First I would like to thank the reader who emailed the paper saying that she liked my articles but said that I really focus on dogs.  Thank you for saying that because it is true, unfortunately about 75% of my cases are canine, that tends to be the main thing on my mind.  So, I would like to dedicate this article to you reader, and to the pastor at a local church.  I met him this week for the first time with a really sad case.  He came home from the Wednesday dinner at church to find his cat paralyzed in the rear legs.  It happened all of a sudden and got no better when he brought in his kitty the next day.  I had to give him the bad news that is was an unfixable problem and we had to let his kitty go.

                Basically what happened to his cat is a pretty common problem.  Cats have a genetic predilection toward heart disease and the really bad thing is that they typically die with absolutely no symptoms.  In the case of the pastors cat it had an enlarged heart probably for months to years.  This severe heart enlargement led to a large blood clot to form in the heart.  Eventually the clot escaped the heart out of the aorta; it traveled down to where the aorta terminates into the two femoral arteries.  When the clot reached this point it got stuck and blocked up the femoral arteries so blood could not flow into the legs.  If the clot is caught early enough there are drugs that can break the clot but they are very expensive and usually do not work. 

                Heart disease is very common in cats due to 3 basic areas, genetics, nutrition, and parasite problems.  The genetics part is easy, it is an inherited problem from parents to kittens.  Unfortunately it is the most common cause.  Nutrition is less of a problem now; in the past cat foods were very deficient in an amino acid called Taurine.  This amino acid causes a weakening of the heart muscle leading it to enlarge and eventually fail.  Nowadays this is only a problem for people who try to feed home-made diets for their pets.  Without proper vitamins and minerals a homemade diet can easily be deficient in Taurine.  The parasite problem is a common one that most people have heard about… in dogs. 

                Canine Heartworms are becoming a big problem for cat owners.  First off, it only takes 1-2 worms to cause death in a cat.  Secondly, when tested for heartworms most tests will come back negative event though they have the disease.  A recent study showed that almost half of all sudden deaths in indoor cats were caused by heartworm disease.  This is scary data, every year more and more cats are becoming heartworm positive.  There is no treatment for the adult heartworms, we use steroids to keep the body from having a reaction and hope the worms will die of old age before they damage the heart too much.  The only thing we have are products like Revolution that kill baby heartworms before they get to the heart.

                Heart disease in cats can be very tricky.  They can die with absolutely no symptoms.  The symptoms can be very vague like lethargy or poor appetite.  Coughing and poor breathing are some of the more severe symptoms.  Recognizing the symptoms and proper diagnosis is hard.  Almost all dogs with heart disease have a heart murmur, with cats it is less than 5%.  That is why it is so hard to diagnose during a normal routine physical exam, the heart sounds great.  The most common way I diagnose heart disease is when I am doing x-rays on a cat for a different reason.  Because cats are so small we usually catch the chest even if we are not shooting in that region and then we see an enlarged heart.

                In closing, heart disease is hard enough to diagnose, treatment can be even harder.  Unfortunately it is hard to know if the cat’s family history unless it is a pure bred cat with documented family lines.  We can deal with the other two causes with a proper well balanced diet and with monthly heartworm prevention even for indoor only cats.  When it comes to the genetic part good physical exams yearly can help.  Also recognizing when your cat is feeling ill especially with it involves coughing or trouble breathing.  Prevention is the key with this disease, please call your vet if your pet is having any of the symptoms listed above.