Snakebite: Mistaken Cause of Death
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007A nice female cat was brought to us. She was very subdued but not distressed. She had been seen playing with a snake which had been killed and thrown away.We could find no symptoms of envenoming but clearly something was wrong. “Take her to the veterinarian at once and someone go fetch the dead snake.”
It was an African Tiger Snake, venom so mild that it would not cause any problem to a cat or human.
We rang the vet to tell him and he said the cat was dead on arrival! A postmortem showed that she died from a heart defect that had been overtaxed as she played with the snake.
The cat’s case had a sad ending but it was not caused by the snake’s venom. Never assume that snakebite was a cause of death; you might well be mistaken!