Feline Critical Care

Feline critical care Cat is not a small dog.

The difference between cats and dogs is observed in almost every aspect: in their behaviour, in their physiological response to critical illness and disease and in their emotional response to hospitalization. They are two distinct species and they should be treated as such. Many aspects of critical care are unique for the cat. In this lecture, we will address some of the most important unique feature of the critical care cats; their physiologic response to shock, monitoring techniques used, the difficulty in assessing pain in this species, the importance of early nutrition and some important aspects of their monitoring and hospitalization.

Critically ill cats often are admitted to the ICU because they suffer from certain degree of hypoperfusion. The classic signs that we are used to recognize in dogs of hyperdynamic shock (bounding pulse, pink/hyperaemic mucous membrane) and the worsening of cardiovascular signs associated to different degree of severity of shock are usually not present in cats. So how can we recognize and monitor signs of hypoperfusion in a feline patient? Shock in the cat presents most commonly as decompensatory, characterised by normal or inappropriately low heart rate (<140 bpm), severe hypothermia (< 35C), weak or non palpable peripheral pulses, and severe mental depression. The mucous membranes in cats are usually paler than dog and in shock they become greyish or white and often the capillary refill time is not measurable. […]