Kitten Sneezing Blood!!

[Raeny]

Hello everyone! I'm new to this site and overall a new cat-mom. I've never owned a cat, much less held one before my husband and I got Sora, our 5-month old (indoor) Ragdoll kitten. We've had him for a little over a month now and we adore him to bits.

Problem though, is the fact that he keeps sneezing, and often times blood comes out along with a thick clump of mucus. He's had this problem since we first got him. When we first saw it, we even panicked thinking he just sneezed out bits of cartilage or something. That's the only problem though. He's perfectly healthy otherwise with a great diet, normal bowel movement, and is active (for a cat + Ragdoll). He has other forms of discharges that are irregular. He has eye mucus but it's the perfectly normal kind. We even changed his litter in case that was the cause (we thought it could be the dust though there was never much to begin with from the old brand) but even so, the problem is still there after the switch.

Anyway, we took him to 2 vets already. The first one gave us antibiotics for it without really bothering to check on him properly (in my opinion) and it didn't do anything. The lady-vet who checked him out honestly didn't seem like she knew what she was doing so we were glad to be rid of the place after that. This new vet we're at now seems loads better so far but still, the sneezing persists. Sora was prescribed Doxycycline and his sneezing did get better around that time and shortly after he finished the meds but the sneezing was still there and eventually returned to how it was before it. Now he's on Chlorpheniramine tablets (my husband brought back this new medication since I wasn't with him during the last vet visit) as well as some vitamins and supplements in the form of a powder to be added to his food as well a 2nd one that are like treats.

Basically they're just trying several things to see which helps and I assume the reason they're not doing any more "extensive" testing is because he seems perfectly healthy other than the sneezing.

I just want to know if others have gone through something similar with their cats and what they did to treat or manage it. I really don't like all the blood mainly because it worries me just seeing all that come out of one small kitten's nose (the bloody boogers, though they don't come out of him often when he sneezes [usually once a day only; the rest of the time they're just snot with bits of blood], are almost as big as his eye!)...that and I also get bothered by all the random blood stains I find from the carpet to our sheets to our clothes. Also, Sora's a VERY cuddly and in-your-face cat which I actually really love. He likes sitting on my chest and just watching while I'm reading at night or sit on my lap or on the desk when I'm on my computer (he's doing this right now as I type!) and it isn't pleasant having a cat sneezing blood on my face or having to constantly worry about that happening every time he's so close to me. lol. Any advice on this matter will be greatly appreciated!

Oh, and BTW, we live in Colorado. I don't know if that matters or not. But the air here is very dry. I wasn't originally from here (my husband and I are from very humid places; he is from Florida and I hail from another country altogether) and when we did move here last year, we both suffered nasal problems (bloody nose/boogers [sorry if this is TMI]; and we still get them regularly to this day). My husband thinks Sora might be suffering the same thing as us and that it's just the air and all the dryness since there's literally nothing else wrong with him besides the bloody sneezing. So we're also thinking of just getting a humidifier to see if it would help or not.

(Sorry for the really long post. )

 

[stephanietx]

I have a chronic sneezer and snotflinger. Most likely, the blood is from busted blood vessels in the nasal passages that have burst from all the sneezing. I would have you ask the vet to do a culture and sensitivity test on the discharge to make sure there is not a secondary infection. The culture will look for bacterial or fungal infections and the sensitivity test will tell the vet which medication will best treat it. This will stop the willy-nilly antibiotic approach. You can also request the Real PCR URD (upper respiratory diseases) test to make sure there's not some other kind of infection going on. This test will also test for feline herpes.

 

[Margret]

First, welcome to The Cat Site! You've found the best (and largest) community of cat lovers on the internet, and we're very glad to have you here. We hope you and Sora will be members for a very long time.

I'm also in Colorado, and you're right about how dry it is here - even if we weren't in the middle of a huge drought the air would be dry; the official term for the plains east of the Rockies is "semi-arid desert," and west of the Rockies you're getting close to the Great Salt Desert in Utah. stephanietx has given you good advice about medical approaches to the problem, and you should follow up on all of those. But you're also correct that a humidifier could help; it could also make you feel more comfortable. If neither the medical tests nor the humidifier find the problem for you, the next thing to consider would be nasal allergies, in which case you may want to get an air purifier with a HEPA filter, but I'd leave that until you've checked out medical causes and tried the humidifier.

Margret

 

[lutece]

Did you get your Ragdoll from a breeder? If so, have you talked to the breeder to see if they have any ideas?

 

[Wile]

One of my cats did have trouble with a stuffy nose and sneezing when he was a kitten. That was the only symptom he had. In his case the suspected culprit was the herpes virus, and he did eventually grow out of the symptoms.