Most common domestic cat diseases treated under pet insurance policies in America

The most common domestic cat diseases treated under pet insurance policies in America in 2018 were reported as: undiagnosed diarrhoea and vomiting, urinary tract diseases, kidney diseases, gastrointestinal conditions, hyperthyroidism, diabetes, periodontitis and general oral health problems. This information comes from five different pet insurance companies: Trupanion, ASPCA, Pets Best, Nationwide and Embrace. 

You can see a trend there or at least I can. Urinary tract problems including kidney disease are a major issue in domestic cats and also it seems are diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. These would appear to be related to diet because what goes in has to be digested and waste is expelled. Both ends of the food processing channel are affected.

Photo: Pixabay.

I have this feeling that there is something hidden is going on in homes in the West which is affecting the health of domestic cats. The high incidents of kidney disease is unacceptable. And I don't think anything is being done about it. I'm referring to food and the chemicals in the home such as fire retardants and carpet chemicals. These are volatile chemicals which give off fumes and these fumes linger in the atmosphere inside the home. I wonder whether the air quality inside homes is sufficiently good for domestic gas. If it isn't it can't be good for people either but cats are nearer the surfaces.

Cats lie on sofas. If that sofa has a fire retardant inside it then the cat is more likely to absorb these chemicals. The same goes for carpet chemicals. These are examples. And as for cat food, I think we know now that the cheap dry cat food is simply not good enough. A lot of people rely on it because it is cheap and convenient. They allow their cat to graze at any time day or night. Arguably this is overly convenient.

You add to poor quality dry cat food the extended daytime absence of solme human caregivers and you create a slightly toxic world for the domestic cat which can result in urinary tract health problems such as cystitis, a bacterial infection of the bladder, exacerbated by stress.

If there is a high predominance of gastrointestinal diseases causing vomiting and diarrhoea then surely this points to food. Doesn't it? Shouldn't veterinarians be looking at the quality of food provided to domestic cats? Perhaps they don't want to look at it because they want a huge number of cats coming through their doors vomiting and shitting diarrhoea. I am too cynical. One pet insurance company said that they paid out US$9,650 to treat a cat with a gastrointestinal condition.

They also said that they paid out US$40,000 to treat a cat with kidney disease. Do the insurance companies investigate the cause of these diseases? Do they dig around and try and prevent the diseases happening? Do they have a vested interest in doing nothing about these diseases? Do they work together with veterinarians and pet food manufacturers to try and eliminate them? I know there are lots of questions but can you find the answers? I don't think you can. I know that the pet food manufacturers work with veterinarians and this to my mind creates a conflict of interest.

Two pet insurance companies rated diabetes as their third most common cat illness claim. Arguably, feline diabetes, which I presume refers to type II diabetes or sugar diabetes, might be caused by the high carbohydrate content in dry cat food. Dry cat food has to have a high carbohydrate content in order to make it. It is there simply as a manufacturing necessity. Domestic cats don't need this sort of carbohydrate level in their food. It is unnatural to them and it is causing, it is argued, hypoglycaemic cats and overburdening the pancreas which produces insulin. This upsets the insulin/sugar balance in domestic cats which can lead to type II diabetes. This is the argument of a well-known veterinarian in America called Elizabeth M Hodgkins DVM.

I am harping on about cat food. And I do give my cat dry cat food although it is the highest quality I can find. And I also feed him lots of high quality wet cat food. But I am dissatisfied in general with the quality of cat food. It does not reflect accurately enough the perfect domestic cat diet which is the mouse which is 40% protein, 50% fat and only 3% carbohydrates. The average dry cat food for cats contains 35-50% carbohydrate calories according to the catinfo.org website. Do you see the massive difference and how that could impact a cat's metabolism and ability to cope with it?

Do Cats Fart?

Domestic cats do fart but, in my experience, it is silent. Put it this way, all the cats that I have looked after have passed wind at sometime or other but not very often and I've never heard the process taking place.



There is no reason why a domestic cat should not pass wind just like humans. Their anatomy is very similar to ours. In fact, I am sure that most cat owners have smelt the effects of their cat passing wind. If it happens a lot I would ask questions such as whether your cat might be ill or whether the diet is correct. A cat should not pass wind regularly or to the point where it becomes an issue or noticeable.

The reason why I have written this very short post is because people search for the phrase: “Do Cats Fart?". I'm not sure why people are so interested in that particular aspect of the domestic cat's anatomy but there it is. It just goes to prove that the domestic cat is very similar to the human in many areas.

Cat Obesity Effects and Management

Some more notes on cat obesity. The first point to notice is that cat obesity is defined as being greater than 15% over the ideal weight (9-12 lbs for a male and 7-10 lbs for a female cat - but cats vary considerably from breed to breed and from individual to individual). I am surprised because 16% over normal weight is not a lot overweight and yet a cat will be classified as obese.

Cat obesity is the biggest problem regarding the feeding of cats in the USA and Western Europe. Apparently, up to 20% of cats in these regions are obese. My late lady cat Binnie was obese at one time so I have first hand experience of cat obesity.

Nearly all cat obesity problems are because the cat eats too much in relation to the lifestyle that he or she leads. By eating too much I mean that the calorie intake is too high. By lifestyle I am particularly referring to the level of exercise the cat partakes in. As usual it is all about how much goes in and how much is burnt off.

There are a lot of charts on assessing cat weight but we don't really need them because anybody can assess whether there cat is overweight. We simply need to use a common sense method. Essentially use common sense and you can feel your cat's shoulder blades and their spine when they are within a good weight range. You should be able to feel your cat's ribs under a layer of fat when they are of the correct weight.

