If you miss a dose, keep going. As soon as you realize you've missed it, go ahead and give the cat another one and just go on their regular monthly routine. If they are not showing any symptoms, great, we don't go any further with that.

If a cat does get an adult heartworm or two, there is no treatment available. They can't get the conventional treatment that dogs do. The medication is somewhat toxic in a cat. Then as the worm dies, the cat often dies as well, which is why prevention is so vital. If infected, the cat develops chronic asthma-like symptoms once infected with heartworm, and that lasts for life. That's treated with things like corticosteroids and bronchodilators as needed, but there's permanent damage done to the lungs.

Preventing standing water is essential. You can use area mosquito sprays and things like that, and they are safe if you follow directions. Anything you can do to keep the mosquito population down in the area helps. Usually, that is combated by avoiding standing water in those areas, dumping standing water from your flower pots, and other things like that.

There are not. Vector and mosquito control can help, but still, those preventative products are essential. A lot of those preventative products also keep fleas and ticks away and help treat intestinal parasites.

Heartworm preventions are 95% effective or more if administered properly and given regularly.

Typically, there are some pills that you can give kitty cats like you do dogs, that are labeled for a cat but are a bit different. There are also topicals. The vast majority of people use the topicals that you put on the skin. These prescription medicines prevent the dog or the cat from getting infected, to begin with. That's the key with a cat, to prevent them from getting infected.