🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

Feline coronavirus spreads efficiently by the fecal-oral route, and in multi-cat households, catteries, and shelters most cats become infected and shed virus, with some becoming persistent shedders th…

Hospice and palliative care for cats with terminal or advanced chronic disease focuses on maintaining comfort, managing pain and symptoms, and supporting quality of life when cure is not possible, an…

In the early 1990s, clinicians and pathologists recognized an association between vaccination, particularly certain adjuvanted vaccines, and the development of aggressive soft-tissue sarcomas at injec…

Obesity has become one of the most common nutritional disorders in domestic cats, driven by overfeeding, calorie-dense diets, indoor sedentary lifestyles, and neutering, and it substantially increases…

Feline parvovirus, the cause of panleukopenia, is a small, environmentally hardy DNA virus that targets rapidly dividing cells, producing the profound leukopenia, intestinal damage, and, in fetal or n…

Tooth resorption is one of the most common and painful dental diseases in cats, in which odontoclasts progressively destroy tooth structure, often beginning below the gumline and causing significant d…

Immobilizing free-ranging lions for collaring, health assessment, treatment, or research relies on established protocols typically combining dissociative anesthetics with alpha-2 agonists, delivered b…

Captive big cats commonly fracture their large canine teeth through biting enclosure barriers, fighting, or chewing hard objects, exposing the pulp and causing pain and infection that require dental i…

Fructosamine, a measure of glycated serum protein reflecting average blood glucose over the preceding weeks, provides a monitoring tool less affected by the stress hyperglycemia that commonly inflates…

The Florida panther, a small isolated puma population, suffered severe inbreeding manifesting in physical defects such as kinked tails, undescended testicles, and heart abnormalities, prompting a land…

Captive big cats now routinely reach advanced ages, and zoos have developed geriatric care programs addressing arthritis, dental disease, kidney and heart disease, cancer, and quality-of-life assessme…

Hand-rearing orphaned or maternally rejected big cat cubs requires specialized veterinary and husbandry knowledge covering appropriate milk replacers matched to species composition, prevention of nutr…

Translocating wild felids for conservation, conflict mitigation, or population management involves significant veterinary considerations, including pre-release health screening, disease risk assessmen…

The development of FeLV vaccines in the 1980s, combined with reliable testing and test-and-removal programs, produced one of veterinary medicine's clearest prevention success stories, sharply reducing…

Preventing dental disease in cats involves home care strategies such as tooth brushing, dental diets, treats, and water additives designed to reduce plaque accumulation, though many cats resist brushi…

A substantial proportion of diabetic cats, particularly those with difficult-to-control or insulin-resistant diabetes, have underlying hypersomatotropism, excess growth hormone from a pituitary tumor,…

Hyperthyroidism increases cardiac output and glomerular filtration, which can mask concurrent chronic kidney disease by lowering blood markers like creatinine; treating the hyperthyroidism and restori…

Large felids under anesthesia frequently develop hypoxemia, low blood oxygen, due to the effects of recumbency and body mass on lung function, hypoventilation from anesthetic drugs, and ventilation-pe…

Field immobilization of leopards and snow leopards presents distinctive challenges, including the elusive, often nocturnal behavior of these cats, rugged or high-altitude terrain, and extreme cold in…

FIP is fundamentally an immunopathologic disease in which the host immune response contributes to tissue injury. The classic vasculitis and pyogranulomas arise from interactions between infected macro…

Research showed that tight glycemic control, often using long-acting insulin glargine combined with a low-carbohydrate diet and initiated early in newly diagnosed cats, can achieve diabetic remission,…

An iodine-restricted therapeutic diet offers a non-invasive management option for feline hyperthyroidism, exploiting the thyroid's dependence on dietary iodine to synthesize hormone; strictly limiting…

Deposition of islet amyloid polypeptide (amylin) within pancreatic islets is a characteristic pathologic feature of feline diabetes, paralleling human type 2 diabetes and contributing to progressive b…

Diagnosis of feline hyperthyroidism rests primarily on measuring elevated total thyroxine (T4), supported in equivocal cases by free T4, repeat testing, or dynamic tests such as T3 suppression and thy…

Modern guidance frames FIV as a manageable chronic infection rather than a death sentence. Recommendations center on keeping infected cats indoors to prevent spread and reduce exposure to pathogens, n…

Because cats are obligate carnivores adapted to low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets, feeding low-carbohydrate therapeutic foods reduces postprandial glucose load and has been associated with improved…

A defining feature of the FIP biotype of feline coronavirus is its ability to efficiently infect and replicate within monocytes and macrophages, enabling systemic dissemination and the characteristic…

Senior cats frequently have multiple concurrent chronic diseases, such as chronic kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, osteoarthritis, dental disease, and hypertension, whose treatments can interact and s…

Kittens receive passive maternal antibodies through colostrum that protect them early in life but can also interfere with vaccination by neutralizing vaccine antigens before the kitten mounts its own…

Combinations of the alpha-2 agonist medetomidine (or dexmedetomidine) with the dissociative ketamine are a mainstay for immobilizing large felids, valued because the alpha-2 component provides sedatio…