My cat might have asthma

Azazel

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We adopted our rescue girl almost 2 years ago and she came to us with a host of issues. One of them was that she has always sounded a bit stuffed up when she breathes. The vet has listened to her breathing multiple times in the past 2 years and the conclusion has always been that the sound is coming from her nose, not her chest or lungs and that it's likely due to the herpesvirus because it comes and goes with weather/stress and she also sometimes gets discharge from her eyes. We have always just tried to manage it by making her as comfortable as possible, but really, she's a happy and playful cat and doesn't seem bothered by it at all.

Just over 2 weeks ago, she had a sudden episode where it seemed like she was either going to have a hairball or struggling to breathe. She jumped up on the kitchen counter and within seconds she was standing upright on all fours and making a wheezing/gagging sound while her abdomen was contracting. This lasted about 15-20 seconds. It freaked me out. I monitored her for the next few days and she was fine. But, about 12 days later it happened again, this time she jumped up on my office desk to look out the window and within a minute she was wheezing and licking her lips. Again, she was sitting upright and looking out the window while it happened.

Well, we went to the vet yesterday and were told that it's likely asthma. However, because it's infrequent at this point we were told to just monitor her for the time being. Our vet is very thoughtful and patient and doesn't like prescribing meds hastily unless necessary. She said to monitor her and try to get a video of it next time it happens. She said that sometimes we need to wait and monitor with symptoms in order to get a proper diagnosis - especially with asthma because it's notoriously hard to diagnose.

So we are in 'wait and see' mode... she is doing fine now and hasn't had another attack since. She was just running around playing last night and this morning. But, I'm just hoping to get some advice from others who have had asthmatic kitties. What are some things I can do around the house to make her more comfortable? Is there a chance that she's not asthmatic? The first attack was really scary because of how badly her abdomen was contracting and releasing. In your experiences, how quickly does asthma progress?

This video is the closest thing I found to what it looked like the 2nd time:

The difference between this and other typical videos of asthma attacks I've seen is it doesn't seem to be as much of a cough but more of a wheeze and she's standing upright as it happens.

And to make it more complicated - the first attack was much more like a hairball where there were rapid clicking sounds and less wheezing, except it lasted longer and nothing came up. Her tummy was moving like this, but with no tongue sticking out and it lasted for a good 15 seconds I think:

Now I'm starting to wonder if the 2 events are unrelated since they were different.
 
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WillowMarie

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I'm sorry you're going through this. It was really scary for me when my Isabelle started coughing, too. She only did it a couple times a month, too. The fact your vet wants to wait makes me a bit nervous. My vet has mentioned that inflammation in the lungs can be present even if symptoms are not present. Constant inflammation can cause scarring, which my vet believed Isabelle has a bit of due to follow up x-rays still showing some inflammation. So if you're cat does have asthma, not starting treatment can come with risks.

Have they taken an x-ray to look for inflammation of the airways? There is also a test that checks lung fluids for something specific in it that points towards asthma. I don't remember what it is called, but my vet also did that, and it showed positive, in addition to the x-ray showing inflammation. That is how Isabelle was diagnosed.

Others will comment on other possibilities. The other that Isabelle was checked for was heart problems, as that can cause coughing, too.

Some of the tips my vet gave me were to keep dust to a minimum and do not use any scents or candles. I also tried an allergy test as my cat was only showing symptoms in spring, but the allergy test showed a fall blooming plant, so it was not accurate for Isabelle to find her specific trigger.

The first vet Isabelle saw for asthma gave her prednisone. It did nothing. I changed vets and saw a cat only vet who performed the tests to determine if it was asthma and explained that many cats do not respond to prednisone and need a different form, prednisolone. She has been on it for years and the dosage gets upped in spring to prevent coughing and lowered sometime late summer to keep her on the lowest dose possible. We also tried an inhaled asthma control medication, which you can buy a spacer with funnel to fit over their mouth, although Isabelle has a stong sense of smell. The training went well until the medicine was sprayed... but many people have had success with training their kitties to use the inhaled. It is safer long term, with less side effects than prednisolone.

Good luck. You're kitties lucky you care so much about her and want to get other opinions on this matter. :)
 

neely

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She said to monitor her and try to get a video of it next time it happens. She said that sometimes we need to wait and monitor with symptoms in order to get a proper diagnosis - especially with asthma because it's notoriously hard to diagnose.
What your vet told you makes sense, glad she's not an alarmist and wants all the facts.

