It’s World Arthritis day, and one species where arthritis goes undiagnosed is cats. As anyone who has a cat knows, cats are masters of hiding pain and discomfort from their human companions, and that can make joint disorders be very hard to diagnose until they have progressed significantly.

Osteorthritis, also known as arthritis, is the most commonly-diagnosed degenerative joint disease in cats. It occurs when cartilage, the smooth tissue that protects the ends of bones from rubbing directly against each other within a movable joint, either wear way or are torn away. When this happens, the ends of the bones come into direct contact.

Did you just wince reading that? It sounds painful, and it can be. Bone grinding against bone results in inflammation and pain in a cat with arthritis.

Arthritis has several causes:

• Injury to a joint
• Gradual wear and tear on a joint over time
• As a secondary impact of another disease that compromises the internal structure of a joint.

Although all of a cat’s bones can be susceptible to arthritis, the most obvious ones are the moving joints: Shoulders, elbows, knees, and wrists are all frequently suffer from arthritis as your cat ages, though the elbows and shoulders may be the most noticeable.

Older cats are most susceptible to arthritis. In one study of x-rays for 100 senior cats aged 10 or older most had signs of arthritis. 90% of cats over age 12 showed evidence of arthritis. Another study showed that cats begin to show joint degeneration earlier than anyone would have expected, with 30% of all cats eight years or older already having some signs of arthritis.

Signs of Arthritis in Your Cat

Early signs of arthritis in your cat are likely to be so subtle you might not notice at first. Your cat may move stiffly, especially when getting up from a nap. She might also not move around as much, choosing not to make the high, graceful jumps of her youth. It’s easy to miss this last one if you have spent years trying to get your cat not to jump up on the counter and are relieved that she’s not doing it any more.

Other signs of arthritis may be mistaken for other problems. Your cat’s matted coat may not seem like a sign of arthritis, but if her spine is arthritic and it hurts to bend around for thorough grooming, she could become unkempt because of joint disease. Your cat’s claws becoming overgrown may not seem like a sign of arthritis, either, but they can be caused by less stretching of painful joints to sharpen them on your cat tree.

As arthritis progresses, you might even see your cat limp or walk oddly.

Helping Your Arthritic Cat

Making some simple adjustments around the house can make your arthritic cat more comfortable.

Make sure your cat has soft, warm, accessible places to sleep. If your kitty used to sleep only on top of the cat tree, you might not think about placing beds in draft-free locations so that she doesn’t need to struggle to climb to a comfortable resting location.

Add cat steps to locations that your cat likes to join you so that she doesn’t have  to jump up onto the sofa or bed to join you at night or up to the windowsill to watch bird TV.

Make sure litterboxes have low enough sides to be easy to enter and exit. An older cat may physically struggle to get in and out of the high-sided litterbox he once leaped into with ease.

Ensure food and water are easy to access and don’t require climbing a flight of stairs or leaping up onto a countertop.

What about Pain Relievers?

When you realize that your cat is in pain, of course you want to do something to alleviate it, but don’t give your kitty aspirin! Cats don’t have the enzyme necessary to metabolize salicyclic acid in the aspirin, so the common human medication is dangerous for them.

There are no anti-inflammatory drugs (NSIAD) for treatments of chronic musculo-skeletal disorders for cats, including arthritis. Researchers at NC State are currently enrolling cats in a clinical trial of a potential pain reliever for arthritic cats. If you are in that part of the United States and are interested your arthritic cat participating in the study, you can read more at their web site.

Talk to your veterinarian about getting your cat to a healthy weight so that extra weight isn’t causing extra stress on her painful joints. Your vet may also suggest complementary therapies like supplements or acupuncture to help give your cat relief from arthritis pain.

