Hi to all!
This is the story of my master that I'm sharing so that every other human with a cat master (<3) could educate themselves about this rare condition and help them as soon as possible if needed!
I share my life with a DSH master (she's actually long-haired but that's what her vet identified her as) who came to my rescue (srsly!) when she was a 3-week-old. When she was 10 years old, one day I noticed she wasn't placing her left front paw completely on the floor and thought that maybe it's one of her nails that's outgrown or maybe there's a tiny sand stuck between her fingers. Some days passed and the limping became easily visible at which point I panicked and took her straight to the vet. The only sign I could tell the vet was her limping and he immediately diagnosed her with Legg-Calve-Perthes or Femoral Head Avascular Necrosis on her right hind leg (due to the pain she was leaning on her front legs which made me think the limping was coming from there) which basically means the tissue on top of her femur (where the joint also is) had been dead and if the condition went unnoticed or untreated eventually it'd progress to the rest of the bone to the point that she'd be unable to use her litter and the chance of infection would dramatically increase down her waist and if she wasn't neutered she'd definitely get an infection in the area. The condition has proved to be genetic-based and some environmental factors that might contribute to it are trauma to the legs, insufficient diet (mainly calcium & vitamin D), lack of exercise, ... (none of which were true in our case). But since this condition is really rare even in humans, there's still very little known about it and I hadn't seen her parents to have known about this condition.
Back to my story, the vet then proceeded with some physical examination (rotating her leg in all directions and testing her leg's flexibility) and then an X-Ray image in which the dead part of her femur was clear (to the trained eye). He then told me that I had 2 options: 1/ Weekly injection of cortisol-based medication to her thigh (to stop the swelling and progress of the condition to the rest of her bone) or 2/ Removing the head of the bone through surgery (in which case the dying tissue would be completely removed and the rest of the bone would be permanently safe, Note that if some of the dead tissue remained, then still it'd kill the rest of the bone tissue, so the surgeon need to be well-trained to be able to do a thorough "cleaning"). Now, my master is a very aggressive one who has zero tolerance for people including the vet so taking her there every single week for an injection was off the table and it wouldn't really solve the problem anyway so of course I went for the surgery.
Being in a third-world-country where artificial joints are extremely hard to find even for people (I just feel lucky that I found a decent vet!), I didn't have that option to replace her joint so that her leg would be as flexible as usual so the vet told me that her bone will make a joint-shaped part overtime and that if physiotherapy and exercise were part of her daily schedule after a while she'd be able to do everything she did before (however if you have available artificial joints I highly recommend you to consider them provided you did your research on how the materials used were safe and the vet approved of them since they can help your cat recover sooner and there'd be less chance of her legs becoming lopsided).
This is how the surgery went: the vet made a 4cm long cut exactly where the head of her femur was, cut the dead parts and extracted them (which was a 7mmx1cm area) , put everything back together and closed her wound with absorbable stitches.
Post-surgery: before moving on, keeping the patient immobile for at least a day or two after the surgery would help A LOT with the recovery since we're talking about their bone getting cut. After about three days, despite the unbelievable pain (the vet forbid me to give her painkillers past a certain dose to keep her from moving too much until the wound was closed) she started with her normal life except that she didn't put her right leg down on the floor. Her wound was healed (closed and sealed) on the seventh day and after complete recovery that took us about a month or so she was walking almost normally. The only problem for her was 1. jumping on any places higher than 1.5m tall and 2. getting up after a long nap in which case she'd use the three other legs and get up (to this day every time she keeps her leg immobile for more than an hour when she's getting back up again there's an obvious click sound similar to the click our joints make). As I pointed out earlier, she's very aggressive to physiotherapy wasn't a realistic choice so I make sure I make her run around and play for at least an hour daily using lasers, feathers, aluminum fuel balls, ... to make sure her leg is in shape.
Unfortunately this condition is usually bilateral, meaning that if a living-being is affected by it in one leg, chances are that they will be affected by the same thing in the other leg as well and as we can see from the name it only affects the femur of cats and dogs alike but it's actually a bit more common in canines. My master was also affected by it in both legs, about 6 months after the first surgery on her right leg we were back to the vet for some checkups and in the X-ray image he took we saw that the other femur was also starting to get some dead tissue on the head and had to go through another surgery. Beside this in the image her right leg bone had "formed" a joint-shaped part where the real joint used to be (so yay!).
After the second surgery she recovered similar to the first surgery and now she's doing fine and aside for the clicking sound (especially in her right leg where the condition was more advanced) she's just a bit more cautious about jumping on high places. Exercise is still part of our daily schedule. Another change is that almost immediately after surgery the patient starts to lose muscle mass in their legs meaning that you'll probably notice that their legs are a lot thinner than before which is related to this mysterious condition not to the surgery or recovery themselves and that's normal. With enough exercise and physiotherapy (if you're lucky enough and your master allows such a procedure) the strength of the legs will be back to normal soon and the only difference would be the visible effect of muscle atrophy.
So all in all, keep an eye out for this condition since time matters a lot here, as I mentioned, this is a progressive phenomenon so the sooner you notice the signs the smaller the affected area will be which would lead to a better and easier recovery process and don't panic if your master is diagnosed with it, know that this is typically not a life threatening illness if treated soon and that the adorable patient will be up and about in no time and that you only need to be a great and careful nurse for a few weeks and make some small changes around the house: monitoring her diet, making ramps or "slides" for high places for ease of access, lowering her litter box walls, making sure she's staying active, help her with physiotherapy, making sure she doesn't make big jumps to or from high places, ... .
I hope this helps some human and master somewhere (even though I hope no living-being gets affected by this strange condition to begin with!) .