Our cat does something similar and one time it actually happened while at the vet. She told us it was a reverse sneeze. Not sure if it's the same for your cat but thought I would mention it. Here's a video I found, not of my own cat, that describes it:

Here is a TCS Article about asthma in cats that may be helpful for you:
Asthmatic Cats
 

MissClouseau

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I haven't read this about cats but since there is almost no worthy study on allergy & cats I think it might be worth to mention... I suspect I have asthma myself and I went to doctors about it, took those tests, etc and apparently there is asthma and then there is allergic asthma. Allergy triggers regular asthma as well but basically allergic asthma doesn't get triggered by anything else significantly, only by allergies.

To me your description sounds like if your girl does have asthma, it might be more about allergies. Maybe airborne allergens? Have you noticed anything similar on the days she got an attack? I have dust mite allergy myself and I have shortness of breath every day at some level because of this but it gets bad enough for other people to notice only some days. And higher the humidity level is, worse it gets.
 
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Azazel

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Thanks everyone for your replies. MissClouseau MissClouseau I spent half of yesterday just doing a thorough cleaning of the entire house and we are scheduling to have someone come and clean out our vents soon. I have to say that we are generally very clean - our house is very low dust and neither of my 2 other cats have had any issues so I'm having a hard time believing that it's dust allergies. The common link between the 2 episodes was that they both occurred right after she jumped on a counter or desk so I'm wondering if what neely neely is saying about a reverse sneeze or maybe just her food in her tummy moving around because she had recently ate before each episode could be the cause. I think it's just so hard to tell at this point because there have only been 2 episodes and both have been quite different.

I'm sorry you're going through this. It was really scary for me when my Isabelle started coughing, too. She only did it a couple times a month, too. The fact your vet wants to wait makes me a bit nervous. My vet has mentioned that inflammation in the lungs can be present even if symptoms are not present. Constant inflammation can cause scarring, which my vet believed Isabelle has a bit of due to follow up x-rays still showing some inflammation. So if you're cat does have asthma, not starting treatment can come with risks.

Have they taken an x-ray to look for inflammation of the airways? There is also a test that checks lung fluids for something specific in it that points towards asthma. I don't remember what it is called, but my vet also did that, and it showed positive, in addition to the x-ray showing inflammation. That is how Isabelle was diagnosed.

Others will comment on other possibilities. The other that Isabelle was checked for was heart problems, as that can cause coughing, too.

Some of the tips my vet gave me were to keep dust to a minimum and do not use any scents or candles. I also tried an allergy test as my cat was only showing symptoms in spring, but the allergy test showed a fall blooming plant, so it was not accurate for Isabelle to find her specific trigger.

The first vet Isabelle saw for asthma gave her prednisone. It did nothing. I changed vets and saw a cat only vet who performed the tests to determine if it was asthma and explained that many cats do not respond to prednisone and need a different form, prednisolone. She has been on it for years and the dosage gets upped in spring to prevent coughing and lowered sometime late summer to keep her on the lowest dose possible. We also tried an inhaled asthma control medication, which you can buy a spacer with funnel to fit over their mouth, although Isabelle has a stong sense of smell. The training went well until the medicine was sprayed... but many people have had success with training their kitties to use the inhaled. It is safer long term, with less side effects than prednisolone.

Good luck. You're kitties lucky you care so much about her and want to get other opinions on this matter. :)
Thanks for sharing your experiences! I did ask my vet if we should run any diagnostics or take x-rays and she said that there is no conclusive test for asthma. We could do some x-rays but she said that even with x-rays she still would want to wait and see how the symptoms play out because the treatment is basically to subside the symptoms so we need to see how severe the symptoms are first before she's comfortable with prescribing any drugs. I have a follow-up appointment in a month.

My vet did listen to her breathing and her heart rate and she also wants to see a video of what the wheezing episodes are like before she diagnoses. I totally get what you're saying about not waiting too long to treat, but I also do trust my vet - she's been in practice for 30 years and one of the reasons that I stick with her is because she's very thoughtful and cautious. I'm honestly not even convinced that it's asthma at this point because the 2 episodes she had were very different and neither sounded like coughs or looked like the typical asthma scenario you see in videos online.
 
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Azazel

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What your vet told you makes sense, glad she's not an alarmist and wants all the facts.

