Fluid in the pleural cavity and heart failure

[SophieJo]

Our 7 year old cat started breathing quickly last week and became clingy but behaved as he normally would, ie eating, drinking and going out. He had his yearly check up and injection at the beginning of February and was fine.
When he wouldn’t go outside 2 days ago we took him to the vets and he ended up being sent to their hospital to have milky fluid drained from around his lungs. The scans confirmed his heart is enlarged and he has been given 4-12 months survival rate. He is in an oxygen tent atm and we hope to have him home very soon. Just wondering if anyone has gone through this with their cat. We are obviously devastated and just want him home.

My cat really severe HCM. She was heavily medicated but did really well for 9 months after diagnosis, when her kidneys packed up. She had a really good quality of life until I knew it was time. Has your cat seen a cardiologist yet?

Mine had Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy too. He was diagnosed 4 January 2016 and passed away from it on 10 May 2016, exactly two months before his 6th birthday. Our vets were wonderful but the biggest stress I had was driving in an emergency from Swansea to Langfords in Bristol when the furthest I had driven in 30 years was twice to Cardiff.

Thank you for your replies. It’s a very stressful time isn’t it. We brought him home this afternoon with a bag full of medication. It’s been hard trying to get the tablets and liquid down him. He’s lost a lot of weight which was the fluid and seems very glad to be home.

I used a pill popper syringe thing. Maia was on eight tablets a day. She was very good with them though

Troy was good with taking tablets but I had to mix up the liquid medicine, can't remember what it was, with Lick-e-Lix. I had to count his breaths and too many meant his lungs were filling up again, reduction in purrs meant the same. He was good as gold in the vets when he had his lungs drained.

It was very stressful. I was working part time normally finishing work at 1.30pm but because of staff shortages I had to work all day. I had to give him furosemide three times a day so had to come home from work lunchtime to administer.

Tablets, monitoring, vets and being on alert as I was advised we may only have him for 6 months. I always dreaded coming home to find he had passed away alone. In the end we were with him albeit on a car journey to the emergency vets and he passed away en route 😭.

My advice - love him as much as you can, spoil him and don't let him outside.

To minimise effort I moved his litter tray to the bathroom, he used to use it when I was also on the toilet! I moved his food and water bowls upstairs too as he slept a lot on my bed.

He would sleep with me lying on my pillow and I would hold his paw as we fell asleep. After all this time bringing back memories is making me tearful. It took me three years after Troy to think of having another cat because I didn't want to go through that again.