Heart Disease in Cats: Is it Possible?

There’s no doubt anymore about the popularity of cat among other pets – in fact, cat is the second most common pet on earth after dogs. The variety of cat’s breeds is become attractive point why people love this animal; short hair or long hair, everything is available. Here are some of popular cat that would blow your mind away: Angora cat, English shorthair cat, Siberian and Tabby cat, Manx cat, Siamese cat, some of exotic cats such as Abysinian and bengal cat, and also the ultimate of all exotic cat Sphynx cat.

As we know, spending time with cat is so much fun moment; they love cuddling and caress, very active animal, playful, smart, but sometime they did a lot of things that made us shook our heads: they mess our houses, won’t listen to us when we call their names, and other annoy things – but, guess what, we still love them! So, as owner, making sure we did our duty to keep our buddy maintain his health is our priority.

Give him the best foods, ensure that the foods was contained with all nutrition he needed, and encourage him to to some exercises every single day. There are many illnesses and diseases that should beware of, and we are going to discuss one of them now: heart disease. Heart disease in cats: is it possible?

Heart Disease in Cats

Heart disease in cats: is it possible? I believed some people have thought about this. Surprisingly, in cats heart disease in one of the common illness for domestic cats; it was dangerous and deadly because heart disease symptoms is not pretty clear at the first stage, not to mention that cat would have the tendency to hide the problem. That is why for cats, heart disease frequently called as silent killer. The unique thing about this is, cats often didn’t exhibit any sign (subclinical) of the disease until it turns to the next stage.

Keep in mind, heart disease is different with heart failure; it refers to dysfunction happened in heart. For the examples of the most common heart disease in cats are strictures or holes which happened caused by birth defects, mitral insufficiency of valve disease, and heart muscles disease which is called as cardiomyopathies or HCM. But, however, based on most recorded cases, cardiomyopathies become number one cause of heart disease in cats.

What would happen to heart of cardiomyopathies sufferer? The disease would make changes of heart muscles by weakening and thickening it. When the heart muscles weaken, the blood pump function to fill the heart would be less effective than it should be; thicken muscles would create less room inside the heart for blood. There two forms of HCM that infected cats: first, sporadic form which is able to infect to any cat’s ages, and the second one is genetically.

In genetically process, the disease would link to the next generation of cat; here are some of the cat’s breeds potentially get the disease more often than other cats: Sphynxes, Maine Coons, Rexes, Ragdolls, and others. There’s a term called DCM or dilated cardiomyophaty which recognized by the flabby and thin heart muscles. But, this disease it rarely happened – almost exclusive, it happened due deficiency of tauirine in cat’s foods.

However, you don’t have to worry about this anymore, because these days, almost every cat’s food sell on stores are supplemented with taurine. If you homemade feed your cat, ensure to fill the need of taurine inside the diet to prevent DCM to happen.

Signs of Heart Disease in Cat

As I mentioned previously, early signs of cat’s heart disease is very hard to noticed, because often time the signs was not existed. Therefore, many owners are not aware that their cats has suffered from heart disease. Another problem to notice this disease is the cat himself. Cat is smart, he knows his own limit and capability. So, when cat noticed that “something was off” with his body, he tends to restrict his activity and routine. This is so dangerous because it leads to clinical signs which is symptoms that the disease have been developed into the next stage.

Furthermore, there are – still, some signs that indicate heart problem in cats such as a murmur. What is murmur? Murmur is an extra sounds made of abnormal blood flow or turbulence which is sounds like “whoosing”. In kitten, there’s a term called physiologic murmur which is nothing to do with heart disease and gradually decrease as the kitten grow. A research reviled among half of adult cats that have heart murmur was associated with heart disease and the half of them was healthy.

Although murmur is not always indicate heart disease, it’s still recommended to monitoring the cat that suffered with it, because murmur potentially lead to heart disease. The professional would monitor the cat to prevent fatal things to happen such as heart failure. Another sign that indicate heart disease is arrhythmia: the heart rhythm problem it might be fast or slow or it could be also form as a gallop which is also an extra sound of heart.

The difference between gallop and murmur is murmur is not always lead to heart disease but gallop is significantly lead to heart disease. There’s should be follow up treatment for gallop sufferers to maintain heart condition. You could also note these several changes of your cat – although it’s less specific than other symptoms that have been mentioned before – such as, loss of appetite, collapse, weight loss, and lethargy. Unlike dogs and humans, coughing and swollen are uncommon event to happen.

For an extreme disease of heart failure, the cats would develop slowly but progressively signs, but there are cases that the cat would experience acutely ill. For the acute ill, there are two main syndromes happened to cats: the first one is FATE (Feline Aortic Thromboembolism) and the second one called CHF (Congestive Heart Failure).

So, the answer of the question is it possible for cat having heart disease is yes. It is one of the common disease in cats. The conclusion of this is we have to bring our cat to routine check-up, to ensure our cats is clear from any illness or disease. God bless you and your beloved cat!