Let’s not forget about cats. Cats too are living longer healthier lives, but what is not
commonly known is that cats also suffer from osteoarthritis. In fact in a retrospective
study conducted at a major veterinary school, radiographs from 100 cats that were
presented to the teaching hospital for illnesses unrelated to arthritis were re-evaluated.
90% of the cats had radiographic evidence of degenerative joint disease. These cats
represented a variety of purebred and mixed breed cats.

How do you know if your cat has arthritis? Well first of all they will not show the same
signs of arthritis as the dog does, in other words they usually don’t limp, but they do have
similar risk factors as dogs. Listed below are some questions you can ask yourself to see
if your cat may have osteoarthritis.

1. Does your cat not feel like walking over to the food bowl?
2. Is your cat missing the litter box? While this could be a behavioral issue
   or the sign of a kidney or bladder issue, also consider OA. Some cats may
   be too painful to want to step into and out of a litterbox.
3. Is your cat less active than he used to be? Inactivity- cats are not known to
   be high performance athletes, but some of this inactivity may be due to
   pain associated with arthritis and not necessarily just a lazy sleeping cat
4. Does your cat take longer to get up from lying down?

Vet-Stem, Inc. is very excited to offer stem cell therapy for cats. We know
there are not a lot of safe options for controlling pain in cats. Early work has
shown very encouraging results. While we have not conducted a formal study
with cats, we do feel they too can benefit from stem cell therapy.

Do you think your cat might have arthritis? What signs is she showing?