As some of you may know, we recently lost our sweet little 2 yo kitty named Toad. This heart-wrenching loss had my 10yo daughter in tears for weeks. She still draws pictures of him and talks about him like an old friend that she misses. Toad was a very social cat who loved my daughter, hung out in her room, and slept with her every night. One morning, Tony came downstairs and announced that Toad was no longer using his back legs. We rushed him to work, gave him all the pain medications, and determined his back legs would likely never work again and would start to die due to lack of blood flow – they were cold and hard and PAINFUL! This led to a very tearful euthanasia where I had to watch my daughter clutch his sedated (due to the level of pain he was in) body against her chest and sob into his soft fur. And then I gave the final injection.
While Toad probably would have never lived a long kitty life, we possibly could have kept him going much longer than we did had we known what was coming. Toad died of a young cat disease known as “Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy” (HCM) where the heart muscle becomes TOO thick and, therefore very little blood is pumped each time and the increased turbulence increases the risk for clots. Toad’s presentation is the most common way to discover this disease in young cats – a fatal blood clot to the aorta at the point where it splits off into the hind legs. The clots can partially or fully block blood flow to the back legs. In Toad’s case, the legs were cold and hard, therefore, no blood was getting to them.
So, how can you prevent this tragedy from happening to your family?
- Have your new cat/kitten evaluated by a vet for a heart murmur. (Toad never had one, but it’s good to know anyway)
- Have your new feline check for a chemical that is released when the heart is stressed. It’s a test called proBNP.
- If 1 and 2 are normal, GREAT! Keep an eye on your kitty.
- If #1 is not normal, but #2 is normal, keep an eye on your kitty and watch for early signs of heart disease like when they’re completely asleep (and not twitching with a dream or something) count the number of times they breathe in a minute – it should be less than 30 breaths per minute. If it’s more, contact your vet.
- If #2 is not normal, think about having an echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart) or a work up at a cardiologist to determine what the next step is and whether your kitty needs to be on medication.
If you’re rescuing a cat from the shelter or from the streets, there’s not a lot you can do to prevent this condition other than making sure to feed it a commercial cat diet that’s balanced for cats and has the amino acids required to keep the heart healthy – but if genetics are in play, the diet won’t really change the outcome. If you’re purchasing a cat breed (specifically Ragdoll and Maine Coon), make sure you find out if the breed is predisposed to heart conditions and then grill the snot out of the breeder and make sure the parents and grandparents have been tested for heart conditions before purchasing. After this whole ordeal, we got his sister, Popcorn (pictured with him as a kitten) and she’s all okay with no signs of heart disease. Now, I’m trying to encourage people to avoid this horribly traumatic experience themselves by recommending testing for young cats.
After his death, I performed a necropsy to confirm my suspicions and give myself solace for putting him down (sometimes, even when you’re sure, you still doubt “Did I just kill my daughter’s cat for the wrong reason???”). Sure, enough, I found a very large clot wedged in the descending aorta along with branches of the clot going into both femoral arteries, effectively shutting off all blood supply to both legs. I also found his heart, which was greatly enlarged with the left ventricle (the one that makes the big pump to the whole body) grossly thickened to the point where almost no blood could be pumped each time. The only thing I can even remotely think of as far as symptoms that I missed was that he was a very active kitten and eventually got to be a sleepy/cuddly cat while his sister continued her tortuous reign on the outdoor small rodent population. I thought this was just his personality, but, looking back, he was probably tired all the time due to lack of oxygen/blood to his body.
***** Warning! Pictures of Toad’s necropsy (autopsy) to follow ******
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#grosspictures coming!
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STOP SCROLLING IF YOU ARE EASILY GROSSED OUT
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Seriously! STOP! Blood! Gore!
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But it’s a REALLY good visual of how everything failed for poor Toad
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