Bruno's Blog – a complete animal at work

The old man was reading something out from the Veterinary Record the other night – you know the one -it’s the vets weekly (yawn) professional rag, full of fascinating articles about blowfly in Mexican camels or contact lenses for haddock.

In amongst all this was a letter from the Veterinary Poisons Information Service (VPIS), no less, warning vets about the expected seasonal rise in poisonings of cats resulting from excessive or inappropriate use of permethrin-based flea treatments.

What on earth are permethrin-based flea treatments, I hear you asking yourselves. These are the common high street spot on flea products, the kind of thing you pick up from the supermarket or pet shop (as distinct from the veterinary channel products).

Now, not wanting in any way to disrespect these venerable commercial outlets, the fact, apparently, is that more cats are poisoned by incorrectly applied flea treatments than by anything other single substance, so WATCH OUT!

The problem is cats’ high sensitivity to the products, making it easy to overdose them, using a dog product on a cat, for example.

Of the last 286 cases registered with the VPIS, 10% of the affected cats DIED or had to be put to sleep.

Take home message?

1. Use veterinary pharmacy products only.

2. I always told you that cats are strange.

Do you remember me talking about the old man being late for work one day a few weeks back because he’d been keeping an eye on one man and his dog herding some sheep and geese in Hyde Park?

 

Yes I know, it’s an old one, the sort the old man spills out occasionally when he’s been on the premeds, oops, I mean aperitifs.

Mind you, the effect seems much the same. Dogs and cats come into the clinic for an operation, they’re given a premed and half an hour later they’re all blurred at the edges, red eyed, smiling and ready to fall asleep.

By contrast, when the old man has dinner guests over (and the woman’s cooking apparatus and general level of intensity in the kitchen seem to resemble surgical operations more than ever these days), everyone is served an aperitif. And sure enough, half an hour later…oh never mind, I can see it’s lost on you.

Where was I? Oh yes. Don’t pay her. But what I actually wanted to talk about today was hormones – the other sort.

Now I know you’re sitting there thinking “The guy’s a dog, for goodness’ sake. What can he know about anything of any importance whatsoever? He has a brain the size of a sesame seed. His idea of interesting is dog shit and old socks.” Well you may be right, but I’ll have you know that one thing I’ve learnt something about over the years is cats.

Two things about cats in fact.

One is that they are very interesting, interesting enough to want to chase.

Two is that they are a harsh adversary and rarely take prisoners.

Three is that one, I can’t count and two, they are mighty tricky little blighters.

I get to see a fair few come through his master’s hallowed portals. Some are almost nice enough to be considered dogs. Fatcat, for example sat obligingly by the sink throughout the old man’s TV interview for ‘It shouldn’t happen to a vet’. Rather in the way that I will sit patiently by his feet waiting for a few crumbs of the dried milk of human kindness that he occasionally sprinkles in my direction.

Some cats, by contrast, have been seen to transform themselves at the flick of an invisible neuro-chemical servo motor into wild psychopaths. They become possessed of the manners of arch flick-knife and Uzi-wielding gang leaders stuffed full of high explosives and crack on the mean streets of the seventh level of feline Hades.

And to think that some of this comes down to hormones, and facial hormones at that. Cats apparently produce 5 facial pheromones (essentially scent hormones). F1, F2, F3 and I’m sure you can guess the rest.

Those clever chaps in white coats at the pharmaceutical company CEVA have managed to synthesise F3 and F4, as Feliway and Felifriend for the following reasons: F3 helps the cat to mark out and identify safe and familiar areas. When a cat identifies it’s smell, they are often less anxious – and from where I see it – more stable.

On a practical level, between 70 and 90 per cent of cats that pee in the house pee less when you squirt some Feliway around. They trash the furniture less. They are more relaxed when travelling. The girls are less prone to cystitis (in my book that could mean good news for the boys, but the old man says the book idea is filthy and disgusting and would never be published).

F4 – and that’s Felifriend for any of you who are still interested – is meant to significantly reduce signs of aggression in a puss that doesn’t like being handled by strangers.

Sounds good to me.

I can’t help noticing that loads of the old man’s patients seem to travel abroad for their holidays. Can we have a passport for him? We’re going Cap d’Antibes, they say and we want Ruffles to come with us.And then there’s the “We want to take him to India, or Venezuela, which was it, darling? Or Timbuktu, oh yes, Sebastian, let’s go to Timbuktu!”

Of course if they wanted to bring them back to the UK, they wouldn’t be able to. If they go outside the Pet Travel Scheme countries as described on the DEFRA website (www.defra.gov.uk/animalhealth), they’ll have to go through quarantine, regardless. The old man tells them so while they’re in the consulting room and then I have a quiet word with Ruffles or Bongo in the Waiting Room afterwards. It’s easier that way.Everyone assumes that quarantine and then the Pet Travel Scheme was set up to stop Rabies from coming into the UK, which it sort of was, but that is far from the whole story. Anyone who has travelled with their pets now knows that they have to have a veterinary treatment for ticks and tapeworms before coming back into the UK.

