Have you had (or heard of) a young seemingly healthy pet just drop dead?
I’m still in shock.
Last Monday (12–27-22) at 4:30 pm my 4 year old (very active and healthy) male cat was sitting on a table next to me. He suddenly fell off the table landing on his side and kicked his way across the room still on his side. I quickly went to him and he went completely limp. No pulse. No breathing. For the next 15 minutes I frantically pounded his chest alternating quickly raising an lowering his front legs where I could hear air entering and leaving his lungs.
He acted totally normal up until he dropped.
What do you think caused this sudden death? Heart attack, stroke, pulmonary embolism (EP).
He was out side in the snow (temperature around 20 degrees F) on and off all day. He looked like he was having fun walking an running in the snow. He even caught and killed Bushtit bird earlier that day. Perhaps he developed a clot from cold exposure that later caused a deadly EP?
What do you think?
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14 Answers
Oh, @gondwanalon, I am so sorry! I had a somewhat similar experience a long time ago with my cat, we (the vet and I) posited that she might have caught and partially eaten a rodent that had been poisoned.
I’m sorry for your loss. There’s no way of knowing what he died from without an autopsy but my dog Prince had a mass on his spleen that made him collapse. He was older and didn’t die right away but needed to be put down some weeks later. Your cat might have had a heart attack, it might have been an undetected cancer, or as you suggest, an embolism. I doubt the cold would have caused it. As @canidmajor suggests, it might have some poison they ingested.
Again, really sorry. It is a shock when pets die, especially young ones.
Sorry to hear about your cat.
There is a thing with humans called Sudden Cardiac Arrest and it may not just be something humans do.
It sounds like poisoning might be what happened. I’m so sorry for your loss and for having to witness such a difficult thing.
How sad. My non vet speculation is some kind of congenital cardiac issue, especially since he lost a pulse so quickly. I doubt it had anything to do with the moderate cold outside, and poisoning is usually more horrifying.
Sincere cat-lover condolences, @gondwanalon!
I haven’t seen it, but know someone who did have a young cat suddenly die from some sort of rare condition, I forget what.
I’m so sorry about your cat. That’s terrible.
It happened to our bunny a bunch of years ago. He was less than a year old. Went to get him out of his cage one day and he was limp, barely conscious. Brought him to the vet where he died shortly thereafter. They said it seemed like he had some kind of stomach infection.
Oh dear, I am so sorry for you loss : (
That’s just horrible, I’m so sorry. So upsetting. It sounds like maybe a stroke since he was on his side? Was one side of his body not functioning, like he was paralyzed?
I don’t think I’ve heard of a young animal dying like that before, but I’m sure it happens like it happens to humans. Young people can suddenly die from heart attacks, strokes, aneurisms, many things.
Thank you all for youse sentiments of sympathy and ideas about what happened.
All my other cats that died were elderly and their deaths were expected. Even so it hurt to let them go.
The thought of my cat being poisoned is hard to understand. Wouldn’t there be some symptoms prior to death?
When you think about it the cat body is more like the human body than unlike the human body. Same bones, muscles, bold vessels, blood, nervous system and heart. I just dad that cats suffer many of the same health problems as humans. As @kritiper above wrote young humans (often athletes) infrequently suddenly drop dead so it is understandable that cats may suddenly drop dead for the very same reason(s).
I’ll never know the reason. I only know for sure that I was not the cause. I’m probably overly protective of my cats. This particular cat developed a respiratory infection when I first got him from the SPCA 2 years ago. My vet told me to put noes drops in and he will be fine. On the way to the pharmacy he started sneezing bloody mucus. So I drove him to an emergency vet hospital to get a second opinion. He recovered in a few days.
No, but I’m so sorry.
I would want to know the cause especially if you have kids or other pets.
I’m sorry for your loss. I lost a pet suddenly like that, when he was about a year and a half old—a black cat we called Luciano. (He was very vocal.) I think he had a bad heart.
Anything that functions in us has the potential to break or break down or go wrong. Same for anything in any other animal. I was startled at first to learn that cats got diabetes, but then, why should they be immune to failures or malfunctions in their system? That’s what wouldn’t make any sense.
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