Just a curious heart question

Sudden death in cats occurs for several reasons. The most common ones are probably cardiomyopathy and heartworm disease. Both of these disorders can cause death with almost no warning at all. We have had a client whose cat went to jump from the couch to a chair near it and landed in the chair, dead. This cat had about four heartworms in the pulmonary arteries when we did a post mortem examination. As far as our client could tell, her cat was normal right up to the time that it died. Other clients have had similar experiences with cats who have had cardiomyopathy, although none quite this dramatic. It seems odd that these disorders can be serious enough to cause death while not causing any warning symptoms but it really seems to be the case at times. Cardiomyopathy is probably the leading cause of anesthetic deaths in cats and most of the time the affected cats have no signs that are detected prior to the anesthetic crisis.

There are many other possible problems, though. Cats probably occasionally are born with defects that can lead to sudden death, such as aneurysms that may suddenly rupture. Toxin exposure sometimes occurs without the cat owner being aware of it. Application of a dog flea control product containing permethrin sometimes results in accidental poisoning, although most cats do show clinical signs prior to the time that they die with this particular toxic exposure.

Sometimes, there are signs of a serious illness that are subtle enough that veterinary clients, or even veterinarians, miss them. Toxoplasmosis, feline infectious peritonitis, feline leukemia virus, hemobartonellosis, liver failure, chronic kidney failure and other diseases usually cause recognizable symptoms but in rare instances there are not clear-cut clinical signs and death appears to occur suddenly.

The only really good way to try to figure out the cause of a sudden death is a post-mortem examination.

Click to expand...

Originally Posted by Violet

And since your question was about sudden death, here is some very important heart disease related info:

http://www.reigningcats.com/Maine%20...%20Article.htm

http://www.cfa.org/articles/health/cardiomyopathy.html

Click to expand...

Originally Posted by Violet

When our cat died we were told one would have to have a veterinary cardiologist do an ultrasound on a perfectly healthy cat that has no symptoms at all to detect HCM.

Our cat had no symptoms either. None. He looked and acted like a perfectly healthy cat. And then one night he died in his sleep. According to the necropsy report he died of acute pulmonary edema resulting from congestive heart failure.......The vet who did the necropsy told me he must have had HCM for several years.....

Click to expand...