Everyone seems to be asking the old man about allergies at the moment.

“My dog is itching and scratching all the time, and he’s got scabs on his tummy” I heard from behind the door as yet another overweight Labrador waddled into the consulting room. “His eyes are all red and gungey”

It seemed to me that it might be a good moment to talk about the ways the guys in white coats manage pet allergies these days. The key seems to be to try to identify exactly what it is that we are allergic to – beef, maize, egg, pollens, grass, trees, that sort of thing – because some of these you can avoid. Blood tests, skin tests, it’s all pretty sophisticated these days.

But if, like Buster, you’re allergic to house dust mites, what are you going to do about that? They’re everywhere, the little buggers. If you choose to live in a house, that is. Mind you, I’ve never seen a house dust mite. Apparently they’re very small, which coming from me means they must be very small indeed. No wonder you can’t see them.

In the bad old days, they used to treat them with cortisone, ie with steroids. Aaargh! Thirsty! Hungry! Fat! No adrenal glands left! Immune system falling apart! Saggy belly and thin skin!

Then that became rather unfashionable. Treat the underlying bacterial infection with 3 months of antibiotics was another favourite. Bleurk! Foul taste, runny tummy, bored of taking pills after about 10 minutes.

Vaccines! Weekly injections of Allergen Specific Immuno Therapy, going on for months. The majority of dogs show some improvement in the first few months, they say. Hmmm. Can’t we do better than that?

Essential Fatty Acids – mixtures of plant and fish oils with other bits of anti-oxidants (things like Vacutan and Efavet) – apparently have a natural anti inflammatory effect on the skin. Used with appropriate soothing shampoos – you know, Allermyl, Episoothe, that sort of thing – and sometimes antihistamines, some of us definitely get better.

Diet! Raw food! (actually that bit is quite good), Homeopathy. I saw a case the other day that was loads better where before it’d just been a mess. I think we like the sound of that.

Then along comes the new BIG GUN. Ciclosporin, or Atopica. Bash the misbehaving part of the immune system on the head until it gives up and stops working in overdrive. Bit sicky sometimes, but, yes, the skins do seem better. Ok we are fairly happy with that.

Then around the same time appeared the green boxes of Phytopica. Herbs. Flowers. Now we really like the sound of that. Came over from the Chinese medicine field. Eighty per cent of dogs show good improvement but about twenty per cent don’t respond at all. I’d take the risk if I were you.

Then in walked Jett.

“My dog’s eyes are all red – has he got conjunctivitis?”

The old man went into the usual pre-allergy diagnosis questioning. Turned out his eyes were sore because he’d been for a long drive in the owners convertible Bentley. The treatment?

Doggles.

Check ‘em out, they’re a scream.

I just wanted to mention – pay attention, please – that I’ve started a forum at www.vetscriptions.co.uk/forums

The old man and Leah already answer bucket loads of questions and share their experiences with you, maybe you like to do that with each other too?

The forum is just starting, so I’ve seeded it with some of the things I’ve heard people say and ask in the clinic – you can take it on from here.

Its all monitored by our vets and nurses so anything really off track will be corrected for you!

Have fun

Now I’m no expert – well actually I am, but spare my blushes – but I’m not sure about these French chickens.

Oh – sorry, did I forget to mention? I’m on holiday. In France. Which is mostly pretty good. I get to spend much more time outside. This is good. I go to the forest where there is a sign saying something about dogs and leads but I can’t read it so that’s OK. I go to the beach which is excellent as there are large numbers of seagulls needing chasing, and in the garden there are moles which need investigating.

 All this is essentially good.

The bit I’m not sure about is the chicken. As you know I’m a bit of a fan of raw meat, specifically raw chicken, in fact freshly defosted raw chicken wings is about as close to the top of the culinary pile as you can get.

The old man was telling me that as he was cycling home last night past one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, there was a group of protesters with banners about the usual meat is murder thing. Well yes it is, but I’m a carnivore – what am I meant to do?

My message to Gordon is – cut out the middle man, mate. Save energy. Eat raw food.

But I digress. The French chicken is, well..

Oh and did I mention the other dogs? There’s loads of them here, but everyone seems to keep them on a lead, so when I go bounding up all smiles and tail wag, they of course also bounce around, yanking and tugging on their leads, setting off much Gallic huffing and puffing from their owners about I know not what.

Now that reminds me - (do I seem a bit scattered this morning? Boy am I excited. Rumour has it we’re going to the beach again soon) I have found myself getting a bit grumpy a few times recently, and actually got into a couple of punch ups in the waiting room at the clinic, which apparently I’m not meant to do. The old man says it’s that I’m going through the second bit of puberty ( I am nearly 3 after all) and that it’ll probably wear off, but it does raise the awful spectre of the possibility of me losing 2 very important parts of my anatomy…

Now where was I?

Oh yes, the chicken.

It’s just different. The bones are a bit harder to crunch and the meat tastes different. Are they older than English chickens? Do they eat different food? What do chickens eat, anyway?

Oh my god – they don’t eat dogs, do they?