Our cat does something similar and one time it actually happened while at the vet. She told us it was a reverse sneeze. Not sure if it's the same for your cat but thought I would mention it. Here's a video I found, not of my own cat, that describes it:

Here is a TCS Article about asthma in cats that may be helpful for you:
Asthmatic Cats
This video does look a lot like the 2nd episode she had! The first one was much more like a prolonged hairball with nothing coming up. hmmm
 

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I have to say that we are generally very clean - our house is very low dust and neither of my 2 other cats have had any issues so I'm having a hard time believing that it's dust allergies
dust mite allergy isn’t being allergic to dust but dust mites. Microscopic creatures that mostly live on fabric and not die until it’s washed at 60° or higher. even then they come back. I use waterproof bed covers, special stuff just because of my allergy.

So it’s like being allergic to air. A HEPA filter air cleaner helps. And following other tips like no carpet in the house, waterproof bed cover and furniture cover if the furniture isn’t leather, special curtains or washing them weekly at 60°,... it’s a fun allergy like this :-/
 

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I like your vet's approach. Asthma is one of the most over diagnosed conditions so I like that she's not jumping to conclusions. I would however do xray, just to see how big the potential inflammation is. My vet also did the culture test to see if two common bacterias are not causing the symptoms (bortadella&mycoplasma). There are also some parasites that need to be ruled out. And, heart disease. I would do diagnostics, although I agree I wouldn't necessarily start the treatment now (some says the steroids are not needed if the attacks are mild and happen not more often than once a week). But imo it's always better to know what you're dealing with, although in some cases it's possible you won't have a definitive answer (we still don't know 100% if my cat is asthmatic or if she has chronic bronchitis or asthmatic bronchitis). Lower respiratory diseases are not easy to diagnose, but luckily, the treatment is similar. Also, if your car is in any part siamese, they are more prone to asthma than other breeds.

If you use any of the below in your house and suspect asthma, get rid of it:
- spray air fresheners (especially these automatic ones in the outlets)
- candles, tea lights, incense sticks, any other source of smoke, including fireplace
- any strong smells, including laundry detergents and similar (all of my cosmetics now are fragrance free - joy of having an asthmatic kitty). If I use anything with perfume, I make sure Ygritte is not around
- hairsprays and other strong sprays
- dusty litter

In some kitties dry air makes things worse and humidifier helps a lot (as in my kitty case), it others, dump air is the trigger and dehumidifier helps, you need to play a little detective. Hepa air filter did nothing in our case, but maybe it's because my place was not prone to dust, and also it was being self-vacuumed at least daily.

If it is indeed asthma and steroid treatment will be necessary, just know that there's always an option of inhaler that has much less side effects than oral ones.
Good luck!
 
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javi3

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Yes, like Azazel said, a quality hepa type air filter can make a difference, since it's impossible to make the air dust free by cleaning alone. The large expensive ones are best of course for larger areas, and there are smaller ones for bedrooms. I have one that uses zeolite and carbon in it's filter which is not only great for odors, but also fumes/gases/formaldehyde etc. Because I can't control what my landlord does in my place, it's really given me peace of mind for my cat especially.

If it is hairballs, I would recommend cat enzymes to put in their food. I've had my cat on a powdered product (mixed in food) for several months because of diarrhea, and I'm telling you...she is like a new cat. She's 8-9, but acts like she's a kitten now, rarely throws up or throws a hairball. Her appetite is great, energy level great, and has firm # 2's twice a day now (a little more work for me...ha..but well worth it. This particular brand has some acidophilus in it with the enzymes and my cat would always throw up from probiotics before, but not with this. It is specifically for cats, comes in green/white bottle and has the word "Good" and "Dr". in the title ( not sure if I was allowed to give brand name).😉 I started out with half dosage, then worked gradually to recommended dose on bottle.
 
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Azazel

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Thanks all. I will look into getting a HEPA filter. What’s the difference between this and an air purifier? Or is it the same thing?

We will definitely get the xrays done next time we are at the vet if this issue comes back. I think our vet was just thinking that we could wait and monitor and save money on the X-rays this time around.
 

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I will look into getting a HEPA filter. What’s the difference between this and an air purifier? Or is it the same thing?
Not all air purifiers work the same way. Some only give out ozone or something like that to deal with the smell of the house which is actually not good for health by the way. An air purifier with HEPA filter locks in the dust and dirt particles and with that the most effective air purifier for airborne allergens.
 
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Azazel

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Update time...

It’s been about 2 weeks now and she hasn’t had another one of the episodes. At this point I’m thankful that my vet was patient and didn’t want to rush into giving her meds because I’m starting to feel like the 2 episodes I witnessed earlier weren’t even related. I’m starting to think that the first one was a hairball and the second was something like a reverse sneeze. Asthma is not ruled out yet, we are still monitoring.
 

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Update time...

