New Diseases

But other infections have emerged. The first case of feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) was seen in the 1950s.

Its development coincided with the establishment of large groups of cats in breeding colonies and rescue centers. In this new environment, an innocuous virus called a coronavirus somehow mutated into a lethal form.

In early infections, cats suffered a fatal inflammation to the lining of the abdominal cavity, but today in some countries cats have adapted to the presence of this virus and show a variety of different clinical signs of disease.

In the 1980s, the first indication that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) could jump from herbivores to carnivores was seen when cats developed a fatal spongiform condition in the brain after eating beef tainted with BSE prions.

Feline spongiform encephalopathy (FSE) became common in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, although dogs that ate tainted beef never suffered a similar infection.

Also in the 1980s, a neurological condition called autonomic polyganglionopathy, or Key-Gaskell Syndrome, reached epidemic levels in the United Kingdom and to a lesser extent in Sweden, then subsided.

In the 1990s, the incidence of cats over 10 years of age suffering from overactive thyroid glands had reached similar epidemic proportions in North America and Europe.

The nature of disease in cats is more complicated and changing more rapidly than in any other domesticated species.