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Reminder: Your cat should be receiving heart worm preventative
Just a reminder: This is prime mosquito season, and cats *can* get
heartworms (with deadly results). I live in East Texas, so my twosome get Heartgard all 12 months, whereas those in northern areas probably need it only for certain months of the year (ask your vet). I always use it on the first day of the month because that makes it easy for me to remember -- and is also the reason for this reminder. Many of you already use Heartgard, but I frequently meet people who have never heard of it or who think that only dogs can get heartworms. Heartworms are more common in dogs, but they are often even more disastrous in cats. MaryL Photos of Duffy and Holly: 'o' Duffy: http://tinyurl.com/cslwf Holly: http://tinyurl.com/9t68o Duffy and Holly together: http://tinyurl.com/8b47e Recent pics: http://tinyurl.com/clal7 |
#2
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Reminder: Your cat should be receiving heart worm preventative
"MaryL" -OUT-THE-LITTER wrote in message news:FIupg.22744$8q.10361@dukeread08... Just a reminder: This is prime mosquito season, and cats *can* get heartworms (with deadly results). I live in East Texas, so my twosome get Heartgard all 12 months, whereas those in northern areas probably need it only for certain months of the year (ask your vet). I always use it on the first day of the month because that makes it easy for me to remember -- and is also the reason for this reminder. Many of you already use Heartgard, but I frequently meet people who have never heard of it or who think that only dogs can get heartworms. Heartworms are more common in dogs, but they are often even more disastrous in cats. MaryL Photos of Duffy and Holly: 'o' Duffy: http://tinyurl.com/cslwf Holly: http://tinyurl.com/9t68o Duffy and Holly together: http://tinyurl.com/8b47e Recent pics: http://tinyurl.com/clal7 I totally agree--before I realized it was a problem in our area I had two cats with heartworm. I'm in Northern California and since it's so dry here in the summer you wouldn't think this would be an area that would support that many mosquitoes. It's pretty mild and rainy here in winter and we can see mosquitoes even in January if it's been warm. Hailey survived with few symptoms after the initial episode where he briefly lost consciousness. If I hadn't seen it happen I never would have known he was sick. Sweet Sam had to be euthanized after a miserable, horrible illness. Sam had would have difficulty breathing, my wonderful vet would remove fluid from around his lungs but it would just come back until he finally started coughing up blood. It can cause sudden death with no prior symptoms. It's an awful disease and it's so easily prevented. As far as I know there is not an effective treatment. Cats hearts and blood vessels are so small that when the adult worms die they eventually break up and can clog the blood vessels. When my first cat Hailey was diagnosed the emergency vet (of course it's never my vet on in an emergency!) said that there were studies at Davis University Vet School (in Davis! CA) where they were doing open heart surgery and scooping out the worms but only if the worms could be seen on the right side of the heart. It was very risky. I'll get off my soapbox now but it's something I feel very passionate about after seeing what it could do to my own cat friends. Bonnie |
#3
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Reminder: Your cat should be receiving heart worm preventative
"22brix" wrote in message ... "MaryL" -OUT-THE-LITTER wrote in message news:FIupg.22744$8q.10361@dukeread08... Just a reminder: This is prime mosquito season, and cats *can* get heartworms (with deadly results). I live in East Texas, so my twosome get Heartgard all 12 months, whereas those in northern areas probably need it only for certain months of the year (ask your vet). I always use it on the first day of the month because that makes it easy for me to remember -- and is also the reason for this reminder. Many of you already use Heartgard, but I frequently meet people who have never heard of it or who think that only dogs can get heartworms. Heartworms are more common in dogs, but they are often even more disastrous in cats. MaryL Photos of Duffy and Holly: 'o' Duffy: http://tinyurl.com/cslwf Holly: http://tinyurl.com/9t68o Duffy and Holly together: http://tinyurl.com/8b47e Recent pics: http://tinyurl.com/clal7 I totally agree--before I realized it was a problem in our area I had two cats with heartworm. I'm in Northern California and since it's so dry here in the summer you wouldn't think this would be an area that would support that many mosquitoes. It's pretty mild and rainy here in winter and we can see mosquitoes even in January if it's been warm. Hailey survived with few symptoms after the initial episode where he briefly lost consciousness. If I hadn't seen it happen I never would have known he was sick. Sweet Sam had to be euthanized after a miserable, horrible illness. Sam had would have difficulty