How to avoid heatstroke?

I am super worried about my 3 kitties and looking for any advice. I tried looking up info online but most sites just have the obvious answers and lots of scary info that probably made me worry even more!

My AC is broken in my apartment. After us bugging them a second time they finally sent someone to fix it today. The guy was here for 3 hours and it seemed like it might be working, he left and then it stopped working again

It is up over 100 degrees inside our place. We have the windows open and fans galore going but it is very little help. I am literally feeling sick from how hot it is.

My cats are used to AC and are really hating this heat. But I am also worried about them. They spend almost all day laying on the bathroom floor. It is the coolest room in the apartment. But still very hot. They are in no way their lively selves. In the very early morning is about they only time they are doing anything.

I am keeping tons of fresh cool water down and put fans on the floor but I can't put a fan in the bathroom because we don't have a plug in there! I also dipped their paws in water because I read that it can help.

Two of the cats are short fur but one is a huge poofy furball, we joke that he is all fur and nothing else lol. He seems to be doing the worst.

I just know how horrible I feel and I hate to see them suffer too. I am watching them closely for any signs of heatstroke.

But does anyone have any suggestions on other things to help them? Should I dip their whole bodies in water every few hours or maybe if I set a wet towel on the floor they would lay on it? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks so much.

Iam assuming your refrigerator is working? How about freezing them some ice cubes for their dish. You could also get some ice packs at the convenience store and freeze those and stick them in a nice towel or something for the furkids.

What I found in a situation like this was that keeping the windows open during the day was a major mistake.
Opening the windows in the evening and at night with fans blowing in the cooler air helps.

What also helps in the daytime is keeping all the shades down, keeping curtains or drapes closed and basically keeping the place as dark as possible. All this keeps the heat out. Shades and drapes/curtains make a tremendous difference. I don't know about blinds, but if you can keep rooms dark with blinds, that should also help a great deal.
I don't suppose there are any portable air conditioners still available. How about window air conditioners? Could you perhaps still get at least one? Both of these are life-savers in a situation like this.

Kisami, check out this thread, should be helpful to you (I feel you, I'm in the same boat!) some good ideas here for sure...:

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=233451

It gets to be about 95 in our house on a regular basis, we have air but I don't often run it. We have lots of fans running and lots of access to water and our cats just lay low during the day. You can actually spray them with water out of a spray bottle, just mist them, they probably won't thank you but it cools them off.

I'm by no means an expert, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Perhaps you could trim the poofy one's fur. It won't make a huge difference, but I know that when I don't have long hair, it's a lot cooler.

Towels with cold water on them around the house could keep the air a tiny bit cooler, but remember not to put them on your hardwood floors!

Make sure that the kitties have plenty of shade. I don't know if your cats despise water as much as mine do, but wetting them a little bit could keep them cool if worse comes to worse.

You're doing the right thing with a lot of water, so keep that up!

PS:

As for heat stroke, one sign of that is when a cat starts breathing with her mouth open and you see that her tongue is cherry red. (This happened to one of mine once when the AC wasn't working.) Covering the cat from head to tail with cold, wet paper towels and changing the towels every few minutes helps very quickly. The cat is out of the crisis situation in no time at all.

In a very serious heat stroke situation vets advise unceremoniously putting the cat in the bath tub or kitchen sink filled with cold water. In that situation one must guard against over-chilling the cat and making her sick, so she shouldn't stay in the cold water for longer than a few minutes.

Thanks so much everyone that was alot of helpful advice!

Originally Posted by Violet

What I found in a situation like this was that keeping the windows open during the day was a major mistake.
Opening the windows in the evening and at night with fans blowing in the cooler air helps.

What also helps in the daytime is keeping all the shades down, keeping curtains or drapes closed and basically keeping the place as dark as possible. All this keeps the heat out. Shades and drapes/curtains make a tremendous difference. I don't know about blinds, but if you can keep rooms dark with blinds, that should also help a great deal.
I don't suppose there are any portable air conditioners still available. How about window air conditioners? Could you perhaps still get at least one? Both of these are life-savers in a situation like this.

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Yeah I just read about the window thing. I had been keeping my windows open all the time and now realized it wasnt the best idea lol. Even more so since there just wasnt really any breeze.

We just moved in to this new place. Just finished getting our furniture here and unpacking. We do not have any blinds or curtains up! Things have been insane and it didn't come with any rods so we had to wait until we could go get some. But we just picked some up today. So tomorrow as soon as my husband gets home from work he will put them all up so that should help too.

We looked around the store for a window AC but the only ones we saw were for windows that opened up & down and all of ours are side to side


I don't want to mist them because I am worried it may scare them since we use a water bottle to make them behave maybe if it is just misting and they dont see the bottle they wont know the difference though. But I will try some ice packs as well.

Thanks a bunch everyone.

thanks for the board. The power blipped out while I was at work and the AC shut down. Came home and it was like 90º in the apartment, and my cats were certainly feeling it! Monet was complaining the instant I walked into the door. Poor Monet panted for a few seconds.. thankfully the color of his mouth looked normal! I'm now blasting the AC in both rooms, put ice in fresh water and even dipped Monet's paws in the water.

Picasso wants to play, but the apartment's still too warm. WHen things cool down, I will play, and hopefully they'll eat then