Nelson, who is in Anniston, AL says that around a decade ago, he was a non believer,
thinking heartworm in cats wasnâ $ ™ t a â $ œbig deal.â $ Then, his own research revealed that 26 per cent of the cats he looked at were positive for antibodies for heartworm disease.
Not exact matches
As a
cat owner, Amy Novotny never
thought much about
heartworms.But a few weeks ago Novotny, a 31 - year - old magazine editor who lives
in south Orange County, was devastated to learn that her
cat, Buster, has the dreaded parasites.A
cat with
heartworms?Until this year the veterinary community
thought cats rarely contracted
heartworms, which have long been a serious problem for dogs.Emerging evidence, however, has convinced veterinarians that
cats also are susceptible to
heartworms.
Heartworm infection, initially
thought to be rare
in cats, can wreak havoc
in the heart chambers and lungs of affected
cats.
Once
thought of as solely a disease of the dog's heart,
heartworms are now known to produce completely different problems
in cats — it is primarily a disease of the
cat's lungs.
As we look more aggressively for
heartworms in cats with better and better tests, we expect to find that the incidence is greater than previously
thought.
Once
thought to be much less common
in cats, some experts now say the incidence of
heartworm disease
in cats is similar to that
in dogs.