You should just go ahead and give the next dose. Alert your veterinarian that you missed a dose. If you live in an area with high incidence of heartworm disease, they might recommend a test. But you should just keep giving the dose. In fact, even if a cat has heartworm disease, we still keep them on the preventative because we're preventing more worms from developing. It's not wrong to give the next dose, but talk to your vet about it.

Keeping your cat indoors will greatly reduce the risk because you're going to have fewer mosquitoes in your indoor environment. That doesn't mean a mosquito can't come into your house now and then. I kill them from time to time in my own house. But keeping them indoors does lower the risk of heart disease and cats.

No, nothing works. If you could put your cat in a bubble so they would never get bit by a mosquito, that would be great, but obviously, that's not plausible.

No, it differs. Prevention entails preventing the disease. It's not going to treat the cat if they already have heartworms. Like I said before, there is no treatment for heartworm in cats. There are treatments for the side effects that they cause, but there's no treatment to kill the actual worm.

No, we typically don't test cats. Especially as a kitten, we just start the prevention. The only reason that I would recommend a test is if they're having symptoms. If they're having breathing problems or GI upset, then we might want to test for heartworm. But it's not something that we would routinely test every year, at least not in our area in California.

It's completely preventable if you are diligent about giving it at the recommended time. If you give an oral preventative once a month and you never falter from that, your cat will not get heartworm disease. It's a hundred percent preventable.