My cat might have asthma

lisahe

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Thank you so much! I literally just got Leo's diagnosis and prescriptions yesterday, so I haven't really had a chance to research options yet. I really appreciate knowing another legitimate source.
Thank you very much to both of you! Yes, I'm in the US. Two others that have been mentioned a fair bit are Inhouse (which is in Vanuatu rather than Canada -- I'd love to just go pick it up!) and Northwest. At a quick glance, Canada Drugs Online (I put in the link again since yours split rachbu! that's one of my favorite tricks!) has lots of certifications/security pluses and accepts checks and money orders. The payment methods are important to me: I don't want to have to call with a credit card number and even though a money order takes a trip to the post office, it's very safe. (I've also noticed that some pharmacies also seem to prefer money orders because they're easy to handle.)

I also want to see if there's a compounding pharmacy nearby that could do this at a reasonable price. My vet's office said that sometimes happens. (Though it's probably least likely with inhalers.)

(You can probably already see that I tend to overresearch everything, which is why I hate shopping and why I see inhaler procurement as a bigger stumbling block than teaching Ireland to use the inhaler! Each option has its pluses and minuses and of course I want to know all of them!)
 
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Azazel

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I hope your cat is still doing well, Azazel!

I found this thread because I searched asthma... Yesterday Ireland had a dental cleaning and the vet said her lungs still sounded noisy, as they had in July for her annual exam. We'd been doing "watch and wait" since July. Given the noisy lungs, we had the vet do an x-ray while Ireland was still anesthetized. The x-ray showed some relatively minor inflammation. What @WillowMarie writes about their cat is very similar to what the vet said about our cat:



What's especially similar here is that Ireland also has only had only a few minor coughing incidents in the last 5.5-6 years. She had her first -- that we knew of -- a couple months after we adopted her. She had two of them and they were longer than anything that has happened since. The first time, I thought she was trying to get rid of a hairball, the second time, I started googling about what else might be wrong and happened upon Fritz the Brave's site. I immediately switched the cats' litter to Dr. Elsey's Respiratory Relief, which has helped keep Ireland under control, hardly coughing at all (other than when I've seen her inhale her own fur while grooming, things like that) for nearly five years. She hasn't even coughed much this year, only three times and only very briefly, no wheezing or distress. We hadn't been in the room with her before any of those incidents so don't know if she might have sniffed up dust or something else. (She loves to snarfle stuff up.) What can make this so confusing is that the disease can apparently be there without the cat show many signs at all.


All of this fits what our vet said, too, both in terms of possible diagnoses (there's more than one) and treatment (the same for either diagnosis), and in terms of Siamese. Is this your lynx point, Azazel? (Ireland is ours!)

In any case, our vet recommended Aerokat and an inhaler (Flovent) as a preventative measure and we're going to do that. I admit that I don't really want to do it: though there don't seem to be many side effects of Flovent, I'd rather not use medications. But even though the x-ray shows Ireland's disease is fairly mild, her coughing has been very minor thus far, and she runs fast and plays hard without any difficulty, it's obvious that her disease has been progressing, almost entirely invisibly, over the years. I don't want it to get worse.

I write all of that as a sort of case study on what happened in our "watch and wait" case. To be honest, as much as I'd rather not do the inhaler, I've known all these years, since those first coughs, when I did a fair bit of reading, that this was likely to happen. I really hoped I was wrong! I hope things turn out differently in your cat's case, Azazel!
Thanks lisahe lisahe for sharing your experiences. Yes, this is my lynx point that I've been referring to in this thread. I do think that the next step for us would be an x-ray and I am thinking of getting one next time we are at the vet. I heard that anesthesia is not necessary for a chest x-ray if the cat isn't too worked up? I hope this is true.