Obese gray cat. Image by Quinn Kampschroer from Pixabay

Problems

Problems that can be associated with an obese cat:

• breathing difficulties - the recent, well circulated story of Meow the 39 lb cat sadly illustrates this problem.
• FLUTD - feline lower urinary tract disease.
• higher risks of failure during veterinary surgery.
• response to infectious diseases is poorer.
• resistance to insulin - development of diabetes.
• the inability of the heart to work harder when called upon (reduced cardiac reserve).
• the accumulation of fat in the liver cells.

Reducing weight

It can difficult to reduce the weight of your cat. I think we all know that. This because:

• we don't see the effect of a diet quickly
• we lose discipline
• our cat pesters us successfully
• cats have specialist diets being obligate carnivores
• cats are less food orientated than dogs
• cats sometimes have a strong preference for a particular food type.

There are various ways to feed a cat. For weight loss there is no secret that the method is lower calorie intake and/or more exercise. The former is probably easier to achieve than the latter. How many calories does a cat need?

The reduction in food intake should not be more than 30% lower than normal (or 70% of normal). It can be dangerous from a health standpoint to try and force a cat to eat a food that he or she does not like. However, feeding a food that he is less keen on, especially at night when you are asleep so don't have to deal with the emotional problems can be successful in my experience. Weight loss should be managed otherwise it can cause fatty liver disease (hepatic lipidosis) which is linked to sustained loss of appetite. Weight loss should be no more than 1.5% of body weight her week. This is to avoid the possibility of a cat developing fatty liver disease which can happen when a cat becomes anorexic.

Bearing in mind that cat caretakers may, and often do, struggle to diet their cat, it is probably sensible to get your veterinarian involved from both the standpoint of advice on a feeding regime and the type of food that is suitable together with the motivation that this may bring to the task at hand.

Apparently as a cat's calorie intake is reduced the cat's calorie requirements are reduced (the basal metabolic rate falls). This would seem to work against the diet being successful. The answer to this problem is to try and encourage your cat to exercise more.

Cats are very persuasive companions. It is difficult to resist their demands for a meal. We need to bite the bullet and to a certain extent be cruel to be kind.

Night time dieting as mentioned above works for me as my cat accepts the fact that I am asleep and won't pester me for food.

Source: Myself and The Welfare of Cats ISBN 978-1-4020-6143-1

Cat Health Problems Not Eating

Cat health problems, cat not eating? In other words loss of appetite. You can't simply list out the reasons for a loss of appetite because it is such a general cat illness symptom. When you feel ill you lose your appetite. So the cause of not eating is being ill! Great, not very helpful.

However, I have written several pages on the subject of cats not eating, partly because visitors to the site ask about this and I respond as best I can.

Also, I have written about it without being prompted by visitors' submissions.

Here are some pages on cat health problems not eating:

• My cat won't eat
• Cat losing weight
• My Cat Has Lost Appetite and Weight with Labored Breathing
• Why is my cat not eating?
• What is Hills a/d pet food?
• Cat Drooling

If you would like to see lots more pages you can use the search box at the top of the home page.

Why do cats like milk?

The fat in milk is what cats like. Whole milk contains 3.5% butterfat (fatty part of milk) content. Cats like cream as well and medium cream contains 25% butterfat. Fats are part of a cat's diet. They provide energy. The average man has up to 24% fat in his body. Men are mammals. Mice are mammals. I can't find a figure for the percentage of fat in mice but it would be similar to humans, I would have thought. So mice, the primary prey of the domestic cat, has lots of fat in it. Cats like fat and like milk because of that.

Also milk is the kitten's food source immediately after birth. There must be a connection there because we keep adult cats in a state of kitten-hood due to the fact that we provide for them in every aspect of their nutrition. A cat is drinking mother's milk even when she is 15 years of age!

I realise that mother's milk (colostrum) is not supermarket milk but there are great similarities. The problem is that most cats are lactose intolerant (due to insufficient lactase) because the milk at supermarkets is cow's milk. We, too, can be lactose intolerant. Have you tried drinking lactose free milk or soya milk to see if it improves your health? We are not cows.....

Arginine Deficiency in Cats

Cat eating rat - plenty of arginine - Photo by aj_1328

Arginine deficiency in cats is something that affects our cat rarely, but it is something that we should know about. Cats are very sensitive to arginine deficiency and it is life threatening. Provided a cat is feed a diet that contains enough protein it won't be a problem.

Arginine is an amino acid. Most species of adult animals synthesize arginine. "Synthesize" refers to a chemical reaction in which arginine is made. However cats and dogs have a limited capacity to synthesize it. It needs therefore to be in the diet as a dietary supplement. It is a "dietary essential"¹.

The metabolism of a high protein diet results in large amounts of ammonia being generated which has to be eliminated by conversion to urea for excretion from the body in urine. Arginine is essential in this process.

A lack of arginine causes an immediate and severe problem. Cats develop severe hyperammonemia "within several hours of consuming a single arginine-free meal" ¹ ("hyperammonemia" is excess ammonia in the blood).

Symptoms include: vomiting, muscular spasms, ataxia (lack of coordination), hyperesthesia, tetanic spasms, leading to coma and death. This indicates the importance of arginine. It is a hidden importance as this nutrient is almost always included in the cat's diet because it is present in nearly all protein sources.

Note: (1) The Cat It's Behavior, Nutrition & Health page 305 ISBN 978-0-8138-0331-9