This is the story of my master that I'm sharing so that every other human with a cat master (<3) could educate themselves about this rare condition and help them as soon as possible if needed!
I share my life with a DSH master (she's actually long-haired but that's what her vet identified her as) who came to my rescue (srsly!) when she was a 3-week-old. When she was 10 years old, one day I noticed she wasn't placing her left front paw completely on the floor and thought that maybe it's one of her nails that's outgrown or maybe there's a tiny sand stuck between her fingers. Some days passed and the limping became easily visible at which point I panicked and took her straight to the vet. The only sign I could tell the vet was her limping and he immediately diagnosed her with Legg-Calve-Perthes or Femoral Head Avascular Necrosis on her right hind leg (due to the pain she was leaning on her front legs which made me think the limping was coming from there) which basically means the tissue on top of her femur (where the joint also is) had been dead and if the condition went unnoticed or untreated eventually it'd progress to the rest of the bone to the point that she'd be unable to use her litter and the chance of infection would dramatically increase down her waist and if she wasn't neutered she'd definitely get an infection in the area. The condition has proved to be genetic-based and some environmental factors that might contribute to it are trauma to the legs, insufficient diet (mainly calcium & vitamin D), lack of exercise, ... (none of which were true in our case). But since this condition is really rare even in humans, there's still very little known about it and I hadn't seen her parents to have known about this condition.
Back to my story, the vet then proceeded with some physical examination (rotating her leg in all directions and testing her leg's flexibility) and then an X-Ray image in which the dead part of her femur was clear (to the trained eye). He then told me that I had 2 options: 1/ Weekly injection of cortisol-based medication to her thigh (to stop the swelling and progress of the condition to the rest of her bone) or 2/ Removing the head of the bone through surgery (in which case the dying tissue would be completely removed and the rest of the bone would be permanently safe, Note that if some of the dead tissue remained, then still it'd kill the rest of the bone tissue, so the surgeon need to be well-trained to be able to do a thorough "cleaning"). Now, my master is a very aggressive one who has zero tolerance for people including the vet so taking her there every single week for an injection was off the table and it wouldn't really solve the problem anyway so of course I went for the surgery.
Being in a third-world-country where artificial joints are extremely hard to find even for people (I just feel lucky that I found a decent vet!), I didn't have that option to replace her joint so that her leg would be as flexible as usual so the vet told me that her bone will make a joint-shaped part overtime and that if physiotherapy and exercise were part of her daily schedule after a while she'd be able to do everything she did before (however if you have available artificial joints I highly recommend you to consider them provided you did your research on how the materials used were safe and the vet approved of them since they can help your cat recover sooner and there'd be less chance of her legs becoming lopsided).
This is how the surgery went: the vet made a 4cm long cut exactly where the head of her femur was, cut the dead parts and extracted them (which was a 7mmx1cm area) , put everything back together and closed her wound with absorbable stitches.
Post-surgery: before moving on, keeping the patient immobile for at least a day or two after the surgery would help A LOT with the recovery since we're talking about their bone getting cut. After about three days, despite the unbelievable pain (the vet forbid me to give her painkillers past a certain dose to keep her from moving too much until the wound was closed) she started with her normal life except that she didn't put her right leg down on the floor. Her wound was healed (closed and sealed) on the seventh day and after complete recovery that took us about a month or so she was walking almost normally. The only problem for her was 1. jumping on any places higher than 1.5m tall and 2. getting up after a long nap in which case she'd use the three other legs and get up (to this day every time she keeps her leg immobile for more than an hour when she's getting back up again there's an obvious click sound similar to the click our joints make). As I pointed out earlier, she's very aggressive to physiotherapy wasn't a realistic choice so I make sure I make her run around and play for at least an hour daily using lasers, feathers, aluminum fuel balls, ... to make sure her leg is in shape.
Unfortunately this condition is usually bilateral, meaning that if a living-being is affected by it in one leg, chances are that they will be affected by the same thing in the other leg as well and as we can see from the name it only affects the femur of cats and dogs alike but it's actually a bit more common in canines. My master was also affected by it in both legs, about 6 months after the first surgery on her right leg we were back to the vet for some checkups and in the X-ray image he took we saw that the other femur was also starting to get some dead tissue on the head and had to go through another surgery. Beside this in the image her right leg bone had "formed" a joint-shaped part where the real joint used to be (so yay!).
After the second surgery she recovered similar to the first surgery and now she's doing fine and aside for the clicking sound (especially in her right leg where the condition was more advanced) she's just a bit more cautious about jumping on high places. Exercise is still part of our daily schedule. Another change is that almost immediately after surgery the patient starts to lose muscle mass in their legs meaning that you'll probably notice that their legs are a lot thinner than before which is related to this mysterious condition not to the surgery or recovery themselves and that's normal. With enough exercise and physiotherapy (if you're lucky enough and your master allows such a procedure) the strength of the legs will be back to normal soon and the only difference would be the visible effect of muscle atrophy.
So all in all, keep an eye out for this condition since time matters a lot here, as I mentioned, this is a progressive phenomenon so the sooner you notice the signs the smaller the affected area will be which would lead to a better and easier recovery process and don't panic if your master is diagnosed with it, know that this is typically not a life threatening illness if treated soon and that the adorable patient will be up and about in no time and that you only need to be a great and careful nurse for a few weeks and make some small changes around the house: monitoring her diet, making ramps or "slides" for high places for ease of access, lowering her litter box walls, making sure she's staying active, help her with physiotherapy, making sure she doesn't make big jumps to or from high places, ... .
I hope this helps some human and master somewhere (even though I hope no living-being gets affected by this strange condition to begin with!) .
