Health Screening

Prekrasne has always been committed to taking any steps that we can to contribute to research and to screening our cats for genetic illnesses.  Our cats are screened for HCM via Doppler Ultrasound by a Board Certified Cardiologist.  We can't test DNA for this disease so we screen our cats regularly.

As of 2012, we are now going to be screening our cats for Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD) also via ultrasound.  We were relying on DNA for PKD-1 but this only rules out one strain out of many.  With increased instances indicating more mutations exist in our breed, we are going to begin screening all of our adult cats.  The good news - with PKD, a negative result means it will not only not exist in that cat, but all offspring will be negative automatically.  Ultrasound is nearly 99% accurate at 10 months of age.  So, we will be screening all breeding adults and then our youngsters who are unrelated to those adults.  Once we have our results, we will gladly share them.

I am lucky to have an owner at my regular vet clinic who is able to perform these kidney ultrasounds.  The first lucky ones to go for their screenings are: Juliet, Esmeralda, and Molly.  The rest will go in shifts since I can't fit everyone in my car :)

These are routine screenings only.  Thankfully, we have had no reason to worry about any of our cats or their lines.  However, we like to keep it that way and prefer to test and know for sure!