Dino’s owner had gone overseas for a month and had left Dino and his brother Bam Bam in our cattery. They are both around 2 years old and seemed healthy at their vaccinations in April.

About 2 weeks after being in the cattery one of our nurses went down to give the cats a bit of extra attention before we closed on Saturday morning. She was horrified to find Dino flat out on his side struggling to breathe.

We immediately rushed him upstairs to give him emergency oxygen and check him over to try and find out what had happened. He was very pale and had noisy crackling lungs and his heart was almost impossible to hear. After he had settled down a bit he was taken to the Afterhours Emergency clinic as he would need intensive care all weekend.

Here he was placed into an oxygen tent and given some drugs to help remove fluid from his lungs. After a few hours he had improved a lot and was ok to move to radiology where some chest X-rays were taken. These showed he had a condition called pulmonary oedema which means his lungs were full of fluid and he was unable to get enough oxygen even when taking huge gulping breaths.

At this stage they weren’t sure of the cause of Dino’s sudden deterioration, he had no access to toxins as he was in the cattery, it can be caused by a serious allergic reaction or electrocution but more commonly heart failure.

The symptomatic treatment gradually started to improve his condition and his heart sounded very abnormal once his breathing had settled down, it was going very fast and had a heart murmur.

Dino was stablilsed over the weekend but when he arrived back at Vetcare he was still very depressed, dehydrated and not eating. We did blood tests on him and found out his kidney levels were high due to the dehydration and his medication so he was put on a drip for several days and gradually improved.

Dino was taken to Vet specialists group for a echocardiogram. This is an ultrasound of his heart and it showed he had severe heart failure caused by a condition called Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. (See article in FAQs about Hyper hearts)  He probably inherited this from one of his parents as at this young age it is unusual.

As this goes to press Dino is almost back to normal and is back running around the cattery with his brother, he will need to be on lifelong medication but we are hopeful he will have a good quality of life for a lot longer.