“It’s just a cat.”
I’ve heard that so many times, and if you’re a cat lover, you probably have too.
It’s an insinuation that cats are throwaway animals, fungible pets who can be replaced by others of their species because, some people claim, they don’t express themselves as individuals, never really warm to humans in the first place, and besides, it’s not like they have emotions.
Countering those persistent myths is one of the reasons I write this blog. I still didn’t have a full appreciation for how singular and smart cats can be until I brought Buddy home. I never fathomed the depth of his emotions, the strength of his convictions or his willingness to make his opinions known about everything.
In some ways, I’m still shocked at how much he communicates and how well we understand each other.
However, one of my biggest fears is not doing right by him, especially missing signs of declining health as he gets older.
That’s the subject of a column today in the New York Times, in which science write Emily Anthes recalls the subtle signs that her cat, Olive, was sick, and the veterinarian’s assessment that she wasn’t just ill, she was on death’s door.
Anthes points out that, to this day, veterinary training uses canines as the default, and treatments for cats are often just adapted from treatments for dogs, even if there’s no data suggesting those methods actually work for feline patients.
“My anatomy book was ‘Anatomy of the Dog,’” Maggie Placer, veterinary science programs manager at EveryCat Health Foundation, told the Times. “We had PowerPoints and supplements for the cats.”
The differences go beyond body plan, organs and behavior: drugs that work for dogs can be ineffective or dangerous for cats. Treatments otherwise regarded as effective in other animals could be harmful to felines too.
“It’s not reasonable to assume that everything that works in a dog will work in a cat,” Bruce Kornreich, director of the Cornell Feline Health Center, told Anthes. “There’s a lot that we still need to learn.”
The situation with feline veterinary science mirrors the gap in behavioral studies between cats and dogs.
Over the past decade, research teams in countries like the US and Japan have made efforts to close the gap by recognizing that studies must be crafted to feline points of view, and that laboratories are not suitable places for studying the behavior of such notoriously territorial animals. Cats behave differently outside of their environments, rendering data useless if it’s captured in settings where kitties are stressed, unsure of themselves or even just miffed that they’re not at home enjoying a nap.
There are unique challenges when it comes to studying effective veterinary treatments in cats as well. Primary among them is feline stoicism, an evolutionary adaptation.
Simply put, cats will do everything they can to mask injury and sickness because they don’t want to become prey. Unfortunately that means by the time a cat cannot conceal an ailment anymore, the disease or injury has progressed. Even if a cat has lived indoors her entire life, the directive to disguise her pain is hardcoded into her DNA.
Anthes’ cat, Olive, didn’t make it. But her litter mate is chugging along, and to help advance the cause of understanding cat health, Anthes submitted both cats’ fur clippings to geneticist Dr. Elinor Karlsson’s Darwin’s Cats, a “non-profit community science project” that uses DNA submitted by cat owners to better understand our furry friends and unlock the secrets of their health and behavior.
Let’s hope that such projects spark a renaissance in studying cat health, like they have with research into feline behavior, so we can do right by our little buddies.
Pain In The Bud 