Maine Coon Cat Health

Maine Coon Cat Health

Maine Coon cats are beautiful, with a friendly, loving, affectionate, and goofy personality. They are a vivacious and intelligent breed whose popularity is quite understandable if you’ve ever met or even just seen one of these cats.

Maine Coons tend to be an active and healthy breed, however, it’s a good idea to consider common inherited health problems in any breed before you adopt any pet. Let’s take a look at some issues that the Maine Coon cat can suffer from.

Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

Maine Coons are prone to developing a heart condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, although this disease can be found in many other breeds of cat as well. The condition involves a thickened inner muscle of the heart, resulting in interrupted blood flow that affects how the heart works. The condition can occur rather early on in a Maine Coon’s life and has even been known to be fatal in Maine Coon kittens.

A complication of this disease can lead to congenital heart failure, a build-up of fluid around the heart and lungs, and a blood clot that blocks the flow of blood to the hind legs, thus resulting in paralysis.

Symptoms of this disease do not always occur, but some warning signs include shallow breathing, paralysis, lethargy, coughing, and severe weight loss.

Maine Coon Cat Health Problems Maine Coon Cat Health Issues

The best course of action is to take your Maine Coon in for an annual scan to ensure that this condition is not developing in your cat. This is a responsible and proactive approach, as this disease has been known to be common in Maine Coons. Unfortunately, the disease will affect muscles and can weaken the cat to the point that it can barely move. If the disease is diagnosed, your vet may prescribe beta-blockers, diuretics and ACE inhibitors as treatment.

Hip Dysplasia

Like many cat breeds, Maine Coons are highly susceptible to Hip Dysplasia, a degenerative joint disease in which an abnormality involving the hip joint causes it to slip out of place. Most cats born with this condition initially have normal hips, but due to both genetic and environmental factors, the soft tissues that surround the joint start to develop abnormally as the kitten grows. This growth affects the way that the joints are held together, causing them to move apart instead of stay together.

Kittens as young as four or five months may be diagnosed with Hip Dysplasia, although, since it is a degenerative disease, clear signs often do not show until a Maine Coon is in her later adult years. Symptoms such as a “bunny hop”, walking funny, trouble rising, trouble with mobility, a narrow stance, intermittent stiffness and eventual loss of muscle tone may be observed.

Treatment can include weight management, controlled exercise and applying warmth. There are several supplements that can help, along with certain medications for both swelling and pain. In some cases, surgery is needed.

Polycystic Kidney Disease

Polycystic Kidney Disease, or PKD, is a genetic disease in which small cysts develop in the kidneys. The cysts are present when the kitten is born, and they multiply and increase in size as the cat ages.

As the cysts develop, they often start to replace normal, healthy kidney tissue, causing the kidneys to grow in size and causes a decline in renal function. A complication of the disease is chronic renal failure.

Due to the slow progress the disease makes, a cat afflicted with PKD may not display symptoms at all. Warning signs become evident when the cat is already an adult, usually about seven years of age.

Warning signs include lethargy, frequent urination, loss of appetite, vomiting, increased thirst, and weight loss.

A genetic test and ultrasound may be ordered by your vet to diagnose PKD. While there is no way to slow down or remove the cysts, therapy such as medication and a prescribed diet may be recommended. A prescribed diet may involve foods with low protein and less phosphorus than is present in most cat foods. Damaged kidneys are not able to remove phosphorus from the blood, so cats with this disease must have a lower intake of this mineral.

Hormone therapy, such as erythropoietin, may be advised as well. This protein enables red blood cells to be produced by bone marrow. It is important for the cats to have this hormone to normalize the amount of red blood cells, as kidney failure in cats can lead to a significant decrease in red blood cells.

Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Spinal Muscular Atrophy is an inherited condition in Maine Coons that affects the skeletal muscles of the trunk and limbs. The death of neurons in the spinal cord in the first few months of life leads to muscle weakness and atrophy that become evident near three or four months of age. Affected kittens walk with an odd gait, with a sway of their hindquarters and their hocks nearly touching. They also may stand with their toes in the front.

By five or six months of age, they may have trouble leaping onto furniture and have a clumsy landing when jumping down, due to weakness in their hindquarters. Carefully massaging their hind limbs may reveal a significant reduction in muscle mass that their long fur may hide.

Kittens affected with SMA are not generally in pain, they eat and play with enthusiasm, they are not incontinent, and can live quite comfortably as indoor cats for a number of years.

Signs of Spinal Muscular Atrophy may start between 15 and 17 weeks of age, and include hind limb weakness, a slight generalized tremor, an inability to jump strongly by 5 months, walking with a sway of the hindquarters, abnormal touch sensitivity in the back, exercise intolerance, and laboured breathing.

After an initial period of rapid loss of function, the progression of the disorder can slow or plateau with variable muscle atrophy, weakness and mobility.

The Maine Coon is a vivacious, loving, and affectionate cat that, read more ...
The Maine Coon is a vivacious, loving, and affectionate cat that, read more ...
Maine Coons are big in beauty, big in size, and huge in personality. They are, read more ...
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Maine Coons are big in beauty, big in size, and huge in personality. They are, read more ...
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Maine Coon cats are beautiful, with a friendly, loving,, read more ...
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