What to Do When Your Cat Has Anemia
📝 Summary
Feline anemia is a condition that is very easy to identify—a blood test will confirm it. Its signs include markedly reduced activity, poor exercise tolerance, moderate to severe rapid breathing, pale mucous membranes, and heart murmurs.
1 Overview
Feline anemia is further divided into regenerative and non-regenerative types. Regenerative anemia is generally caused by parasites, tumors, cancer, urinary tract bleeding, or an enlarged spleen, while non-regenerative anemia results from immune deficiency, bone marrow dysplasia, feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), tumors, chronic kidney failure, or malnutrition.
Anemia is only a symptom, indicating that various underlying conditions in the body may be causing it. The method of checking for anemia is very simple: a complete blood count (CBC) or a blood chemistry panel.
The way to treat anemia is simple: treat the disease that is causing it. Once the underlying disease is cured, the anemia resolves on its own.
Because premature human infants have underdeveloped lungs, they are often given curosurf (poractant alfa)—a pulmonary surfactant extracted from pig lungs. So the theory that eating pig lungs ‘nourishes and clears the lung meridian’ is not without basis. But not every disease can be treated by ‘like cures like.’
Feeding your cat a little pork or chicken liver now and then is fine, but it is better cooked. Some pork livers come from pigs with cirrhosis, and raw liver can carry rather unfriendly viruses and bacteria. Cats fed only pork or chicken liver year-round need other nutritional supplements, because a diet of liver alone leads to severe malnutrition—a major cause of anemia.
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