• White

On sterility. These are non-sterile. That makes them right for cleaning around a wound, padding under a bandage, applying creams and general kit use, and wrong for packing an open wound or anything you would want a vet to have handled first. If a cut is deep, dirty or will not stop bleeding, use these to hold pressure on the way to the surgery rather than as the treatment itself.

What the options mean. Sold in sizes from 5 x 5cm to 10 x 10cm — £4.49 to £5.99.

Who it's for: Anyone building a proper pet first-aid kit, and owners managing dressings or post-operative wounds at home under veterinary instruction.