CAT HEALTH & MEDICINE

“It used to be thought that animals don’t feel pain,” says Alicia Karas, DVM, a veterinary pain specialist who is board-certified in anesthesiology. It wasn’t that long ago. “The real start of recognizing that animals feel pain and might need medication for it was probably the early 90s,” she notes. “Until then, a vet might say, ‘If I give the animal pain meds after an operation they might move around too much and hurt their surgical sites, interfering with their healing.’ It was a myth that needed to be battled.

The Pet Poison Helpline (855-764-7661) has released its list of the top 10 cat poisons for 2024. The list is based on caller data rather than on a formula devised from theory. In other words, these are the toxins actually making people’s cats sick, in the following order:

You notice that the pupils—the black circles in the center of your cat’s eyes—are no longer the same size. One has become significantly larger than the other, blocking out much of the iris (the colored part). Or one has become significantly smaller. Either way, it’s not normal. Both pupils are supposed to enlarge to the same degree to allow more light in when the ambient light has dimmed, and they’re supposed to shrink to the same degree to let in less light when the surrounding light has brightened. The condition of one pupil remaining a different size from the other no matter what is called anisocoria, from the Greek aniso, meaning “unequal,” kore, meaning pupil, and the Latin suffix ia, signifying “abnormal.”

Cats tend to hate car rides for all kinds of reasons, but for some cats, one of them may be motion sickness. A glitch in a cat’s vestibular system, which controls balance and coordinates the movements of the head and eyes, may have something to do with it. But the sheer terror of riding in a car can bring on motion sickness, too, with its attendant vomiting, drooling, diarrhea, and caterwauling—loud, tormented hyper vocalizations.

Since March of last year, more and more cats have been diagnosed with bird flu, an often deadly viral disease. Cats in particular appear susceptible to avian influenza. The illness has been diagnosed in indoor cats, barn cats, and large cats like tigers, mountain lions, and lynx, both in zoos and in the wild.

What people tend to think of when their cat has an illness with a grim prognosis is “a kind of binary option, either full-court treatment or euthanasia,” says Eric Richman, MSW, LICSW, a veterinary social worker who tends to clients at Tufts. But there’s “potential for middle ground,” he says, in the form of hospice and palliative care—“palliative” meaning pain-relieving as opposed to disease-treating.

Cats’ blood pressure and respiratory rates can increase in veterinary settings in response to lots of noise, making what they consider a difficult situation more difficult still. Researchers at Ontario Veterinary College assessed more than 30 cats examined both quietly and against the backdrop of tapes on which people talked and laughed at 80 decibels—as loud as a garbage disposal or a busy downtown street. Average heart rates went from 155 beats per minute during the quiet exams to almost 200 beats per minute when the tapes were played. Respiratory rate—the number of breaths taken per minute—soared from about 48 to an average of 61. Bodily reactions indicating stress— dilated pupils and the like—increased, too.

Q: My cat was pretty sick—vomiting, no lust for life, weight loss, abdominal distention. The vet did some testing, first with a blood test and then with a liver biopsy, and said she had copper disease. Too much of that mineral had accumulated in her liver. The doctor said my cat would need medicines and should go on a low-copper diet. How could this have happened? I have always fed her food that met the standards of the Association of American Feed Control Officials, as you suggest people do.

If it’s summertime and your cat laps up a lot of water right after sunning herself, she’s probably just feeling thirsty after lounging in the heat. But if you’ve been noticing increased thirst in general and it has nothing to do with the weather, there’s a reasonable chance it could be attributable to one of three medical conditions: kidney disease, overactive thyroid [hyperthyroidism], or diabetes.

One of the reasons the Feline Veterinary Medical Association says cats 11 through 15 should have a twice-yearly vet visit and cats older than 15 should go for a checkup three times a year is that older cats should be routinely assessed for frailty. While old age is not a cause of frailty in itself, advanced age is associated with the condition. It’s a serious one. Considered a syndrome, frailty signifies decreased functional reserve that leads to declines both physiologically and cognitively. It also means the body has less of an ability to mount a defense against adverse medical events.

Dogs are routinely tested for heartworm disease during their annual physicals. Not so, cats, even though they are at risk wherever heartworm infection occurs in their canine counterparts—it results from being bitten by an infected mosquito.

Having a cat with diabetes is life-changing—for you as well as the cat. The insulin shots required to keep the disease from doing more damage can cost $100 a month—no small issue if it’s not covered by pet heath insurance. The required changes in your day-to-day habits can be daunting, too. A cat with diabetes should ideally get his insulin shots every 12 hours, with no more than a margin of an hour or two so that blood sugar remains on an even keel (too much sugar in the blood damages tissues throughout the body). If you want to go out to dinner or sleep late on the weekend, you could potentially be putting your pet in harm’s way.