CAT HEALTH & MEDICINE

Your cat is wobbly on her back legs and perhaps seems to be in pain. Maybe she also has urinary and fecal incontinence; waste exits her body when she is not trying to “go.” It’s possible she has intervertebral disc disease (IVDD). It’s much less common in cats than dogs, but it does occur. A new study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association says that advancing age and excess weight predispose cats to the condition. What is it exactly?

An occasional bout of diarrhea is no cause for alarm. If your cat’s appetite remains good and she is as active as she usually is, it’s generally safe to wait two or three days to see if the problem resolves on its own, says Tufts veterinary internist Michael Stone, DVM. Reasons for loose stools that quickly resolve on their own:
™ Your cat had a bacterial or viral infection, but her body was able to vanquish it without medical treatment.
™ Your pet was feeling stressed. Something like young children visiting your home and running around or coming home from a stressful veterinary visit could send her gastrointestinal tract into temporary overdrive.
™ 
Your cat ate more food than she’s used to.
™ She had an unusually rich treat.
When do loose stools become a concern?
The clue to whether you should take your cat to the doctor because of diarrhea is whether it’s persistent over the course of a day or a day and a half, your pet is lethargic, or she has a decreased appetite. Then it’s not just a few instances of watery stools but a situation that perhaps could lead to dehydration and potentially dangerous electrolyte imbalances. In such cases, some professional sleuthing is necessary to find out what’s causing the problem and also to get it under control.
If it’s a young cat such as a kitten, the diarrhea may be due to intestinal parasites like roundworms. An older cat’s diarrhea may be attributable to, say, hyperthyroidism or perhaps lymphoma that has spread to the GI tract. The vet may have to run some tests.
Whether or not the situation seems serious, don’t give your cat anti-diarrheal medication intended for people. Many of those medications contain ingredients that can be dangerous for felines and will only serve to make a bad situation worse.

If you notice small, hairless nodules on the head, neck, trunk, limbs, or other parts of your cat’s body, take your pet to the doctor. They may be mast cell tumors—one of the most common types of skin tumors on cats, and in some cases malignant. The good news: Even though mast cell tumors are a source of concern and can be intermittently itchy, red, and even ulcerated, they tend not to recur or spread to other sites in the body if promptly taken care of.

Surgical spaying or neutering is one of the most commonly performed procedures in companion animals. A female’s ovaries (and usually the uterus) are removed or a male’s testicles, and unwanted offspring cease to become a concern. But a new survey suggests that dogs may be more likely to be sent home with pain-relieving drugs once their ovaries or testicles are removed than cats.

Your 14-year- old cat has a large, benign tumor in one of her toes that is causing her pain and interfering with her mobility. Do you schedule a surgery to excise the tumor? Forgo the surgery and let the tumor keep enlarging until she is in so much discomfort that you finally euthanize her? Or wait and see?

Is your cat one of those whose tongue protrudes when he’s just sitting around? Ever wonder why he does it?

Abdominal surgeries are among the most common operations for cats (often performed to remove foreign bodies that your cat has swallowed and can’t pass, but also for spays and other reasons). When you take your pet home after a procedure in which her abdomen has been opened, you may see some bruising around the incision along with a little swelling, and perhaps some redness. That’s fine. But if after a couple of days the sutures “disappear” because the swelling has increased or there’s oozing, take her back to the vet’s office. Something’s wrong that needs to be tended to.

There’s no cure for Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV). And there’s no vaccine to protect against it. No drug can treat it, either. And it sounds a lot like “HIV,” which can progress to AIDS. So of course people are nervous about this feline disease, which strikes an estimated 2 to 5 percent of cats. The concern is so pervasive that a lot of people won’t even consider adopting an FIV-positive cat from a shelter, leaving animals who have tested positive for the condition to languish. Some people have even euthanized a cat found to be FIV-positive.

Q: You mentioned in a recent issue that the American Association of Feline Practitioners had some ideas for getting a cat to take her medicine when she normally refuses it. Can you say what those strategies are?

Drooling, eyelid or facial twitching, excessive vocalizations, growling, and weird head, neck, or limb movements. Each of these can be a sign of a partial seizure, which is much more common in cats than generalized seizures. Partial seizures are also harder to recognize for what they are, unlike a generalized’s seizure’s sometimes violent shaking and loss of awareness. 

When it comes to people, long-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin and ibuprofen are often thought of as problematic because they can cause problems ranging from a tendency to bleed too easily to stomach ulcers. There can be risks to the heart and brain, too. That said, under a doctor’s supervision, NSAIDs are sometimes prescribed to deal with chronic pain—pain that is not going to subside in a short time.   

One minute your cat seems fine, and the next, she’s paralyzed in her hind legs and is crying out in great pain, dragging herself around by her front limbs. What’s going on?