References and Further Reading

Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, Is Your Cat Slowing Down?
International Cat Care, Arthritis and Degenerative Joint Disease in Cats
NC State Veterinary Hospital, Feline Arthritis and NSAID Study
Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, Feline Osteoarthritis

Photo Credits

flickr/ajr595
flickr/Annie Mole
flickr/Alan

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Happy World Vegetarian Day! Many humans make diet choices for ethical or health reasons to become vegetarian, and some of them wonder whether their cats can join them in their dietary changes. The short answer is no, it isn’t safe for your cat to eat a vegetarian diet.

Cats are obligate carnivores. Their physiology requires that they eat meat, and cats who don’t eat meat risk serious health issues.

One of the clearest examples of why cats need a meat-based diet is that they require taurine. Taurine is an amino acid that is found in small quantities in muscle meats and in larger amounts in the heart and liver. The nerves in a cat’s eye that see images are rich in taurine, and they degrade when a cat is taurine-deficient, leading to a loss of sight. Long-term taurine deficiency can even lead to blindness.

The heart of a cat with taurine deficiency can grow enlarged and weakened, a condition known as dilated cardiomyarpathy (DCM). After Dr. Paul Pion discovered of the danger of taurine deficiency to feline heart health in 1987, commercial cat food manufacturers began supplementing the taurine in cat food to make up for taurine destroyed during the cooking process.

Cats also have a short digestive tract compared to humans. In humans, food takes 30 hours to five days to pass through the intestine, compared to 12-24 hours in cats. Herbivores, like rabbits, have intestines much longer in comparison to their body size because the process of digesting the cellulose is long and difficult. Cats intestines aren’t meant for extracting nutrients from plant matter the way they are from meats.

A cat’s absolute requirement for a meat-based protein diet and a digestive tract too short to extract nutrients from plants are things that make your kitty a carnivore rather than an herbivore. Your cat can’t safely join you in your vegetarian diet, so celebrate the differences that make your kitty unique and different from you, including your different diets!

References and further reading

Journal of the American Medical Veterinary Medical Association, Clinical findings in cats with dilated cardiomyopathy and relationship of findings to taurine deficiency.
Waltham Science, Cat/Dog Nutrition, Differences between Cat and Dog
Biopharmaceutics & Drug Disposition, Comparison of the gastrointestinal anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of humans and commonly used laboratory animals

Photo credits

depositphotos/LisaA85
depositphotos/DarkBird

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Rabies is considered one of the core vaccines for most cats and dogs in the US, but many people don’t know much about the disease. In honor of today’s World Rabies Day, we’re sharing some facts about rabies you may not know.

Rabies is a deadly virus

Rabies kills approximately 59,000 humans a year worldwide. Only a few cases are fatal in the US each year.

People can catch rabies from animals

The strong push for rabies vaccination in the United States is because it is a zoonotic disease. That means that it can be transmitted from animals to humans. The disease is found throughout the continental US, but is found most often along the east coast from Florida to Maine and in southern Arizona.

The most common rabies carriers in the US are raccoon, bats, skunks, and foxes, but dogs and cats can also catch the disease. It is important to use caution with unfamiliar animals if you don’t know their health status. Contact with an animal’s saliva (such as through a bite) or brain/nervous system tissue.

Keep in mind that even indoor pets can be exposed to rabies-carrying animals when some of these animals make dens in the basements or attics of our homes.

Rabies has an unpredictable incubation period

While the typical incubation period of rabies is three to eight weeks, it can be as little as eight days or as long as multiple years. The longest incubation time on record for the disease was in a man who was exposed to rabies before emigrating from Brazil and became symptomatic eight years later.

What happens if a dog or cat bites someone

Because of the risk of human infection, if your dog or cat bites someone or is exposed to a rabid animal, you will be expected to show proof of up-to-date vaccination. If you can’t show proof of vaccination, your choices are:

• Have your pet euthanized
• Pay for medical quarantine of your pet for six months

A recent study showed that it may be possible to give pets with out-of-date rabies vaccination status an additional vaccination after exposure. At this time, local laws have not changed based on this new research.

