Cats
Seeing Clearly: Identifying New Causes and Treatments for Feline Conjunctivitis
By Alex Jimenez
It’s not uncommon for cats to develop cold-like symptoms such as sneezing, runny eyes and a cough, especially in shelters or other environments in which many cats are housed. These same signs can be caused by both bacteria and viruses, and appropriate treatment requires an accurate diagnosis of the cause.
In a Morris Animal Foundation–funded study at the Colorado State University Center for Companion Animal Studies, Dr. Michael R. Lappin sought to improve treatment of cats with conjunctivitis – inflammation of the tissues surrounding the eyes – by identifying the most common... Read more.
Posted by MAF on January 10, 2012
Categories: Animal health, Animal welfare, Cat health
PermalinkDrugs that could manage obesity
Dr. Ya-Xiong Tao
Auburn University
Obesity in cats has reached epidemic proportions: An estimated 20 to 48 percent of owned cats are now overweight. Obese cats are more likely to develop health problems, such as diabetes, skin conditions, heart disease and severe lameness.
With a grant from Morris Animal Foundation, researchers at Auburn University investigated whether they could use drugs to act... Read more.
Posted by MAF on December 21, 2011
Categories: Cat health, Feline health
PermalinkLooking Back: The Best Shelter Cat Stories of 2011
To celebrate national Adopt-a-Shelter-Cat month in June of 2011, Morris Animal Foundation asked cat lovers to share their touching shelter cat stories on our Happy Healthy Cat Campaign Facebook page. The response was amazing, and we would like to thank everyone who participated.
Categories:
Animal welfare, Cat health
By Amy Ettinger Millions of older cats are affected by chronic kidney disease. The disease is costly, affects quality of life and has few treatment options. In addition, the disease is often not diagnosed until the late stages, once 75 percent of kidney function is already lost.
Researchers at Colorado State University are investigating why kidney disease affects senior cats and are exploring the role of cell aging, known as cell senescence. With Morris Animal Foundation funding, the scientists are studying cells to determine whether cats with kidney disease have shortened telomeres, which... Read more.
Categories:
Animal health, Cat diseases, Cat health
By Allison Tonini research looks into treatments to help beat this painful disease Oral cancer is a devastating disease of cats that becomes more common as a cat ages. Feline oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), the most common oral tumor diagnosed in cats, is particularly serious because it is generally recognized too late for it to respond to treatment. The rapid progression of the tumor can be debilitating—preventing a cat from eating, chewing, swallowing, grooming and even breathing. Even with aggressive treatment, OSCC has a grave prognosis.
Categories:
Animal health, Cat health, Feline health
(aka, a real life story from study D08FE-057, “Environmental and Group Health Risk Factors for Feline Respiratory Disease in Animal Shelters”) Feline upper respiratory infection (URI) is more than just a kitty cold. It’s a painful condition that can make cats feel sick for days or weeks, causes painful ulcers on the eyes and tongue and leaves some cats with lifelong aftereffects. And, because it spreads easily and is costly to treat, it’s one of the most common causes of euthanasia for shelter cats in the United States. Even when shelters have the means to treat URI, that treatment can drain... Read more.
Categories:
Cat diseases, Cat health
By Kelley Weir Have you ever wondered why your doctor insists that you finish your prescription of antibiotics? With all the fuss that we hear in the media about antibiotics becoming less effective and overused, one might assume that quitting your antibiotics when you feel better, instead of taking the whole course, would be better for our bodies. Not so—for us or for our pets. In fact, the opposite is true, and antibiotics are becoming less effective precisely because people don’t take their full prescriptions or make certain their pets complete their medications. Germs remaining after... Read more.
Categories:
Animal health, Animal studies, Veterinary research
By Kelley Weir Your cat’s dry, hacking cough could mean a hairball—but it could also be a sign of allergic asthma. The condition affects 1 to 5 percent of pet cats, and knowing the signs and treatment options could give your cat a chance to breathe more easily. Human sufferers of allergy-induced asthma know exactly what an asthma attack feels like and can recognize the symptoms in themselves. Most cat owners, however, probably don’t even realize that their cat is susceptible to allergies or asthma and do not know the symptoms—after all, cats are known for causing allergies not... Read more.
