The Start

If you've found this blog, it's likely that you have a pet diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Your furry family member has heart disease and may have recently gone into congestive heart failure.

You're not alone.

Nearly one year ago, we went through the same experience. Our seemingly healthy cat Gypsy went into heart failure. It was the beginning of a journey that would prove to be eye opening, educational and extremely difficult.

We've been moving along on the advice of Gypsy's cardiologist (yes, a cat cardiologist) and what we can find out online and from other people. Information is limited. There are many articles detailing the disease itself, symptoms and prognosis, and they're great resources in the early stages. We haven't found much offering advice for the day-to-day management of the disease though.

That's why we decided to start Save Gypsy. Our hope is to help others out there who have decided to try to manage their pets' heart disease. The blog will be specific to our experience, which is with a cat. This shouldn't be taken as medical guidance or prognosis or anything of the sort. We're simply sharing what has happened along our journey in hopes that something we've learned along the way may help someone else.

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Gypsy's Story

In November 2013, my boyfriend Thomas and I took in what we thought was a lost cat. We gave her shelter/food in the face of serious winter weather. She showed now signs of being a feral cat, so we thought she may have owners out there searching for her. We put up flyers and sent out emails but to no avail. With no plans to keep her (our house was already full of rescue animals including three dogs and two cats), we began attempts to re-home her. 

Then the unimaginable happened. Our sweet, energetic, bright-eyed, TEMPORARY boarder went into congestive heart failure. 

We rushed her to the nearest animal hospital, and they gave her a very bleak prognosis - five months for a cat in her condition. After a very expensive weekend at the vet, we decided to make her ours because we knew it'd be unlikely we could find someone who would have the time or money to take care of her. 

We named her Gypsy because she was a traveler without a home, which we were now determined to give her. Gypsy has gone into heart failure a total of five times since we found her. She successfully pulls through every time within 24 hours and bounces right back to her sweet, loving self.