Domestic cats are human friends, beloved pets, furry family members. Their health and well-being largely depends on the owners. Therefore, you need to be attentive and sensitive to your pets, pay attention to their mood and monitor their health, because cats themselves cannot complain about the disease.
Diseases in cats are no less than in humans, and they proceed in different ways, with different symptoms. The owner of the animal can notice some of the manifestations of the disease himself. So what if your cat has a swollen nipple?
Symptom
Cats have four pairs of nipples on the anterior abdominal wall. Most often, pathology develops in the last two pairs of nipples. One nipple (less often - several) increases in size. Together with the nipple, the mammary gland also swells. What diseases can this happen?
Mastitis
Mastitis usually develops in a nursing cat, although it can also occur in a pregnant cat. It is connected with the fact that milk stagnates in the mammary glands. And infection joins this stagnation. At the same time, the mammary gland looks edematous, painful, it is adhered to the skin, the vascular pattern is clearly visible. The nipple is dense, hot, covered with small cracks. The cat avoids touching the stomach, but the inflamed nipple itself licks more often than others. When you press on the nipple, you can see a curdled discharge.
Since the treatment, which includes vitamins, antibiotics, immunostimulants.
Mastopathy
Mastopathy is a degeneration of breast tissue. For cats, this is almost always a precancerous condition, so you should not hesitate to consult a doctor in any case. There is only one symptom of mastopathy - an enlargement of the mammary gland, not associated with pregnancy. The seal can be of different sizes, not soldered to the skin, with smooth edges. For cats, mastopathy does not cause inconvenience, so the onset of the disease is easy to miss.
The disease is diagnosed after a puncture of the breast with a biopsy. During this procedure, the mammary gland is pierced with a needle and the contents of the tumor are aspirated with a syringe. Even if there is no liquid discharge, the tissues remaining in the needle are sent for cytological examination.
Depending on the condition of the animal, the doctor may prescribe conservative therapy or surgical treatment. Conservative therapy is carried out if the risk of malignancy of the process is small (usually it is hormonal correction and vitamin therapy). Surgical treatment is indicated when there is a suspicion of malignant degeneration of the tumor. During the operation, both the nipple and the mammary gland are removed, their tissues are sent for histological examination.
Breast tumor
A tumor is the most common breast pathology in cats, and in most cases it is a malignant process. As with humans, it is very easy to miss it, because at first nothing bothers the cat. The first symptom is swelling of the nipple. Sizes can be very different: from 0.5 cm to 3 cm or more - malignancy does not depend on the size. If it was possible to recognize the process at the initial stages, then the pussy will have to undergo a surgical operation, during which either several or all of the mammary glands will be removed. With concomitant pathologies suggesting the impossibility of surgery, the cat is shown a course of chemotherapy. With timely treatment, the prognosis for the disease is favorable.
It is impossible to bring the disease to the stage when the animal's coat grows dull, the nipple becomes covered with cracks and a discharge with a fetid odor appears from the mammary glands, neighboring lymph nodes increase. In this state, the prognosis for the disease is extremely poor.
Prevention
Nobody knows the exact causes of breast cancer and mastopathy. The main theory assumes a hormonal theory of the origin of these diseases. From this point of view, the optimal preventive measure would be to neuter the cat before the first estrus. This procedure significantly reduces the risk of these diseases.
