Heartworm prevention used to be focused on the southeastern portion of the US. However, heartworm disease can now be found in every state. Heartworms are spread by mosquitos, so anywhere there is standing water – heartworm disease can be found. It is recommended to keep your pet on monthly prevention year round. Most products will prevent against intestinal parasites as well. While it is typically thought to be a “dog disease”, our feline friends can also develop a heartworm infection.
Heartworm disease causes severe organ damage including to the heart and lungs. Unlike a dog who can have hundreds of worms, cats typically only host a few of them. Our dogs progressively show signs of disease, such as coughing, lethargy, decreased appetite, and weight loss. While cats don’t often show any symptoms (in many cases, the first sign of heartworm disease is death). Therefore, it is extremely important to keep or feline family members protected against this damaging and deadly disease.
Our canine patients are recommended to have annual heartworm testing to ensure they are negative for this disease. The test looks for uterine antigens from the female heartworm. Because the cat doesn’t typically have many worms, there is less chance for these to be female. So the routine testing we do for dogs, is less likely to give us an accurate result in our feline patients. There are other tests that can be done for our feline friends, they just aren’t as simple as the in house blood test that we do for the dogs.
Cats cannot undergo the same treatment for heartworms that dogs can. For our cat patients, the treatment is surgical removal of the infecting worms. This is a dangerous procedure outside of it being a surgery in that if the worm becomes damaged during removal, it can be detrimental to the cat as well.
Due to the difficulty in diagnosing and treating our feline patients, we try to emphasize the dangers of NOT having all cats on year round heartworm prevention. Even indoor only cats should receive the preventions as mosquitos rarely ask permission to come into your house.