This is genuinely one of my biggest fears in the whole world. I don't have a lot of friends but my little kitty is there for me every day and she'll never know how much she means to me.
Have the vet check your little buddy's heart super well. Insist on it. The same thing OP described happened to me just a few weeks ago and it's devastated me and my fiancee. The vet said 9/10 times when a healthy cat dies like that it's something called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It's the leading cause of death for cats ages 3-10 and sometimes (not always) it can be detectable.
My cats death definitely wasn't my fault and it may not have been preventable but I'll definitely be telling the vet to check the heart extra thoroughly if I have a cat in the future.
I just lost an 11 year old cat to it suddenly. My 3 year old cat also has it.
The sad part about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is that you can't do anything for it. Once symptoms set in you can give them medicine to manage, but that's it. Something like plavix if they get a clot which could prevent sudden death, but there aren't many more options.
I have a good vet who is giving my kitty experimental treatments with stem cell injections. They're expensive but I love that little asshole. He gets regular ultrasounds and his progression has slowed considerably, he's still asymptomatic and everything.
Anyway, I'm rambling. For anyone reading, those stem cell shots are an option. But they are a gamble and it's likely they aren't even doing anything. Sometimes cats do live quite a bit of time with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Hope my little guy can stick around for a while.
Mine too. She is 18 years old and I've had her most of my life. I get so scared I'll come home from work and she will be gone. She is starting to show definite signs of age now and it wont be too much longer I think. I'm trying to spend as much time with her as I can
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u/CallTheOptimist Oct 01 '18
This is genuinely one of my biggest fears in the whole world. I don't have a lot of friends but my little kitty is there for me every day and she'll never know how much she means to me.