Case Study: Weezy

My name is Scarlet, I am a Registered Veterinary Nurse here at Meopham Veterinary Hospital and I have a cat called Weezy.

Weezy was given to me by a friend who had an accidental litter when he was a kitten. As soon as I got him I knew we had a very special bond. He has barely left my side ever since we first brought him home.

When he was 2 years old, one night in August he became very, very ill. He was lethargic, wouldn’t get up or move and he was open mouth breathing. At the time I was working for a different practice that didn’t have its own out of hours service and so I had to rush him to another emergency practice. They took him in and he had to stay overnight, the vet there was very busy but managed to do a quick scan of his heart and told me there was something wrong with it. The next day, I picked him up in the morning and I took him to my own vet who repeated the heart scan.

We then got some very, very bad news. My precious little Weezy had a heart condition, at the time I was told that he had a condition called Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), this is where the heart muscle is thickened and so it isn’t as efficient at pumping blood around the body. It is commonly diagnosed in young, large breed cats. It is a degenerative condition and will drastically shorten the animal’s life. We were heartbroken, the vet said that euthanasia might be the best option for him as he was so unwell at the time, but I wanted to try with medication.

So for the next few weeks we started the journey of tabletting Weezy, who isn’t always the most well behaved cat, but he was amazing for these tablets. After a month he started to get back to normal, he was back to being mischievous and naughty like he always was. He ended up staying this well for another 2 years, which, with HCM is almost unheard of! So we started to suspect that maybe, he had a different issue. Around this time is when I started working at Meopham, we ran out of Weezy’s previously prescribed medication and so he needed to come in to meet Bruce and have another scan to make sure we were treating him with the right stuff.

So Bruce gave Weezy a little sedation (due to his naughtiness) and gave him another scan, and this one showed that in fact, he didn’t have HCM like we initially thought. Which was great news, however he did still have a heart condition, Restrictive Cardiomyopathy. This means, in Weezy’s case that his heart doesn’t contract correctly. Bruce spoke to a cardiac specialist and we discussed his condition and decided to take him off two of the tablets he was on, and keep him on one which increases cardiac contractility.

He did fantastically for almost another year, but in January 2023 he collapsed again. I rushed him into Meopham, it was out of hours again but I was so grateful he would be seeing the normal vets and nurses who we both knew instead of having to go and see strangers at another practice. He was very unwell again, his heart rate went up as high as 300, the normal range for a cat is 120-130 beats per minute, and the scan showed his heart wasn’t pumping blood effectively and it was pumping out of rhythm (arrhythmia). The emergency vet on duty that night, Anna, called me and told me, she said she needed to give him a drug to make his heart beat in the correct rhythm and another drug to increase the contractility.

It was touch and go for that night, but, thanks to the incredibly hard work of the nurses, Lucy and Hazel and Anna the vet, Weezy pulled through, even if he had used another of his nine lives. Bruce came in the following morning, and scanned his heart again, to see if there were any changes which could have caused this episode, but again luckily, there were no changes.

We are unsure of what caused Weezy’s heart to start pumping out of rhythm, but factors which can affect cats with heart conditions include; stress, heat, and exercise. After another night in the hospital, Bruce discharged Weezy home to me.

Since then we have had no more incidents, Weezy is a happy, naughty, cheeky little cat. He takes his medication every day like it’s a treat. I check his heart rate and rhythm at home regularly and give Bruce regular updates.

Having Weezy has changed my whole life in a number of ways, I’ve never had a pet before of my own, and none of my family pets have ever had any illnesses. Although I work with sick pets every day, having one of your own is very different and it gives me a whole new perspective on the way we look after our clients and their pets. I have grieved for him before he has gone, and I have nursed him.

The vets here, Anna and Bruce, saved Weezy’s life, they were fast acting and so, so clever. Weezy is now 6 years old! If someone had told me, that day in August, that I would still have my boy at 6 years old, I would never have believed them, but today after work I will go home and I will give him his tablet and his dinner, he will take 2 bites of it and then come and climb all over me, knock my glasses off with his aggressive head boops and lick my face like a dog.

Scarlett RVN