Categories:
Asthma , Cat health
The cat needs a helping hand, and a newly formed partnership between some of the most influential feline organizations in the country is looking to provide that support. Cats are the most popular pet in the United States, outnumbering dogs by more than 9 million. But the cat falls woefully behind dogs when it comes to visits to the veterinarian. Research conducted into cat health also falls short of the research conducted for dogs. "The formulation of the Cat Health Network is a step in the right direction. The decline in feline veterinary visits is alarming and now more than ever before, it's becoming critical for us to... Read more.
Categories:
Cat health, Veterinary news
Researcher hopes to help veterinarians identify deadly tumors By Amy Ettinger Every year, thousands of cats develop tumors that appear to be linked
to routine vaccination and other injections. These injection
site–associated sarcomas (ISASs) are typically more aggressive than
sarcomas that occur spontaneously. In addition, ISASs often require more
intensive treatment and show a higher risk of recurrence after surgical
removal. For these reasons, accurate diagnosis of the tumor subtype can
significantly affect the outcome for sarcoma patients. With Morris Animal... Read more.
Categories:
Animal health, Cancer, Veterinary research
By Kelley Weir Back in the 1990s, veterinarians began to notice an increase in the incidence of sarcoma in cats at the site where injections are routinely given. This type of cancer, which affects approximately 1 in 10,000 cats, was initially associated with vaccines and, thus, named vaccine-associated sarcoma (VAS), but it was subsequently found to be associated with other injections (e.g., antibiotics) and, therefore, is currently called injection-site sarcoma (ISS). ISS is an extremely aggressive cancer: the time from injection to tumor development can be as short as 4 weeks or as long as 10 years. A combination of surgery,... Read more.
Categories:
Cat diseases, Cat health, Feline health
About 10 percent of all tumors in cats are oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), making this the third most common tumor in cats. Currently, surgery is the only effective treatment for feline OSCC, but for surgery to be curative, the disease must be identified early. Current chemotherapeutics have minimal efficacy in treatment of OSCC. To address this problem, researchers from the Ohio State University investigated a new class of anticancer drugs, histone deacetylase inhibitors, which have been found to inhibit tumor growth in humans and mice. They determined that histone deacetylase inhibitors do have anticancer effects on feline OSCC... Read more.
Categories:
Cancer, Cat health, Feline health
Morris Animal Foundation’s Happy Healthy Cat Campaign Helps Cats Enjoy Longer, Healthier Lives America’s No. 1 pet may get a lot of attention in videos posted on the web and funny photos, but the truth is that each year millions of shelter cats in our country need homes. While those videos and pictures can make for a good laugh, Morris Animal Foundation is asking cat lovers to share another kind of story—one that has changed their lives. In celebration of Adopt-A-Shelter-Cat Month in June, Morris Animal Foundation is calling for anyone who has happily adopted a shelter cat to share a... Read more.
Categories:
Cat health
By Heidi Jeter
one cat’s journey from a hoarder’s house to a loving home Lovey is a beautiful white cat who lives with his little cousin Pepsi in a wonderful home where he helps his owners care for foster kitties. He’s earned the nickname “therapy cat” because he is able to befriend any animal who enters his home. And this remarkable cat is so attuned to his human family that when their daughter was bedridden from a bad cold, Lovey stayed by her side giving her comfort and love.
Categories:
Animal health, Cat diseases, Cat health
By Kelley Weir The life of a shelter cat can be a short and bumpy road. Keeping cats healthy while they are in a shelter is a top priority because it helps them find new homes. Infectious diseases can spread rampantly in shelters, often leading to euthanasia of cats. In particular, upper respiratory infections caused by feline herpesvirus 1 (FHV-1) and feline calicivirus (FCV) affect millions of cats in shelters each year. In addition, shelter cats are at an increased risk of developing feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), a disease resulting from infection by some (but not all) feline coronaviruses, that is 100 percent... Read more.
Categories:
Morris Animal Foundation has partnered with the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP), the American Veterinary Medical Foundation (AVMF) and the Winn Feline Foundation (WFF) to create the Cat Health Network to improve feline health and welfare by funding feline health studies. Thanks to a generous gift from Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Morris Animal Foundation worked with scientists to develop a new genetic tool for studying feline diseases. This new tool is a gene chip containing single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced "snips"). The SNPs function as genetic markers that will help scientists identify... Read more.
