Thanks for going through the details. My cat had steatitis when he was
about 10 or 11 months old. He was very active and playful and all of a
sudden his activity level started dropping on a daily basis. He would
move less and less. He had an alert and happy look, was eating and
drinking as he always had, so I did not think it was something
serious. It got to a point where he did not move at all, he would lay
on the same spot all day long. He appeared happy, looked alert, was
communicative, was still eating and drinking as if nothing, but he
would not move. So I took him to the first vet. Vet was baffled with
the symptoms. He had no fever, his heart was normal, vet did not
notice anything wrong upon physical examination (at that time blood
tests were not done routinely here). Vet wanted to give him steroids
but I did not allow him to. Since I did not have a straight diagnosis,
I did not want to mask the symptoms. So, no medication. Took him to
another vet and he was equally baffled. I ended up going to 4 or 5
different vets in a month and nobody knew what he had - and I
continued refusing any medication. That whole time he would not move
but he looked normal in every other respect. At the time I had bought
Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible and was reading it and came across
steatitis - he even mentions cats having steatitis because of being
fed only tuna (the canned tuna for us humans). The symptoms matched
but my cat was not fed tuna. But I decided to give him vitamin E
anyway. He improved almost from night to day and in two weeks he was
his old self again. Vitamin E was the only thing he got. He did not
have any other symptom at all except the unwillingness to move. As I
mentioned previously, his skin was normal and remained normal
throughout that entire month he didn't move. Pain is a *must* symptom
of steatitis. When you exercise in excess, you get muscle pain. That
pain is caused by microscopic crystals of lactic acid. That pain can
be so bad that we do not want to move. Now imagine having little
blubber stones in and around your muscle tissue. It must be an
excruciating pain. That's why animals with steatitis do not move and
do not like being touched or forced to move.

You say your cat did not appear to be in pain. That alone rules out
steatitis. According to literature, the head and neck area are spared
in steatitis - most likely because there are no fat deposits in those
areas and Bubba's neck skin came out. You mention he had a hole in his
belly right from the start. Is there any chance he had been bitten by
a rat? Or cut himself while venturing outside? Or maybe bitten in a
fight with another cat? These microbes are commonly found in soil so
getting infected is easy if the immune system is debilitated. If he
already had anemia, he was already debilitated when he got cut or
bitten. You say he responded well to treatment but you did not give
him only vitamin E. These organisms are bacteria so he probably
responded well to antibiotics on one end, and steroids messed him up
on the other end, which brought his overall condition to deteriorate
quickly. Also what you say about the condition being limited to one
area is in fact inconsistent with steatitis. You also say that after 2
or 3 weeks the fat pad was significantly smaller and softer. He
probably had an inflammation in that area - a normal and *wanted*
response to infection - and steroids made the inflammation go away
(this also explains the "fat pad" becoming softer). Inflammation
should *never* be inhibited unless you know for a fact you're dealing
with an auto-immune disease (see below - btw, seems not many vets or
docs know this - they prescribe steroids as if they were candy). You
mention many times that there were no signs of infection. Inflammation
is a sign of infection and not all infections cause pus or fever. To
make a long story short, I am absolutely sure that was not steatitis.
I believe it was some infection with some anaerobic bacteria or
protozoan, maybe leprosy, maybe T. gondii (as posted earlier), maybe
something else. Yet the only disease that I know of that causes the
skin to literally break loose is leprosy. As I mentioned previously,
these microorganisms are everywhere and any person or animal with a
debilitated immune system is at risk. I wish your vet had sent a
sample of his tissue for culture. Then you'd know exactly what it was.

Anyway, again I am sorry for what you and Bubba went through and I
know you did the best you could to help him. I also apologize for
extending this discussion but it seems you are as eager to get answers
as I am. The more we know, the better for our present and future pets.
I hope a loving kitty makes way into your life soon.



INFLAMMATION

Inflammation is the body's reaction to an injury such as an invasion
by an infectious agent. In just the same way as it is necessary to
increase the blood supply to active muscles during exercise to provide
glucose and oxygen so it is also necessary to direct elements of the
immune system into sites of infection. Three major events occur during
this response.
1. An increased blood supply to the infected area.
2. Increased capillary permeability caused by retraction of the
endothelial cells. This permits larger molecules to traverse the
endothelium than would ordinarily be capable of doing so and thus
allows the soluble mediators of immunity to reach the site of
infection.
3. Leucocytes, particularly neutrophil polymorphs and to a lesser
extent macrophages, migrate out of the capillaries and into the
surrounding tissue. Once in the tissue, they migrate towards the site
of infection by a process known as chemotaxis.
These events manifest themselves as inflammation.

The immune system is not the only system which protects the body from
injury; the clotting, fibrinolytic and kinin systems are also involved
in mediating inflammation and in the resolution of tissue damage.
These systems interact to maintain the integrity of the vascular
system and to limit the spread of tissue damage whether it is caused
by physical injury or infectious agents.

Immunology, Ivan M. Roitt, Jonathan Brostoff, David K. Male.