How to know if my cat has toxoplasmosis?

Health

When we speak of toxoplasmosis, we refer to an infectious disease that can affect cats. The disease becomes really disturbing if the owner of the cat is a pregnant woman. It is a disease that can be transmitted (hardly) to the fetus that is pregnant and for this reason is a matter of concern on the part of some families.

If you are worried and want to rule out that your cat has toxoplasmosis, it helps you with useful and interesting information. Thus How to know if my cat has toxoplasmosis It will be something else that we will learn about the animal world and everything that surrounds it. Do not wait any longer, keep reading this article.

What is toxoplasmosis?

Toxoplasmosis is a infection that can be transmitted to the fetus. The chances of this happening are very low but even so, and in the case of pregnancy, it is totally understandable that many women are interested in the subject and try to discover how they can identify toxoplasmosis.

It is in raw meat and feces of infected cats transmitting basically by direct contact with one of these two elements. It can happen that we wash the cat litter improperly and the infection spreads.

An 10% of cats around the world suffer from it and an 15% are carriers of this disease that usually spreads when the cat feeds on wild animals such as birds and mice.

Contagion of toxoplasmosis

As we have previously mentioned, toxoplasmosis is spread by direct contact with the feces of the infected animal or by raw meat. It is for this reason that many veterinarians recommend collect the stool from the sandbox with gloves, in this way direct contact is avoided. They also recommend not handling raw meat.

The contagion can happen at any stage of pregnancy although it is really serious when it happens in the first three months, embryo formation.

The contagion may have occurred without us noticing because it is about an asymptomatic disease, that is, it does not manifest clear symptoms by which we identify the disease.

Detect toxoplasmosis

As we have commented previously, toxoplasmosis It is a disease asymptomatic, that means that in principle the infected cat does not show clear symptoms of being suffering from an illness. Even so, we can detect some anomalies in the cat if it suffers from toxoplasmosis:

Diarrhea
Low defenses
Fever
Lack of appetite
Difficulty breathing
Apathy

The ideal to detect toxoplasmosis is perform a blood test to our cat in the usual veterinary center. It is the most reliable test that will reveal if the animal is indeed sick. Stool analysis is not recommended as it is not determinant in all stages of the disease.

How can we prevent our cat from suffering from toxoplasmosis?

Toxoplasmosis can be prevented with a proper diet based on packaged products as well as wet feed or food, basic in cat feeding. Withdrawing raw foods is the best option without a doubt.

Most domestic cats live inside the home, for that reason if the animal takes its vaccines up to date, eats food prepared and has no contact with other animals abroad we can be calm and it is very unlikely that it suffers from this disease.

Treatment of toxoplasmosis in cats

After performing a blood test and checking the presence of toxoplasmosis in the cat, the veterinarian issues a diagnosis and that is when we can start the treatment to fight the disease.

Generally antibiotic treatment is applied for two weeks either parenterally or orally, although the second option usually applies. We remind you of the importance of following the instructions of the veterinarian if our cat suffers from the disease, for this reason we must follow with caution all the steps that we propose, especially if there is a pregnant woman at home.

Pregnant women and toxoplasmosis

If our cat has been infected for some time or we have had a cat that has suffered toxoplasmosis before, the pregnant woman may have suffered it too, relating it to her symptoms as a mild cold.

There is a effective treatment to combat toxoplasmosis in pregnant women, although most times it does not require any treatment if the pregnant woman does not show obvious signs of illness (except in severe cases in which the symptoms persist repeatedly).

This article is merely informative, in .com we do not have the faculty to prescribe veterinary treatments or make any kind of diagnosis. We invite you to take your pet to the veterinarian in case of any type of condition or discomfort.

If you want to read more articles similar to How to know if my cat has toxoplasmosis?, we recommend that you enter in our section of Infectious diseases.