The Common Symptoms of Feline Leukemia

Cats with Feline Leukemia do not show very visible symptoms of the disease during the initial stages. However, you can observe certain signs that your cat may really be afflicted with it if you are keen on taking care of your beloved pet.

Here are some of the common symptoms that can be observed when your cat is afflicted with Feline Leukemia.

• Excessive urination: If you notice your cat peeing many times a day, it is time to have her checked. It could be Leukemia, or it could be something else entirely.
• Laziness: Notice your cat just lying around all day, every day? It should be cause for alarm.
• Excessive thirst: The need for water most parts of the day or night is always an indication of an underlying problem.
• Excessive drooling: It is not a common occurrence and therefore, it should be checked.
• No grooming: This also goes together with laziness and your cat just do not want to keep herself clean by licking herself.
• Misbehaving with other cats: Misbehaving is brought about by your cat’s irritation.
• Evidence of white skin: This is usually due to the complications of anemia.

Other signs of the disease in cats are poor condition of its fur, lymph nodes which are visibly enlarged, diarrhea, infected mouth and gums, recurring fever, mucus membranes and gums which look pale in color, continuous weight loss due to the eventual lack of appetite as the disease progresses and the viruses spread in the cat’s body, various skin infections, complications in the urinary bladder, as well as in the respiratory tract, occurrence of eye diseases, manifestations of nerve-related problems like seizures, and drastic behavioral change.

When the infected cat is a female, abortion of its kittens would likely occur and it may not get pregnant again.

One thing that makes the disease dangerous is that the disease itself does not kill. However, since the virus attacks the immune system, there would be complications due to other diseases which the infected cat may not be able to fight off.

Since this is a highly contagious disease, you have to subject your cats, if you have a couple at home, to constant examination by the veterinarian. Make sure that you would not keep the healthy cat together with the one that has leukemia since just by the sharing of the cat plate the infected saliva would pass the disease on to the healthy one.

However, take note that there are also cats which are immune to the disease and in order for you to find out about it, you might want to check with the vet.