Mojo, still at home

/ f.lynn.whyte / 1 Comment

Mojo had been at the clinic as long as I’ve been there. He’s a lovely cat, doesn’t take any nonsense from dogs, and knows just when someone needs a purry cuddle. But he’s not a young cat any more, and with that came some changes.

The weekends confined to a kennel with little activity were harder on his body as he aged, and about eighteen months ago, we started looking for a retirement home for him. But he had some health problems, and our amazing team wants to keep in close touch with him and his new people. He’s on a special diet and regular medications to help with vomiting and stool issues.

He spent his long weekends at the home of a staff member, and those special folks have always taken good care of him. But life changes, people move on, and there didn’t seem to be a great home available among our current staff.

However, one weak moment several months ago led to Mojo coming home with me. For just a few days. He did fine, he loved being around us, and he was able to fend off the dog with little problem.

However, Ruby was NOT impressed.

Whenever Mojo entered the same space as Ruby, she would growl, hiss and spit. She took runs at him and generally acted as loud, distressed and inconvenienced as possible. For his part, he would just sit and stare at her, ignoring the dramatics and holding his ground. If anything, this would make her even more frantic.

This repeated itself for another few times over the months, so I was reluctant to bring Mojo home, because it’s been her home first, and I didn’t think it was fair to Ruby.

However, over the holidays last year, things changed. Our home was considered the best place for him because he was having constipation problems and we wanted to make sure he would be closely watched, and over a week or so, Ruby decided that the world would not end if Mojo was inside our home.

Ruby still doesn’t like him, but she’s content to pretend he doesn’t exist. Mojo seems to have found a happy place:

So, we are back to three cats in the household. Right now, Mojo is on the arm of the couch in a sunbeam with Ziggy sprawled on the floor nearby; Ruby is curled up on the warmest tile on the heated floor and all seems well with the world.

The photo at the top is from this week. It took a year, but I think Ruby has finally adjusted to Mojo’s presence, especially in front of the fireplace.

Max’s Heart

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Dear Max,

You had a heart murmur.

The first time I took you to the veterinarian for your kitten vaccines, she heard a mild murmur. When she was listening to your heart with her stethoscope, the lub-dub had an extra sound, meaning that the flow of the blood was not smooth. There is a good article here with audio files of heart sounds.

The problem with cats and heart murmurs is that the murmur tells you nothing about the possibility of disease. In dogs, the murmur can tell you a lot. In cats, a murmur could simply be due to positioning or how nervous you were. But it could also mean serious disease. In general, mild murmurs like yours are not as likely to indicate a problem as a more severe murmur. But cats don’t like to follow rules or guidelines, especially when humans put them into textbooks.

Then there’s the whole issue of heart disease in cats. It’s hard to diagnose. Normal chest x-rays with a normal looking heart aren’t enough. One of the nasty and more common types of feline heart disease, called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), doesn’t change the way the heart looks on an x-ray. You need a cardiac ultrasound, or echocardiogram, done by a specialist, with measurements of the blood flowing inside the heart, to diagnose this disease.

It wasn’t available ‘back then’, but nowadays there is a blood test (NT-proBNP) that can show if there is stress on the heart muscle. This might be useful to determine whether changes in lungs seen on an x-ray are due to heart disease, but other problems can cause high levels of proBNP. At this point, it’s not a way to tell if a murmur is benign or not.

Cats with heart disease also hide it. Between their natural instinct to hide a problem, and the ability of the cardiovascular system to adjust as the heart weakens, you often don’t know there’s a problem with a cat’s heart until they are in the midst of a life-threatening crisis.

As if that isn’t complicated enough, there is still not a lot of evidence or even agreement among specialists (veterinary cardiologists) about what kind of medications work best in cats with heart disease before it causes signs of illness. A couple things they all agree upon, high blood pressure needs to be treated, and if a heart problem is confirmed, then using medication to prevent blood clots is a good idea.

And then we get to the practical part. A cat with heart disease or heart failure needs daily medication. Sometimes more than once a day. Usually more than one medication. Of my cats, there have been some I could pill, some I could bribe and one in particular (you’ll hear about Tinky later) who I could not medicate by mouth.

There is one new, simple way to help monitor for heart failure and to assess if the medication is effective. It’s called SRR, for Sleeping Respiratory Rate. You can do this easily at home by counting how many breaths in a minute when your pet is sleeping.

Luckily, we didn’t need to deal with heart failure, but I sure learned a lot when I researched it.

What did I learn about heart disease in cats from you, Max?

  • Heart murmurs don’t necessarily equal heart disease in cats.
  • Heart disease is harder to diagnose in cats, and may also be harder to manage.
  • Some cats with heart murmur live a normal, healthy life and never develop heart disease.
  • The knowledge of heart disease in cats is changing rapidly as research and clinical experience teach us.

