Three Mental Illnesses In Cats
Behavioral disorders can be associated with mental illness. This fact is evident to us in human beings, but animals can also develop pathologies that affect both their physical and mental state. In cats, the most common mental illnesses are stress, depression, and epilepsy.
All these alterations have different origins and treatments. If, as cat guardians, you suspect that the feline has similar symptoms, it is necessary to go to the vet or consult a feline behavior specialist.
Here are the three most common mental illnesses in domestic felines.
1. Stress in cats
Stress in cats can also seriously harm their health, as it continuously affects the immune system and can lead to eating disorders, alopecia and strange behaviors.
A stressed cat can become aggressive and display compulsive and repetitive behaviors, such as stereotypes. Other clear signs of stress are:
- Do not use the sandbox.
- Mark the furniture in the house, both with urine and with your nails.
- Show hyperactivity.
- Meowing excessively.
- Increased or decreased grooming. Excessive licking can cause bald spots on the skin, this is known as psychogenic alopecia. A large intake of hair also affects the digestive system.
Some common causes of stress can be changes in your space or routine, the arrival of other animals at home, or the lack of sufficient stimuli, due to poor environmental enrichment.
To treat a stressed cat, you can consider making it easier for him to adapt to new changes with the help of pheromones.
You can also avoid this feeling by making a good introduction if new members are incorporated into the family or by enhancing their enrichment with new resting places, toys, scratching posts, windows (always secured) where you can look outside, etc.
Stress may not fall under the category of mental illness in cats, but it is certainly a major trigger for both physical and mental disturbances.
2. Depression in cats
Depression is a common disease in felines and often goes unnoticed. Cats are very sensitive animals and any change can affect their life more than we think.
The symptoms of depression in felines can be camouflaged with the habits of a calm cat, but we should not minimize them, since depression can affect their health. Some signs of this pathology are the following:
- Sleep more hours than usual.
- Apathy. The animal loses interest in its surroundings, does not interact with its objects or with other animals or personnel.
- Stop grooming yourself.
- He does not use the sandbox.
- He is elusive or irritable when we try to relate to him.
The lack of freedom, especially if it is a cat used to leaving home, moving, spending a lot of time alone, the loss of a member of the family (be it a person or another pet), the development of a disease, the Lack of stimuli or a poor diet are some of the reasons that can trigger depression in cats.
Consult the vet if you think this is your case and never decide to administer medication on your own. Stress and depression can be treated in many cases with special care of the animal’s environment.
3. Epilepsy in cats
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that produces transient seizure episodes. Seizures are not always synonymous with epilepsy, as they can also appear due to endocrine, metabolic, cardiovascular diseases or acute pain.
We only talk about epilepsy when the seizures have an intracranial origin. Once the veterinarian confirms the epilepsy in the feline, he tries to find out the triggers of the seizures or if on the contrary it is idiopathic epilepsy, that is, without known causes.
In cats, only between 15 and 25% are cases of idiopathic epilepsy. For this reason, any type of pathology that can cause epilepsy with an organic cause is very important:
- Feline Infectious Leukemia Virus (FeLV).
- Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FiV).
- Toxoplasmosis
- Tumors
- Malformations
Idiopathic epilepsy usually occurs in cats between one and three years of age, and the animals do not usually show any abnormalities between seizures. So it is difficult, eliminating seizures, to present symptoms in the veterinary office.
In addition, being such sudden and exaggerated movements, guardians of epileptic cats tend to be alert and are not very objective in describing what happened to their pet. The attacks are usually short, they do not last more than a minute and when they finish the animal seems completely recovered, it even goes quickly to its feeder.
If you’ve ever witnessed an epileptic seizure or your cat has had seizures, even just once, you should go to the vet for a neurological exam on your pet.
Epilepsy can be treated with medication, it is never cured, but treatment reduces the frequency of seizures and provides a better quality of life for the animal.
As you have seen, cats can suffer from mental illnesses, in most cases triggered by stress. The symptoms in these cases are very similar and you should pay attention to them before the problem worsens.
