• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The tests aren’t absolutely accurate. A negative answer means only that the cat wasn’t carrying the virus at the time the blood sample was taken, and it may even have been in the earliest stages of infection. It’s a good idea to do a second test later. Positive answers don’t show whether it has or may get one of the related diseases, but even if it doesn’t, it will shed the virus and shouldn’t hang around with other cats until they’ve been inoculated.

Negative cats who may have been exposed should have the series of three Leukocell vaccinations. It’s a nuisance, but it beats the possible alternatives.

More good news: in 1987, cats with the killer heart disease called dilated cardiomyopathy, curable only by heart transplant, were found to have inadequate amounts of an essential nutrient called taurine in their bloodstreams. Its addition to their diets cured the condition, which had killed tens of thousands of cats a year in the United States.

Pet food makers were alerted, and moved quickly to add taurine supplements to products that tested deficient in it. (This breakthrough may eventually prove to be good news to humans with congestive heart failure, if a correlation can be found.)

On the bad-news side stands hyperthyroidism. The first cases of this surfaced in 1980, so the older books don’t mention it, but it’s showing up more and more frequently among the senior cats.

The early signs can even look cheering to the cat’s people. When a torpid, overweight old cat begins to perk up and spring around the house ruffling the rugs, eats more enthusiastically and yet slims down, it looks like a whole new lease on life, but it might be hyperthyroidism. It’s caused by a thyroid adenoma, an enlargement of the thyroid gland that makes it secrete too much thyroid hormone. This sends the cat’s metabolism into the racing mode.

Fat and muscle tissue are consumed, high blood pressure can lead to heart and kidney failure, and circulating immune complexes get trapped in the kidneys and damage them further. Things to look for in the cat over seven or eight are weight loss, increased appetite, hyperactivity, increased drinking and urination, heart murmur, vomiting shortly after eating, diarrhea or larger stools, and difficulty breathing. If you spot more than a couple of these, take him in for a blood test.

The best treatment, as of now, is what humans get, with radioactive iodine taken up by the tumor tissue and destroying it. But unfortunately, it’s expensive and not widely available for cats. It’s also possible to remove the abnormal gland or glands surgically, a fairly tricky procedure but the treatment of choice right now. There are also medications, like methimazole, which unfortunately has to be poked into the patient more or less forever.

Most recently, cases are beginning to crop up in more than one cat in a family, meaning that there may be some infectious agent involved, or a culprit in the environment. Or it might hinge on diet, and thorough research on cat foods may pinpoint it.

In the meantime we have to cast a skeptical eye on the magically rejuvenated older cat.

Back to good news: nonsurgical hope for the cat with what used to be called FUS by vets, for Feline Urinary Syndrome, and is now called Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disorder, or FLUTD; I have no idea how they pronounce it. The rest of us called it cystitis, which it isn’t. The urine forms crystals in the bladder or urethra that make urination painful and difficult or impossible. It happens almost exclusively to males, and without quick treatment it can lead to uremic poisoning and death. The cat makes frequent sad trips to the litter box, and strains and cries, and produces little. Boy was a martyr to it before much could be done for it, and notified me of attacks by going to the bathroom and pulling down all the towels and sprinkling each with a few agonizing bloody drops. A vet with a catheter relieved the immediate problem, and then there were little red pills that didn’t help and were a great nuisance,