Broncho-pneumonia is the ordinary form of pneumonia in the cat. It may occur primarily after exposure to cold, or it may be the secondary result of a bronchitis which has lasted for some little time. The pneumonia in the cat, like that in the dog, is a broncho-pneumonia, or a pneumonia due to filling up of isolated little lobules in the lung of the animal, and differs from the ordinary pneumonia of man and the horse, in which latter the inflammation invades a whole lobe of the lung. In broncho-pneumonia there is more fever than in simple bronchitis. The constitutional symptoms and debility of the animal are more marked, with usually a total loss of appetite. On auscultation, in addition to the mucous râles which are heard in bronchitis, we have "sibilant" rales, or sounds of more or less sharpness, like those of a whistle, which are due to the hepatization or filled-up lobules pressing upon and compressing the lumen of the air-tubes which lead to lobules of sound lung-tissue. Bronchopneumonia in the cat may also be caused by the presence of parasites lodged in the lung-tissue and an irritation producing an effusion and filling the air spaces. (Vide Parasites, Figure 30, p. 125.) This form of broncho-pneumonia at the outset resembles in its symptoms an ordinary broncho-pneumonia, but is to be diagnosed later, either by the detection of the parasite in the discharge which the animal coughs up, or by the fact that the bronchopneumonia does not run its regular course, but gets better in a few days, or gets decidedly worse, with more lung-tissue filling up; and that it assumes a chronic form, with the local symptoms of sibilant râles to be heard, unchanged in size and location, accompanied by the absence of the severe constitutional symptoms.

One finds in certain books a description of consumption of the cat. If by consumption the authors mean tuberculosis (which the word technically does), they are absolutely in error; for tuberculosis is almost an unknown disease in the cat, and even by inoculation can only be produced in animals which have been rendered lymphatic by a prolonged close confinement.

In the commencement of broncho-pneumonia the same treatment can be used as for colds and bronchitis. If the disease continues it is well to give, in addition, thirty drops of whisky or brandy in a spoonful of water several times in the day. Should the animal become very much debilitated and absolutely refuse to eat, it can be given a teaspoonful of a mixture of the yellow of one egg beaten up, four table-spoonsful of milk, and two teaspoonsful of whisky every few hours; but it is not advisable to force food on it except in extreme cases. In addition to the milk which is kept at the side of the cat, it can be tempted from time to time with a small bit of raw beef pounded into a pulp, and with a small saucer of the juice of the beef, or of the pure beef-juice as it runs from a cut of roast beef.

Diseases Of The Digestive System

Constipation And Diarrhoea

Constipation is much less frequent in the cat than in other animals. On the contrary, there is a tendency in the cat, especially in the house-kept one, to a certain amount of looseness of the bowels, which would be looked on in other animals as suspicious. When this looseness becomes excessive, and the discharges become watery, or mixed with mucus, or even bloody, it takes the name of diarrhoea. When the diarrhoea becomes chronic, or is excessively severe, it takes the name of dysentery. In this case there is usually great straining, with very little discharge at each evacuation, and sometimes protrusion of the mucous membrane at the anus. Diarrhoea is frequently produced in the cat by feeding it out of soiled pans in which the milk or other food has been allowed to ferment. It is produced by irregular feeding - overfeeding the animal at one time and allowing it to starve at another. The use of fat meat, of putrid meat, and of too much liver or sour milk are also causes.