Reply
New Contributor
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎03-11-2010

Hi, I have never posted here on Pet Lovers, but have been reading. I have 4 cats and an 11 month old Havenese. Two of my male cats were due for vaccines and I mentioned to the vet that my one male was urintat*ing on things. He had a little protein in his urine so we did blood work. Well, the heart worm antibody test came back positive meaning he has been exposed to heart worms. He was negative in 2009 and all my cats have always been negative. My dog was negative in July 2010. The cats are on Revolution and the dog Sentinel although there have been months that have been missed and I generally do not give it in the winter because in MI it gets cold and mosquitoes don't live in the cold. We drew the antigen tests on the cats and the dog test on the dog. We will get the results on Monday. We will find out if the male has active disease. I am so bummed. I feel that I did everything right. The ONLY way a cat can get heartworms is from a bite from a mosquito that has fed on an infected dog. It takes 6 months from the bite for the test to be positive. Mosquitos only travel about a mile from their breeding area. That leads me to believe that one of my neighbor's dogs has heartworm. Dogs, fox, and coyote are hosts and there is a fox around but there are many more dogs. If a cat has heartworms and a mosquito bites them they cannot transmit it because cats are not hosts. There is no treatment for cats, but sometimes they just die off in the cat.