What is the cycle of a heartworm, and how will this information be beneficial to my cat?

The heartworm cycle in a cat is when a mosquito bites the cat and injects a baby worm into the cat’s skin. These worms then migrate through the skin into the bloodstream, and they arrive at the lungs, and that's when all the damage is done. Months later, when the worms start arriving at the lungs, the cat develops an intense inflammatory reaction to destroy these worms before they continue to mature. The cat has these asthma-like symptoms—coughing, open mouth breathing, vomiting, and labored breathing in general.

The life cycle of a heartworm is complex with many larval stages. However, the most important part to note is that out of all these stages, we can only kill two of them. Therefore, it's crucial to give your cat heartworm prevention every month on the same day because we only get two chances to ensure that your cat doesn't get heartworms.

A heartworm will usually reproduce, they'll float around in the bloodstream, we call those offspring microfilaria or larva. A mosquito will then ingest that, usually this is from a dog or any other canine, like a coyote. It will then go and take a blood meal from your cat and inject some of that blood with the microfilaria into the bloodstream, where it will then go and affect the heart.