It’s been about 2 weeks now and she hasn’t had another one of the episodes. At this point I’m thankful that my vet was patient and didn’t want to rush into giving her meds because I’m starting to feel like the 2 episodes I witnessed earlier weren’t even related. I’m starting to think that the first one was a hairball and the second was something like a reverse sneeze. Asthma is not ruled out yet, we are still monitoring.
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 W WillowMarie writes about their cat is very similar to what the vet said about our cat:

I'm sorry you're going through this. It was really scary for me when my Isabelle started coughing, too. She only did it a couple times a month, too. The fact your vet wants to wait makes me a bit nervous. My vet has mentioned that inflammation in the lungs can be present even if symptoms are not present. Constant inflammation can cause scarring, which my vet believed Isabelle has a bit of due to follow up x-rays still showing some inflammation. So if you're cat does have asthma, not starting treatment can come with risks.
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.

Lower respiratory diseases are not easy to diagnose, but luckily, the treatment is similar. Also, if your car is in any part siamese, they are more prone to asthma than other breeds.
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!
 

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Thank you for your timely post. My rescue cat, Leo (in the picture) was just diagnosed today. I'll be following this!
 

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Thank you for your timely post. My rescue cat, Leo (in the picture) was just diagnosed today. I'll be following this!
I'm starting to think feline respiratory disease is far more common than I could have ever imagined.

I hope Leo's doing okay. And that you are, too. Despite having had the suspicion of asthma (or something similar) in the back of my mind for nearly six years, it's still kind of a shock for me, particularly since Ireland seems like such a healthy cat (almost painfully so! she's wiry and athletic) plus the realities of getting her onto an inhaler aren't easy to sort out.
 

rachbu

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I'm starting to think feline respiratory disease is far more common than I could have ever imagined.

I hope Leo's doing okay. And that you are, too. Despite having had the suspicion of asthma (or something similar) in the back of my mind for nearly six years, it's still kind of a shock for me, particularly since Ireland seems like such a healthy cat (almost painfully so! she's wiry and athletic) plus the realities of getting her onto an inhaler aren't easy to sort out.
here's the thing: Ireland IS STILL SUCH A HEALTHY CAT. And so is my Leo. This is not a death sentence--it's a chronic, manageable condition, just as it is in people. And since it seems to arise from allergies in cats, it occurs to me that our cats are really no sicker than a child with a peanut allergy. Yes, it's serious, but it's manageable. And as long as you manage it, your cat can and will live a long, happy, healthy life.

As for the inhaler, don't stress yourself or Ireland too much over it. Get her used to it gradually, and don't force it. If you can't get all 12 or 15 breaths, she's going to be okay. You can build up to where she needs to be over time.

But truly, it's most important for you and all of us to remember that these are NOT sick cats. It's something to monitor and something to be taken seriously, but it's not a disease that will cause them to live any less of a healthy, fun-filled kitty life!
 

lisahe

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rachbu, what you write pretty much fits my view of it, too! Ireland is an active cat who's healthy, other than a body part or two that aren't quite as healthy so need some extra care. :) Even the vet didn't seem overly concerned: this is just something important to do to keep her healthy.

I'm glad to have this diagnosed early on so it can be managed, particularly since we have so many polleny plant and trees where we live. Getting her to use the Aerokat is, to be honest, the least of my worries, particularly since Ireland hasn't shown many symptoms. (Since I hate shopping for anything other than books, though, figuring out where to buy the inhaler to use wiht the Aerokat is the part that feels hardest to sort! But that's just my oddity!)
 

rachbu

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rachbu, what you write pretty much fits my view of it, too! Ireland is an active cat who's healthy, other than a body part or two that aren't quite as healthy so need some extra care. :) Even the vet didn't seem overly concerned: this is just something important to do to keep her healthy.

I'm glad to have this diagnosed early on so it can be managed, particularly since we have so many polleny plant and trees where we live. Getting her to use the Aerokat is, to be honest, the least of my worries, particularly since Ireland hasn't shown many symptoms. (Since I hate shopping for anything other than books, though, figuring out where to buy the inhaler to use wiht the Aerokat is the part that feels hardest to sort! But that's just my oddity!)
Oh, well then I can help take that off of your plate! I haven't yet shopped around, but my vet took it upon himself to give me the website of a reliable Canadian pharmacy where you can get Flovent for a third of the price in the US (assuming that's where you're located): www.canadadrugsonline.com

just get a regular prescription from your vet, scan and send there, and you'll be able to order without any issues.
 

rachbu

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Just to add another option, back in 2015 when I tried the inhaled for Isabelle, my vet recommended canadapharmacy.com.
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.
 
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