I was hoping you guys might have advice/resources on a very unique issue. Basically a stray cat gave birth to kittens on my friend's porch, so we decided to adopt one at 8 weeks before the were run off. Eclipse (named by friend's 6 year old) is a handful, but a wonderful little guy. He had a really severe umbilical hernia (barely missed being diaphramatic), so he had to have surgery when he was 10 weeks old (he's healing well).
We have a lot of anxiety about other possible defects or health problems and we recently discovered that their mom might have been the product of closely related parents. A lot of sites are very vague on stats, read like they are paid to sell things, or just talk about spay/neuter (done) as their singular point of advice, so we wanted to know what we could do to reduce his risks with his current health and the possibility of inbreeding. What's good for helping him develop a healthy immune system? Would a cat DNA test ACTUALLY give us any useful information or are they just a novelty? If we want to look into pet insurance, how can we find out what kinds of things would be under "pre-existing conditions" (just umbilical hernia or all gut and diaphragm stuff or what), what is considered "elective", and if they will boot us once he reaches a certain age if we are enrolled with them starting now?
Edit: Here's him before his surgery with his sister (Melanite whom we also adopted) and another pic of him after surgery
Hello! I'm not a vet, so I can't offer advice on addressing/preventing specific health issues but I can offer some thoughts on pet insurance and cat DNA kits.
You asked whether cat DNA kits are useful or a novelty... the answer is sort-of both, unfortunately. I think they can be helpful as a tool to give you an idea what health problems your cat might have an increased risk for, but they're pretty useless if you want to know what different breeds a mixed-breed cat is, for example.
In your case, something like Basepaws might have some benefit. The results should be taken with a grain of salt, but the health report will indicate whether your cat's risk is high for certain conditions. For some conditions, it can also tell you whether they're a carrier or if they're totally clear. Mallory Crusta spent a good while testing the kit and wrote our review of it, so it's really detailed. You can find it here: https://cats.com/basepaws-review
As for cat insurance, unfortunately companies will use just about anything they can as a pre-existing condition. You'll have to fill out a health survey or submit your cat's most recent health records, so anything that's been noted (even if they didn't receive treatment) will count.
It's hard to say whether they'll lump all future issues in with a pre-existing condition or not. Every company is different. That said, if you're going to get pet insurance it's best to do it while they're young. The rates will be lower and they won't have as many pre-existing conditions. I don't think it's standard for companies to kick pets off at a certain age, but you should expect your premiums to go up each year.
Yours sounds like a tricky situation since you already know there are some health issues at play. Pet insurance is a gamble in cases like these... it could really work out, or you could end up spending a lot of money on a policy you can't use. You could potentially look into plans like Pet Assure that are basically a discount plan for veterinary services, but you'd want to see what clinics in your area take it. Another option is to just figure out what you'd be willing to spend each month on premiums and set that money aside in a dedicated savings account to use if your cats need it.
We have a fairly new article that explains the different types of pet insurance that could help answer some of your questions: https://cats.com/types-of-pet-insurance-for-cats
Hope this helps!
@jbluewind Thanks to Kate for her answer. I had posted an answer here on Tuesday but it didn't post for some reason, so apologies for the delay. Here were my thoughts/perspectives for you:
Hi JBlueWind,
One thing to think about first is that defects like the umbilical hernia you mentioned may be either congenital or developmental. In other words, it may be due to genetics but something can also happen during fetal development that leads to it. My point being that just because of the umbilical hernia having been present, this doesn’t necessarily mean there are going to be other genetic abnormalities present.
In some cases, when one such abnormality is found at least one or two others are found in a kitten at the same time, which is bad news and at least you didn’t find that early on.
The presence of the hernia also does not imply that Eclipse has a poorly functioning immune system. I would say that there is a greater impact on immune system caused by the contribution of viral diseases, poor nutrition, and stress in terms of what we see day to day in medicine.
I think the truth is that in the case of many stray kittens, they are many of them likely in-bred. I suspect my own cats (who were barn cats at a large dairy farm) were (I believe their mom and dad were either siblings or father/daughter). My three did not have any genetic defects, immune disorders, or illnesses that couldn’t be contributed to something else.
As far as the DNA tests go, I think they can sometimes be of some use but it depends on your expectations. They can provide some information about breed make-up percentage. Based on that, you might be able to say that if your cat has a certain percentage of a certain breed that there could be a higher risk for diseases that affect that breed (maybe). As to how accurate they are for truly predicting disease, I don’t think they’ve been around long enough to get really solid data.