breathing, my wonderful vet would remove fluid from around his lungs but it would just come back until he finally started coughing up blood. It can cause sudden death with no prior symptoms. It's an awful disease and it's so easily prevented. As far as I know there is not an effective treatment. Cats hearts and blood vessels are so small that when the adult worms die they eventually break up and can clog the blood vessels. When my first cat Hailey was diagnosed the emergency vet (of course it's never my vet on in an emergency!) said that there were studies at Davis University Vet School (in Davis! CA) where they were doing open heart surgery and scooping out the worms but only if the worms could be seen on the right side of the heart. It was very risky. I'll get off my soapbox now but it's something I feel very passionate about after seeing what it could do to my own cat friends. Bonnie Thanks for your report. That is painful even to read about, but you have done a great service because so few people realize how bad heartworm can be in cats. MaryL |
#4
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Reminder: Your cat should be receiving heart worm preventative
"MaryL" -OUT-THE-LITTER wrote in message news:qnzpg.22805$8q.6923@dukeread08... "22brix" wrote in message ... "MaryL" -OUT-THE-LITTER wrote in message news:FIupg.22744$8q.10361@dukeread08... Just a reminder: This is prime mosquito season, and cats *can* get heartworms (with deadly results). I live in East Texas, so my twosome get Heartgard all 12 months, whereas those in northern areas probably need it only for certain months of the year (ask your vet). I always use it on the first day of the month because that makes it easy for me to remember -- and is also the reason for this reminder. Many of you already use Heartgard, but I frequently meet people who have never heard of it or who think that only dogs can get heartworms. Heartworms are more common in dogs, but they are often even more disastrous in cats. MaryL Photos of Duffy and Holly: 'o' Duffy: http://tinyurl.com/cslwf Holly: http://tinyurl.com/9t68o Duffy and Holly together: http://tinyurl.com/8b47e Recent pics: http://tinyurl.com/clal7 I totally agree--before I realized it was a problem in our area I had two cats with heartworm. I'm in Northern California and since it's so dry here in the summer you wouldn't think this would be an area that would support that many mosquitoes. It's pretty mild and rainy here in winter and we can see mosquitoes even in January if it's been warm. Hailey survived with few symptoms after the initial episode where he briefly lost consciousness. If I hadn't seen it happen I never would have known he was sick. Sweet Sam had to be euthanized after a miserable, horrible illness. Sam had would have difficulty breathing, my wonderful vet would remove fluid from around his lungs but it would just come back until he finally started coughing up blood. It can cause sudden death with no prior symptoms. It's an awful disease and it's so easily prevented. As far as I know there is not an effective treatment. Cats hearts and blood vessels are so small that when the adult worms die they eventually break up and can clog the blood vessels. When my first cat Hailey was diagnosed the emergency vet (of course it's never my vet on in an emergency!) said that there were studies at Davis University Vet School (in Davis! CA) where they were doing open heart surgery and scooping out the worms but only if the worms could be seen on the right side of the heart. It was very risky. I'll get off my soapbox now but it's something I feel very passionate about after seeing what it could do to my own cat friends. Bonnie Thanks for your report. That is painful even to read about, but you have done a great service because so few people realize how bad heartworm can be in cats. MaryL Yeah, it was very painful. I felt so guilty about not using preventatives. I'm a microbiologist in a local health department lab and I should have known but these were indoor cats and I didn't realize we were in an endemic area. It wasn't something that came up on my radar. We'd always given our dog Heartgard but I really wasn't aware of how bad it could be for cats. I also thought that if they were indoors they should be fine. According to my vet the mosquitoes that carry heartworm do come into houses, even with screened windows. The sad thing with Sam was that he was a stray that we'd taken in (after the neighbors decided they didn't want to feed the 10+ cats they'd been feeding--they didn't even move, they just stopped feeding them). By that time we'd gone through Hailey's illness and all my cats were on Heartgard. We started him on Heartgard when we brought him in but I guess he'd already been exposed. All cats are special but he was just a sweet, sweet cat and he was young (maybe 3 years old). They loved him at the vet and cried just as hard as I did when we finally had to euthanize him. If my story will help any cat from getting this disease it'd be wonderful. Bonnie |
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