Categories:
Cat diseases, Cat health, Feline health
Chronic infection with feline herpesvirus-1 (FHV-1) is common in cats, and FHV-1 is thought to be the most common cause of conjunctivitis. Treating this type of conjunctivitis with antiviral drugs causes irritation and requires frequent administration. With Morris Animal Foundation funding, scientists from Colorado State University demonstrated that cidofovir, an antiviral drug, is nonirritating and effective against FHV-1. In addition, these researchers found that both FHV-1 and Mycoplasma bacteria were common causes of conjunctivitis. Therefore, treatment for Mycoplasma with less expensive topical antibiotics should be... Read more.
Categories:
Animal health, Cat diseases, Cat health
By Amy Ettinger research looks at early detection Chronic kidney disease is one of the most common diseases in older cats, and it is consistently the top health concern among Morris Animal Foundation’s cat health supporters. Feline kidney problems are diagnosed with blood and urine tests, but most standard tests aren’t very sensitive. By the time these tests are able to detect disease, the sick cat has usually lost about 70 percent of its kidney function, making effective treatment difficult. The iohexol clearance test is a more accurate method, but it is invasive, time consuming and costly.... Read more.
Categories:
Cat diseases, Cat health, Feline health
Researchers at the University of Georgia uncovered some surprising data in a recent Morris Animal Foundation–funded study of cytauxzoonosis, a tick-borne disease that affects cats. Once thought to be 100 percent fatal, research has found that, at least for some cats, the severity of the disease is lessening. Cytauxzoonosis causes severe illness, and in most infected cats, the course of disease is rapid. Supportive care and antiprotozoal drugs have had inconsistent therapeutic results and limited success in treating cytauxzoonosis. In the past, nearly all cats died of the initial clinical illness within one week, but... Read more.
Categories:
Animal studies, Cat diseases, Cat health, Feline health
Cats are notoriously hard to photograph, but the results can be well worth the effort. This was certainly the case for Morris Animal Foundation’s first Happy Healthy Cat Photo Contest, sponsored by Sergeant’s Pet Care Products and judged by longtime foundation trustee and actor Betty White. Hundreds of funny, outrageous and adorable cat photos were submitted to the Happy Healthy Cat Campaign’s and Sergeant’s contest websites. Only the best of the best made it to the final round and were sent to Betty White to be judged. Brittany... Read more.
Categories:
Cat health, Happy healthy cat campaign
After careful consideration, we have decided to combine the Happy Healthy Cat Campaign Facebook page with our main Morris Animal Foundation Facebook page. For those who shared stories with us, they have been archived here. Thank you all again and be sure to
Posted by MAF on December 16, 2011
How aging prompts kidney disease
Posted by MAF on December 8, 2011
Sounding off about oral cancer
Posted by MAF on November 28, 2011
A Tale of Two Shelters
Posted by MAF on November 11, 2011
New Science Tackles Antibiotic Resistance and Much More
Posted by MAF on September 30, 2011
Just a Hairball? Or a Sign of Something Worse?
Posted by MAF on September 29, 2011
Partnership launches cat health initiative
Posted by MAF on September 12, 2011
Developing DNA tests to diagnose cancer in cats
Posted by on August 19, 2011
Testing New Drug to Fight Feline Injection-Site Sarcoma
Posted by MAF on July 11, 2011
Study Identifies Promising New Drug Therapy for Feline Oral Cancer
Posted by MAF on June 22, 2011
Share Your Shelter Cat Story for Adopt-A-Shelter-Cat Month and Win Fun Cat Swag!
Posted by MAF on June 20, 2011
The power of a gentle touch
Posted by MAF on May 17, 2011
Staying Healthy While Awaiting a New Home
Posted by on April 11, 2011
Morris Animal Foundation Expands Efforts to Improve Cat Health
Posted by on April 5, 2011
Study Results Will Improve Diagnosis and Treatment of Feline Conjunctivitis
Posted by MAF on March 18, 2011
Keeping kitty kidneys healthy
Posted by on March 1, 2011
Deadly Tick-borne Disease Not as Fatal as Once Thought
Posted by MAF on February 2, 2011
Celebrity Judge Betty White Chooses Winning Cat Photograph for Contest
Posted by MAF on January 14, 2011
