CAT HEALTH & MEDICINE

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?

Q: There is a difference in vaccine recommendations for people and those for cats that I find confusing. With people, the interval between vaccinations varies depending on the shot. For instance, people get a shot against tetanus every 10 years and a shingles shot just once. But cats are supposed to get all their core vaccines once a year. Why is that? Does the immunity from the diseases the shots protect against always wane so quickly?

Feline skin is second only to the feline lymphatic system as the site of lumps and bumps—various tumors, cysts, and other abnormal growths, known medically as neoplasms. Sometimes these growths grow alarmingly large. But even when they’re small, they concern people with cats—for good reason. No one wants to see or feel swellings on their pet’s coat that shouldn’t be there. “I am asked to evaluate them daily,” says Tufts veterinary internist Michael Stone, DVM.