There would be some type of anesthesia for surgical procedures, whether injectable or inhalant anesthesia, because we wouldn't want them to feel the pain of that procedure.

Depending on the type of surgery, some of the fundamental questions would be about recovery time, what to expect when you take your pet home, and how to best care for your cat. And you may also want to ask how to get your cat ready for the surgery that's coming up.

In my experience, I'm going to say no, because again, most of the medications I'm using to prevent are combination medicines that also do fleas, ticks, ear mites, heartworms, intestinal worms, and those kinds of things. I use things like Revolution, Revolution Plus, and Advantage Multi for Cats. Those are all things I've used. Full disclosure in answer to that question, yeah I have seen some cats that don't like it when you put it on. They act very irritably, and they may even get a little patch of hair loss in that area because you're putting it on the back of the neck. I've seen those kinds of side effects, but it's not specific to the heartworm preventative that's in it. Many of those products may be alcohol-based because that helps them to absorb through the oil layer in the skin and be absorbed in the bloodstream. I think more side effects have to do with the liquid itself or the carrier that the drug is in, and perhaps not the drug itself.

Any time you put a chemical in or on an animal, you always have the risk of there being a reaction to that animal, but it's not something that I routinely see in cats.

Respiratory issues—again, being a more serious condition in cats and how it normally presents, I guess you could say similar to dogs, it takes fewer worms to cause these. That's the most common thing that I see. A cat that might come in for hacking, coughing, maybe even open mouth breathing, or perhaps poor color. Maybe the cat was running around playing or just jumping around a typical day, and all of a sudden just collapsed, acute collapse. It usually presents as either cardiovascular or respiratory signs in a cat.

Every once in a while, you'll see vomiting, although I personally have not seen a cat come in for vomiting and then later be diagnosed with heartworms. It's always been the respiratory signs that I have picked up on.

That's a good question and one that I think has gotten lost in the shuffle over the years. The answer to the question is, no, they're not very common in cats. And there's a couple of reasons why. First off, I want to share with you some figures, just to impress upon you how much of a different disease this is in dogs and cats. First off, if you took 100 dogs and gave them heartworm disease in a lab, you would pretty much have 100% of those dogs test positive for heartworms in a matter of a few months. This is because dogs are the natural hosts for heartworm disease. Cats are not, but they can contract it. The same study was presented to me as if you took 100 cats and exposed them to heartworms; you’re probably going to get anywhere between 5 and 15 of those guys come up positive. This is because they’re much more naturally resistant to the disease.

The other thing that I always thought was interesting, in dogs, especially in larger dogs, it’s not unusual to have a considerable population, 20, 30, maybe even more than that, worms that reside in the heart of a dog. Whereas in cats, it's much smaller. One or two worms in a cat, and you typically have a pretty significant, I would argue, life-threatening infection in a cat.

It's not common for that reason. Cats are naturally resistant to it to some degree, but I would also argue that it is a much more serious disease if they do contract it.

Again, depending on the type of procedure, I generally tell owners not to feed them immediately when they go home. They might be hungry, as, in many procedures, they're fasted, or we've withheld their food. But when they do that, sometimes they go home, and they gorge and then vomit, and then you get concerned and call us. Generally, after you get them home for a few hours, feed them about 50% of what you would normally feed them. If they don't eat, that's okay. I'm not too concerned about that. If they eat and act hungry, don't feed them anymore for three or four hours later. Let that food settle because they're kind of like kids; they don't always know what's best for them, and they might overeat.

I don't generally tend to change food, because again, you don't want to add in one more factor that can cause an upset stomach, but let's say they had a dental procedure and had several extractions; we might talk about softening their food during that time.