364 



THE BOOK OF THE CAT. 



and sometimes attempts to bite when the chest 

 is touched or made to move ; the abdomen is 

 retracted, and the breathing, which is short 

 and jerky, seems to be performed by the flanks. 

 There is a slight or suppressed cough, but this 

 is often absent. The animal wastes away, the 

 coat becomes dull and open and lustreless, and 

 the hairs are easily pulled out. The creature 

 hides under the furniture and refuses its food, 

 and when a fatal termination is at hand, 

 the flanks move up and down like a pump- 

 handle, the breathing becomes difficult and 

 suffocative, the mouth, which is offensive, 

 being opened at every inspiratory and ex- 

 piratory effort ; the tongue becomes purplish, 

 the elbows turn out, the cat assumes a squat- 

 ting position on all-fours, and a foetid diarrhoea 

 sets in. 



Treatment. Although generally fatal, treat- 

 ment may be desired to be attempted. The 

 chest should be painted with tincture of iodine 

 or oil of mustard ; if there be much pain, a 

 hypodermic injection of morphine will prove 

 useful, and a pill composed of {- grain pow- 

 dered digitalis leaves, -J- grain sulphate of 

 quinine, and i grain of iodide of potassium, 

 administered three times a day. When the 

 breathing becomes difficult in consequence of 

 the accumulation of fluid in the chest cavity, 

 it may be deemed advisable to draw the fluid 

 off by means of a trocar. Nourishing liquid 

 food, such as milk, Mosquera's beef jelly, or 

 eggs, should be given, little and often. 



DISTEMPER. 



Distemper is a contagious, inoculable fever, 

 due to a specific microbe (the cocco-bacillus, 

 or pasteurella of Lignieres), and is similar, if 

 not identical, to that causing distemper in 

 the dog. Krajewsky, Laosson, Lignieres, and 

 others have experimentally demonstrated its. 

 identity, but I have never observed the cat 

 naturally giving the dog distemper, nor vice 

 versa, and I believe this is the experience of 

 most veterinary surgeons in this country. 



The microbe of distemper which belongs 

 to the same class of micro-organisms, the 

 pasteurella, that causes influenza in the horse, 

 fowl cholera, swine-fever, guineapig dis- 

 temper, etc. is generally found in the blood, 

 which it alters to such a degree as to make so 

 profound an impression on the system as to 

 diminish its natural resistance to the ordinary 

 germs, which become, in consequence, increased 

 in virulence, and cause the various phenomena 



by which we know the disease. It is difficult 

 to detect in the body after about a week. 



The disease varies in severity according to 

 the degree of virulence of the microbe. If 

 this is very virulent, it causes a very acute or 

 septic disease, as is observed in the typhus or 

 gastro-enteric outbreak, which kills off a large 

 number of animals within a few days or even 

 hours. If it is of a milder strength, we get 

 the subacute form with localisations, such as 

 we usually see in distemper. There is also a 

 chronic form, which lasts a long time, and 

 which tries the patience of the owner as well 

 as the vitality of the sufferer. Finally, a 

 chronic wasting or cachectic form is sometimes 

 observed ; it resembles the " going light " in 

 birds and other animals, and may be mis- 

 taken for starvation, which it simulates very 

 much. 



The microbe may exist in a healthy cat's 

 body for weeks without causing it any dis- 

 turbance until, perhaps, the animal catches 

 cold, or is depressed in some other manner. 

 However, an apparently healthy animal with 

 this microbe in it may be infective for othei" 

 cats. 



Period of Incubation. This varies according 

 to the degree of virulency of the microbe and 

 the state of the cat's system and the surround- 

 ings in which it is kept. A very virulent 

 infection has a much shorter period of in- 

 cubation than a mild infection. Whereas the 

 former may cause distemper in from two to five 

 days, the latter takes from one to three weeks. 

 It seems doubtful whether the specific microbe 

 causes the symptoms we usually see in dis- 

 temper, or if these are due to a secondary 

 infection resulting from the invasion of the 

 normal microbes of the body, which have 

 become virulent, and prey upon their hosts. 



Duration of the Disease. This, like the 

 period of incubation, varies also according to 

 the degree of virulence of the virus. A very 

 virulent virus kills in a few days or even hours, 

 or the animal recovers very quickly. It is 

 not so with a virus of a milder degree of viru- 

 lence, which may cause symptoms that take 

 from one to five or six weeks to disappear, 

 if the animal recover. In other cases the 

 disease shows itself in so mild a form that it 

 appears like an ordinary catarrh, and recovery 

 is established within a few days. 



In a few instances death takes place sud- 

 denly before any premonitory symptoms have 

 had time to develop. 