Max and Kids

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Dear Max,

Initially, baby was interesting, warm, always wrapped in something soft. When she made noise, you just had to take a step back and you were out of range. But then, she started to move. She got fast and agile, and she could fit in almost every little hiding nook you found. Life became a game of hide-and-seek, with you trying to be one step ahead looking for a better hiding place.

You didn’t see any benefits to this young human until you learned about the wonders of the high chair. I think as far as you were concerned, the high chair was the best thing ever invented. It kept the little grubby fingers away and confined to a single place.

You knew where that young human was when she was in ‘the chair’, but it also allowed a smorgasbord of free food to fall to the floor. We saw a lot more of you once you figured out the rules of the high chair. If I remember correctly, you liked chicken. A lot.

You would sometimes climb into bed with the young human when she was deeply asleep, but you preferred the company of adults.

Mostly I recall you took all the changes we imposed upon you with good grace, and you adapted well. As long as we got some cuddle time together regularly, you were happy to be a member of a busy growing family.

What did you teach me when I look back on this time?

  • Cats are always watching, and they can figure out routines.
  • If you allow it, they will choose the level of interaction that makes them comfortable, and that probably leads to a cat with better comfort and lower stress.
  • Again, cats can adjust to huge changes in their household routine and environment, as long as they have some time and some choice in how they interact.

Why microchip cats?

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Return to site

Hint: even house cats can get outside sometimes

Microchips help lost cats get home. That’s the simple answer. Veterinary clinic and shelters have microchip readers, and they scan a pet to look for a microchip. The microchip number is called in to the company, and they contact you to tell you where your pet is.

See that small black cat with lovely green eyes above? That’s my Ruby and I will share her lost cat story some day. Now she has a microchip. If she ever sneaks out again and ends up at a shelter or veterinary clinic, my contact information is easily available.

If you want some facts about microchips and what they are made of, Wikipedia has a great summary.

There was a study published in 2012 about lost pets. One of the findings of that study was that cats do not have microchips as often as dogs. Another finding was that more dogs make it back home. Because of the type of study, we can’t say one causes the other, but we can say that microchips and ID collars helped return lost dogs to their homes.

If you google microchips for pets, you’ll likely find some scare stories that claim ‘studies show’ some terrible outcomes. These studies were done in laboratory mice over 10 years ago. Since then, millions of pets have been implanted with microchips with no side effects and no problems.

Would I say the risk is zero? No. But the risk of crossing the street is not zero.

Think about your pets and their lifestyle and risks. Ziggy doesn’t have a microchip because any time she ends up outside and looks up, she makes a frantic vocal dash for the safety of indoors and a ceiling over her head. Ruby has one, because she’s an adventurer and she’s quiet.

Let’s give our friends at Lennox & Addington lost and found pets less work to do.

Max and the Pregnant Lady

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Dear Max,

After we moved you several times, tried to introduce a dog and successfully introduced a kitten, we decided to have a baby.

I remember when I was pregnant, someone asked when we were getting rid of our cats.

“Umm, never.”

Her first concern was the litter box. She worried about ‘that infection’ I could get from your litter box. There is a parasite that can cause an infection called Toxoplasmosis in cats and humans. A cat with an active infection will shed it in their stool. If a woman is infected for the first time when she is pregnant, the infection can cause birth defects in the baby.

I talked to my midwife and we did a blood test which indicated I had already been exposed to the Toxoplasmosis organism. Therefore, the risk of getting a new infection that could affect an unborn child was very low. My husband agreed to look after litter box duties every day, so the risk of injury to our unborn child from the litter box was close to zero.

After getting sound medical advice, there was no need to banish or rehome our two cats because of this. If you have questions about this, talk to your medical professional.

Next, she worried that ‘cats can steal a baby’s breath’.

This one was an ‘old wives’ tale’, pure and simple. Cats are curious. Cats like warm places. Cats could be attracted to the smell of milk. Unattended cats left to their own devices might sneak into a baby’s crib and snuggle up to the infant, but there is not any malice in their actions.

We lived in a one bedroom apartment, so we just closed the door and kept you out of the bedroom when the baby was sleeping. Fortunately for us, our new little bundle of joy was also very noisy and you did not show much interest in spending time with her unless she was on my lap. You liked to rest in the crib only when the crib was empty.

I don’t know if the concerned party was ever comfortable with our decision to keep you, but that didn’t matter to me. We made a commitment to you and Dennis. A growing family was no reason to break that commitment.

What did I learn from living with you and baby?

  • A cat will try to make room on a lap that is housing a ten pound infant.
  • Change tables make perfect cat beds.
  • Get the correct information about your health from your doctor, not well-meaning folks who offer unsolicited advice.