My girl has been doing fine. She still hasn't had another episode. When my vet saw her she listened to her breathing and said that she believes that the issue is in her nasal passage and not in her lungs. This makes sense because she's had a chronically stuffy nose since I've gotten her and the occasional watery eye. I guess I'm just not convinced at this point that the episodes I experiences were asthma attacks because they didn't look like a typical asthma attack (although I'm not ruling it out). We do regular check-ups at the vet every 6-12 months so I'm just going to wait until the next checkup in the Spring where we will get blood work done. I'll request a chest x-ray too. My vet still believed that you can't diagnose based on a chest x-ray alone so she wanted to see how the symptoms play out.
 

lisahe

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Thanks lisahe lisahe for sharing your experiences. Yes, this is my lynx point that I've been referring to in this thread. I do think that the next step for us would be an x-ray and I am thinking of getting one next time we are at the vet. I heard that anesthesia is not necessary for a chest x-ray if the cat isn't too worked up? I hope this is true.

My girl has been doing fine. She still hasn't had another episode. When my vet saw her she listened to her breathing and said that she believes that the issue is in her nasal passage and not in her lungs. This makes sense because she's had a chronically stuffy nose since I've gotten her and the occasional watery eye. I guess I'm just not convinced at this point that the episodes I experiences were asthma attacks because they didn't look like a typical asthma attack (although I'm not ruling it out). We do regular check-ups at the vet every 6-12 months so I'm just going to wait until the next checkup in the Spring where we will get blood work done. I'll request a chest x-ray too. My vet still believed that you can't diagnose based on a chest x-ray alone so she wanted to see how the symptoms play out.
I'm very glad to hear she's doing well, Azazel! I'd thought it was probably your lynx point: she and Ireland seem to have a lot in common. (Including a bit of stuffiness and an occasional watery left eye, things I've always chalked up to her having a URI right after we adopted here.)

I don't know about anesthesia and chest x-rays. Ireland definitely gets worked up (well, either that or she's totally, absolutely docile at the vet's) but all things considered, it worked out great to have her x-rayed while she was still out after the tooth cleaning.

I think it's great that you're going to request the chest x-ray. If it shows nothing, you'll have peace of mind and a baseline for later. (Ireland's lungs, for example, had sounded fine up until July 2019, when they suddenly sounded noisy.) Actually, I feel a strange relief now, just from knowing what we're dealing with (at least sort of, as mentioned above, since there are lung disease overlaps!) and what the options are. I think I mentioned before that I've had asthma in the back of my mind ever since Ireland coughed those two times (with by far the worst symptoms she's ever had) almost six years ago. Although of course I'd always hoped she'd never need any sort of treatment for her lungs, I'm glad this didn't progress too much.

Fingers crossed for your cat to continue to do well!
 
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Azazel

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I'm very glad to hear she's doing well, Azazel! I'd thought it was probably your lynx point: she and Ireland seem to have a lot in common. (Including a bit of stuffiness and an occasional watery left eye, things I've always chalked up to her having a URI right after we adopted here.)

I don't know about anesthesia and chest x-rays. Ireland definitely gets worked up (well, either that or she's totally, absolutely docile at the vet's) but all things considered, it worked out great to have her x-rayed while she was still out after the tooth cleaning.

I think it's great that you're going to request the chest x-ray. If it shows nothing, you'll have peace of mind and a baseline for later. (Ireland's lungs, for example, had sounded fine up until July 2019, when they suddenly sounded noisy.) Actually, I feel a strange relief now, just from knowing what we're dealing with (at least sort of, as mentioned above, since there are lung disease overlaps!) and what the options are. I think I mentioned before that I've had asthma in the back of my mind ever since Ireland coughed those two times (with by far the worst symptoms she's ever had) almost six years ago. Although of course I'd always hoped she'd never need any sort of treatment for her lungs, I'm glad this didn't progress too much.

Fingers crossed for your cat to continue to do well!
My vet did mention that sniffing and stuffed nose is not usually a response to allergens and more likely a URI. She said that allergic responses will usually manifest more as skin diseases.

Trust me, I am the first person to freak out and expect the worst but my gut is really telling me to be cautious in assuming it's asthma. I will keep you all updated though, I appreciate your support!
 

lisahe

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I'm taking a brief break from another Saturday afternoon -- warm and rainy, just perfect -- spent on dust remediation! So what better time than now to post this link to an interesting article in Wired about indoor air quality?! 🙀 😱 Even though I won't be buying all these machines, it gave me some good tips on things I should be doing better with, like running the exhaust fan more.

I hope everybody's cats are doing well! :)
 
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