Cats are cute and easy to keep. They don’t need to be taken out for a walk. They are the choice of many pet owners. When choosing to feed kittens, kittens have weak resistance, and special attention should be paid to the infectious disease of feline distemper.
Feline distemper is an infectious disease caused by the feline panleukopenia virus (FPV), also known as feline infectious enteritis. Highly contagious and acute onset. Kittens under one year are more common and more severe than adult cats. Mortality is extremely high.
Feline distemper is characterized by sharp leukopenia (but not all cases of leukopenia are feline distemper, other diseases can also cause leukopenia, such as feline leukemia, feline hepatitis, etc.). Under-vaccinated or unvaccinated cats are prone to feline distemper, especially in kittens aged 3-5 months. A female cat infected during pregnancy can cause stillbirth, miscarriage, and neurological symptoms in newborn kittens.
How does feline distemper spread?
The eye and nasal secretions and excrement of sick cats contain a large amount of virus, and healthy cats are exposed to virus-bearing animals. Urine and feces may be infected, and oral infection may be caused by contact with the eating utensils, clothing, and environment used by the sick cat, and it can also be infected by contact with the sick cat. Blood-sucking insects such as lice and fleas can also help spread the disease. Pregnant female cats can pass the disease to the fetus. Recovered cats can still shed the virus through feces and secretions for a long time, infecting other cats.
Therefore, they do not need isolation treatment for cat plague.
(cats with distemper are very weak)
Causes
Ⅰ. Virus characteristics
A. Feline panleukopenia virus (FPV) is a parvovirus.
B. FPV is relatively stable and resistant to most disinfectants except bleach, formaldehyde, and glutaraldehyde.
II. Epidemiology
A. FPV can infect felines and animals such as raccoons, ferrets, and minks.
B. FPV is transmitted directly through infected animals and their secretions, especially feces.
C. Infectious vectors (pollutants) are essential because FPV can survive in the environment for a long time.
D. The incidence of panleukopenia is highest in kittens between 3 and 5 months of age.
(The most typical symptom of feline distemper is frequent vomiting, unrelated to eating, and the vomit is yellow bile-like)
Clinical symptoms
There are generally two situations when cats are infected with the feline distemper virus. For cats with strong physical resistance, although the virus has infected them, they do not become sick; that is to say, they will not develop feline distemper. Clinical symptoms, but only healthy cats with venom. And those cats with weak body resistance are unfortunate. They will have symptoms of cat distemper in varying degrees. The mild ones may just have a worse appetite, while cats with severe illness will have more typical symptoms of cat distemper.
The main manifestations are fever, up to 40~41℃; lack of energy and anorexia, severe or even inability to drink; the most typical symptom is frequent vomiting, vomiting that is not related to eating, and the vomit is Yellow bile, even if the cat has not eaten or drank for a few days, they can still spit out or pull out; diarrhea, the degree of diarrhea is not the same for each cat, severe watery bloody stools, and It can be pulled many times a day, and cats with mild symptoms may only have unformed and loose stools; as the condition worsens, diarrhea and blood in the stool will occur, and even excretion of the intestinal mucosa (loose stools with mucus or flaky, striped stools) Objects) Affected cats quickly develop symptoms of dehydration (poor skin elasticity, sunken eyes) due to constant vomiting and diarrhea. Other complications include oral ulcers, bloody diarrhea, jaundice, and generalized intravascular coagulation syndrome. If it is not treated in time, it will soon die of collapse; some kittens may develop neurological symptoms. At this time, the cat will not be able to walk normally, may stagger when walking, and often fall unconsciously. However, some kittens infected with the feline distemper virus before birth may have retinal dysplasia and overlapping or wrinkled lesions after birth. These cats are usually blind or have very poor vision.
The disease course is more than 5-7 days, no fatal complication occurs, and it often recovers; the number of white blood cells will return to normal within 24-48 hours beyond the course of the disease.
The cat may die suddenly without clinical symptoms in the most acute type. Acute type died within 24 hours. The body temperature of sick cats can reach above 40℃, then it may drop to normal and then rise again, or the high fever can continue. In critical conditions, the body temperature of sick cats can be significantly lower than usual. Some cats have mild symptoms or are even asymptomatic with poison. Still, they may develop or worsen under the circumstances such as sudden environmental changes, weakened immunity, or after surgery. Infection in pregnant female cats can cause miscarriage, stillbirth, and fetal malformations.
Of course, shit-shoveling officers don’t want to hear that the cat has cat sickness and abandon it. Although cat plague is terrible, some of it can be treated. If you choose it, don’t abandon it.
