Cat Wellness Exams & Parasite Prevention | Nashville Cat Clinic, TN

WELLNESS EXAMS & PARASITE PREVENTION

Comprehensive Care for a Healthier, Happier Cat

At Nashville Cat Clinic, our Wellness Exams & Parasite Prevention are designed to keep your feline friend at their best. With gentle, thorough check-ups, we focus on early detection and prevention to ensure your cat lives a long, happy, and healthy life. From head to tail, our caring team looks after every detail to support your cat's well-being with the compassion and expertise they deserve.

"Keeping Cats Healthy, One Checkup at a Time"

Proactive Care for a Lifetime of Purrs

At Nashville Cat Clinic, we know that cats are experts at hiding illness and discomfort, which is why we’re here to help. Your cat is a cherished member of your family, and like you, we want them to enjoy a long, healthy life. We recommend annual wellness exams and staying up-to-date on vaccinations to ensure your cat’s health is always in good hands. Unfortunately, nearly half of cats in the U.S. don’t receive routine checkups after their first year, and often, cats are only brought in once symptoms appear. With regular exams, our experienced veterinarians can catch potential issues early—providing more treatment options and improving recovery outcomes for your pet.

During your cat’s wellness visit, our veterinarian will perform a full-body examination, looking closely for any signs of health changes. For senior cats or those with ongoing health conditions, we may suggest more frequent visits to ensure we’re on top of any changes that may need attention. Additionally, we recommend annual blood work for cats of all ages. This proactive approach allows us to monitor their internal health and detect diseases in their earliest stages, giving us the best chance to manage conditions and keep your cat happy and thriving.

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Fleas and Heartworm disease

FLEAS

Ctenocephalides felis/canis

The flea life cycle is 3 months long and resembles that of a butterfly (egg, larva, pupa, adult). NOTHING can kill the pupal stage. Fleas can stay in the pupal stage for a very long time until they sense the environment is suitable for them to become adults (ex. If you leave your house for the winter and reside elsewhere, the fleas will stay in the pupal stage until your return in the spring). Fleas hatch out in response to heat, pressure and carbon dioxide.

Fleas jump on the first shadow/heat signature that passes by—this may be your pant leg. They will continue to move from shadow/heat signature to shadow/heat signature until they find a suitable environment. This is how and why EVEN INDOOR ONLY CATS can become infested with fleas.

If ONE animal in the household has fleas, they ALL have fleas—EVEN IF YOU DON’T SEE THEM!! All animals in the household must be treated for 3 consecutive months minimum.

Most of the time you will not see adult fleas on cats because they groom themselves so well. This does not mean they do not have fleas.

Some animals are more sensitive to fleas than others. That is why you can have 2 cats in the same house and one is itchy and chewing/scratching themselves raw, but the other one doesn’t seem bothered. Some cats are actually allergic to the flea saliva, so 1 bite from 1 flea can make them very itchy.

Fleas can carry tapeworms. If your cat has fleas, you should watch his/her stool very closely for proglottids (tapeworm segments). Proglottids look like little pieces of rice, but they move.

HEARTWORMS

Dirofilaria immitus

Heartworm is carried by mosquitoes. Even INDOOR ONLY cats can become infected with heartworm disease (~40% of cats that are diagnosed with heartworm disease are indoor only).

The 2 most detrimental times for the cat during the heartworm life cycle are when the larvae are travelling through the lungs to get to the heart (75-90 days after infection) and when the adults die and are pumped out into the lungs. The lungs are the shock organ in cats and respond very viciously to the heartworm adults and larvae causing a major inflammatory reaction. These cats develop HARD (Heartworm associated respiratory disease) which can look just like asthma or allergies. When in this stage of heartworm disease, the cat feels like it is breathing through a coffee straw. In some cases, the cat does not show any symptoms of heartworm disease but will suddenly die.

There is no good test for heartworm disease in cats because cats are not the ideal host and because of the small number of worms that infect cats’ hearts. Cats typically will only have 2-3 adult worms in the heart, unlike dogs who get thousands of worms in the heart. To get a positive on the heartworm test you must have antigen which is made by female worms. It is possible, because of the small number of worms present, that the cat could have an all male heartworm infection or not enough females to make enough antigen to show up positive on the test even though they are infected. It is also possible that there are no adult heartworms present, and therefore no antigen, if the larvae are causing the symptoms. Unlike dogs, cats do not typically have microfilaria (baby heartworms) circulating in their bloodstream because of the likelihood of same sex worm infections and because their immune system attacks heartworm larvae/microfilaria so viciously, so we cannot use this as a secondary testing method. Adult heartworms typically live a 2-3 year lifespan in a cat’s heart.

The best thing to do for cats is to PREVENT heartworm infection in the first place by using monthly, year-round heartworm prevention.

Heartworm prevention works in a different way than flea/tick prevention. It actually works backwards or “in reverse”. When you give the heartworm prevention, it kills any heartworm larvae that the cat has been exposed to in the last 30 days. It can do this because these are immature larvae that can be killed by the active ingredients in heartworm prevention. The longer the larvae are allowed to survive in the body, the less likely the prevention will kill them. Heartworm prevention DOES NOT kill adult heartworms. This is one of the major reasons it is SO important to give Revolution/Advantage Multi on a monthly basis and on time.