Rabies can’t be diagnosed in live animals

Rabies is diagnosed through the direct fluorescent antibody test. This test involves putting a fluorescent anti-rabies antibody on brain tissue to see if it binds to infected tissue. Since the test requires brain tissue, there is no accurate test for rabies in live animals.

Symptoms of rabies

In cats, rabies symptoms start with changes in behavior including aggression, restlessness, and lethargy. Symptoms progress to increased vocalization, loss of appetite, weakness, disorientation, paralysis, and even sudden death.

References and further reading:

American Humane Association, Rabies Facts & Prevention Tips 
ASPCA, Rabies
Center for Disease Control, Rabies 
Global Alliance for Rabies Control, Rabies Facts 
Annals of Neurology, Phylogenetic and epidemiologic evidence of multiyear incubation in human rabies 
Journal of the American Veterinary Association, Comparison of anamnestic responses to rabies vaccination in dogs and cats with current and out-of-date vaccination status

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depositphotos/Wavebreakmedia

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Just like us, cats have two eyes, but what and how they see isn’t exactly like humans.

Field of Vision

A cat’s 200 degree field of view is wider than the 180 degrees that a human sees, which means that cats see things further slightly behind their head in their peripheral vision. This is a real advantage to hunters looking for prey as well as helping small animals keep a lookout for predators who might keep them harm.

Cats having forward-facing eyes also gives them binocular vision, where each eye has overlapping fields of view. This gives cats depth perception for accurate pounces onto prey. This also helps cats make their graceful leaps and accurate landings on small ledges or branches.

Cats like Ashton with only one eye don’t have binocular vision, and they have to learn to compensate. Ashton doesn’t leap onto unfamiliar objects because she can’t measure the distance there with her eyes. She’s also much more likely to lose small objects when they are tossed in the air, but she compensates by listening for the sound of them striking the floor.

Seeing Colors

Cones are the light receptors in your eyes that work best in bright light. Human eyes have 10 times the cones than cat eyes, giving them the edge in seeing color, but cats do have cones. They can distinguish colors from each other, but they are better able to distinguish colors at the blue-purple end of the spectrum. They see even further into that end of the spectrum than humans, and are able to see ultraviolet light that humans can’t detect with our eyes.

Have you ever used a black light to see down wayward cat urine in the house? Your cat’s vision may help her see that, too. That goes a long way toward explaining feline urine-marking on walls; it’s not just a scent mark but a visual indicator, too, like spray-painting graffiti that says “I was here!”

Distance Vision

Humans can adjust the shape of the lens in our eyes to focus at various distances. Cats can’t adjust the shape of the stiffer lens of their eye and instead actually shift the location of the lens in the eye slightly to refocus, giving them less flexibility in their range of vision.

As a result, while humans can focus on objects 100-200 feet away, a cat needs to be within 20 feet to focus on an object. That’s right… cats are nearsighted.

Night Vision

Rods are the photoreceptors in your eye responsible for seeing in low light. Cats have six to eight times the number of rods in their eyes than humans. This helps cats make the most of low-light conditions for hunting or making their way around the house in what humans perceive as darkness.

When you trip over your kitty on your way to the kitchen for a drink in the middle of the night, your cat was able to see just fine. It was you with your lesser rods who couldn’t see your way in your house.

It’s easy to make assumptions that when your cat sees something you don’t — or doesn’t see something you do — that they’re being fanciful or difficult, but keep in mind that your kitty sees the world differently than you do in many ways.

References and Further Reading

The Journal of Comparative Neurology, A quantitative analysis of the cat retinal ganglion cell topography
Animal Eyes, Michael F. Land, Dan-Eric Nilsson, Animal Eyes
Handbook of Sensory Physiology, The Visual System in Vertebrates
Vision Research, The schematic eye in the cat
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, The spectral transmission of ocular media suggests ultraviolet sensitivity is widespread among mammals
The Evolution of binocular vision

Photo Credits

depositphotos/RasulovS
depositphotos/wvita

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