High blood pressure in cats - come and tell me your stories and more importantly how much is this going to cost me?

[parabelle]

So just that. Babygirl is still falling over and vet thinks it may be high blood pressure, doing some more tests tomorrow. Any one else had this in their cats and what's the treatment and how much am I looking at?

You're looking at a daily pill. I'm not sure of the cost, but not very much. That should sort it. It does have to be treated though, otherwise it can lead to blindness and many other things.

My old cat is on treatment for high BP (amlodipine, it comes in 5mg tablets and he has half a tablet once a day, I have to cut them up more or less in half as they aren't scored - they can be crushed and mixed with food). I can't remember the exact cost but they are not too expensive, the vet gives me 28 at a time so they seem to last a good while. The dispensing fee is what adds most to the cost. And as TCN says, if untreated there can be serious side effects and sadly my cat's an example of that - he's blind now, the high BP damaged the backs of his eyes and we didn't notice until it was too late. I think he also has some kidney failure (which could also be due to high BP) but as he is over 17 we are just nursing him along until he becomes terminally unwell.

Amlodipine is the standard treatment most commonly cats start on 1/8th of a 5mg tablet once daily. The aim is to get their pressure below 180mmHg in the clinic. If I can't get it under control with 1/4of a 5mg tablet I tend to add in benazapril too so we are using two different methods of control. I haven't yet needed to go beyond 1.25mg of amlodipine and 2.5mg of benazapril once daily.