Cat has lots of congestion and is constantly sneezing.

leo&ivy

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Hi!

This past September, my cat Leo (who is now almost 2) randomly started to have sneezing fits. The sneezing proceeded to become more frequent and came along with congested sounded breathing.

I brought him to the local vet who gave him a supplement to help boost his immunity for upper respiratory issues. This had no effect.

He then went on antibiotics for a week or so. Still no effect.

I was then referred to a specialist at a pet hospital. The first visit, they took swabs of his nose and eyes to check for any bacterial infections. Came back negative.

The next step was to bring him in to check for polyp and take tissue samples + remove tons of mucus that had been built up.

Nothing conclusive really came from the last procedure. No polyp or foreign objects. I guess he just has inflammation in one of his nostrils that causes him to overproduce mucus.

When I got him back after his procedure, he was fine for a few days (since they had removed all his excess mucus) but shortly after, he was back to the same symptoms.

There are times that he sneezes so much, I'm not sure how he's managing to breathe. Often there's so much mucus that it gets all over his whiskers or the floor around him.

As a solution, they've given me a liquid oral antibiotic and a liquid steroid to drop into his nose. However, I haven't given it to him yet because it's going to be a stressful experience for him to get all these drops and medications into his mouth and nose every 12 hours. I also can't imagine giving him tons of antibiotics are good either. I'm just really hesitant about what is the best course of action, but it's really hard to watch him struggle to breathe all the time. I need to do something...

Plus, it doesn't seem like these things are going to fix the issue - just treat the symptoms. I can't imagine there's NOTHING I can do to make him better without giving him nose drops for the next 15 years.

Should I seek other opinions? Has anyone else dealt with something like this?

BTW, his behavior and other health is amazing other than the sneezing. He eats, drinks, goes to the bathroom, plays, etc.
 

EmersonandEvie

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See if the medications that your vet prescribed do the trick. One round of antibiotics won't hurt him. He may respond very well and will give you and him some relief! You never know until you try. :)

You can also see if sticking him in the bathroom with the shower turned on as hot as it will go will help him. Steam treatments do wonders for humans and they worked well when Evie had a really bad URI.
 

mrsgreenjeens

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I'm wondering if this could be allergies? When my allergies are bad, I'm constantly sneezing and needing to blow my nose. Has anyone suggested trying an allergy medication to see if that helps? Just a thought. Otherwise, I'm not really sure why the antibiotics since they didn't work before, but certainly the liquid steroid drops might help since they should reduce inflammation. But I'm with you that this is a bandaid for the real problem and it would be nice to find out what the real issue is.
 
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