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I have been through three practices here and four vets and had a long distance consultation with my vet back home. My cat has has more drugs, more shots, supplements, incorrect and incomplete diagnoses and I'm listening to her raspy breathing right now. We called our latest vet yesterday early in the morning and left a message, but all they told us was Do you want to make an appointment? N-O. We want to know what will happen when we show up, money in hand? Shall we "try" another antibiotic - the one that I found out, when I got home, was the same one that we gave up on a year ago?
My cat's diagnosis is asthma and chronic rhino sinusitis. These are two separate things. I went, over 2 years go, to the vet because she was coughing hard, a lot. I looked up pictures of coughing cats online and all the asthmatic cats looked just like mine. The first recommended vet was taking standing patients with - get this - an 8-12 week wait time. The next vet, recommended by the first, said oh, that's not a cough; that's laryngeal spasms. She could have (reeled off a long list of stuff ending with cancer). They gave her amoxicillin and she was herself again in 3 days. Six months later we went back and more amoxicillin, but not as much effect and not as soon. Next episode got Azithromycin, effectiveness dropping all the time.
Back again, congested, runny nose, coughing, and she got Covenia and depo-something combination injection. It was great. Gypsy was young and happy and bouncing off the walls. It lasted two weeks. Had a conversation about not continuing to pump my cat full of drugs which were half helping. I asked for a long term plan and other suggestions. Well, a bad tooth could be exacerbating the sinus stuff, needs anesthesia. A nasal flush could let them culture for anything and look for possible foreign bodies, needs anesthesia. An x-ray of her head might show tumors or polyps, needs anesthesia.
We arranged to do all three at once, one anesthesia - with reservations about how much a regular x-ray would show in her head - and when we arrived on the day I said where is the pre-op? We can do pre-op, they said, and the only reason I left her was that she's tougher than nails and I wanted the tooth and the flush. An hour later or so, I get a call that they did chest x-rays and found "pathology." What, I asked, precisely, does "pathology" mean. Something bad. We can't anesthetize a cat with this pathology. (current vet said it would be pretty stunning if they got chest x-rays without anesthesia)
I went to get her and asked to see the x-rays. Nope, no drs available, x-rays on machine in room where they're working. I said I'll wait. So they got a tech to take cell phone pictures of her x-rays for me. Not ideal at all. There were two vets in this practice that bounced us back and forth and said conflicting things and fully two weeks later neither of them could tell me what was on the x-ray, the x-ray tech wasn't ruling anything out.
So I called my old vet and asked for a second opinion.
One look at the x-rays and he said that's asthma, nothing else presents like that. Almost two years later, undiagnosed. He said get to an internal medicine doctor. Looked them up, 75 miles the closest one. we asked at our practice and they said they called and couldn't get us in. We said a few choice things to them and called the hospital directly and were told that they do NOT have an internist on staff. I could try some places 100 or more miles away. By then Gypsy was on another combo shot and feeling well again.
I asked around for another vet, asked at work, online, everywhere, and went to a new practice, highly rated. Got a woman who had had a cat with just what Gypsy has and she said I can get you to the 100-mile internist today but you will spend a lot of money and nothing is likely to change. She gave prednisolone, as recommended by our old vet at home, for the very obvious asthma on the x-rays, and more Covenia by injection and we had the last period of really good health. However, the nose never stopped running and she was breathing worse, rasping, and two or so weeks back we went in to see another vet (ours on holiday vacation), who said well, we'll try another antibiotic and up the prednisolone dose, add an appetite stimulant. Call and let me know how she is.
When I came home and saw it was again azithromycin, my heart sank. All along, I have said the same thing to all of these vets: Gypsy is 14 and I won't put her through too much. If she has cancer, I won't do chemo or a big operation, just make her comfortable until we can't. If the sinus thing is - as all the vets told me - almost impossible to pin down and resolve, then make her comfortable. I look at her every day and find she doesn't look the least bit comfortable any more.
We have a vaporizer under where she sleeps, running 24/7 steam - just plain water steam (she hates the shower thing). She's eating small amounts at a time all day and night and will happily accept any treat, using her box, drinking water, but mouth breathing, rasping, coughing horribly and we called the vet to let her know how she was (other than eating a little better, she's the same). Well, the second vet is out, do we want to make an appointment? No. We want to talk to a vet. OK, one is in on Tuesday, the other on Monday. Do we want to make an appointment?
I kept asking around and have an appointment, for a fresh new approach (if my poor girl makes it) with a holistic vet for next Monday, the 20th. Neither of the latest two vets, or anyone else at the practice, has called us back. The advice from whoever is answering the phone is if your cat is sick, go to the emergency vet (35 miles). I'm considering it, but not feeling like dealing with any more vets, any more drugs, and I'm not leaving her alone in a hospital. They could offer an inhaler or some oxygen, which I think someone should have done already, so I'm going to continue considering it.
I'm torn between more nonsense or just waiting until she's ready to go. I come home from work each night and put tiny dabs of vaseline on her sore nose (from licking) and anything crusty, then get a warm wet cloth or cotton ball and a small flexible baby comb and between she and I, we get her face clean and her coat brushed and her ears cleaned. She perks up and talks and eats some, watches TV and seems happy for a few hours, but the nose keeps on running and eventually she just rasps off to sleep over her vaporizer.
Through all the above, every vet hounded me relentlessly about a rabies shot and I'm so put off by the idea of them at this point that I think I'll go either for that last visit to let her go or I would try the holistic vet if Gypsy is up to it, but otherwise they can all go to blazes.
I would asap take her to emergency vet now. If she is laboring again this much, time matters. You can call the new vet & request a call in should a person cancel but this wk sooner than 20th, til then if you can get her ANY relief -- do it today! Why wait? Gypsy has suffered enough w/ lousy vets & meds, etc. so give a shot to any vet that will eval asap today. I know it'll cost but her life outweighs it & you know I know what I speak of. You can always make more $ to make it up -- you can't EVER make another Gypsy if she can be helped at all now.
Please take her asap if you guys can today. Gypsy is counting on you, as who else would go to the extremes for her but you two. Paws crossed for this poor little girl of yours & we all here, for sure, await asap info on the vet. Hang in there.
Take it from me, moist air is the worst thing for asthma, makes it worse. I had a really bad chest cold and ended up at urgent Care because I I developed asthma like symptoms. The Dr, who had asthma herself said moisture makes it worse. I had been going in bathroom and steaming it up with the shower because it felt better temporarily, but I was making things worse.
Pr9ednisone and inhaler and a dose of pre-emptive antibiotics because I was close to getting pneumonia.
What kind of kitty litter is being used. I've heard that some cats can have reactions from dust from kitty litter, also highly perfumed litter. I use a walnut based litter that has been issues with some cats and can not be used for caged animals like hamsters because of the constant contact will cause breathing problems. Maybe a change to newspaper litter, something with no dust might help.
Last edited by Izzie1213; 01-12-2020 at 07:01 PM..
Take it from me, moist air is the worst thing for asthma, makes it worse. I had a really bad chest cold and ended up at urgent Care because I I developed asthma like symptoms. The Dr, who had asthma herself said moisture makes it worse. I had been going in bathroom and steaming it up with the shower because it felt better temporarily, but I was making things worse.
Pr9ednisone and inhaler and a dose of pre-emptive antibiotics because I was close to getting pneumonia.
What kind of kitty litter is being used. I've heard that some cats can have reactions from dust from kitty litter, also highly perfumed litter. I use a walnut based litter that has been issues with some cats and can not be used for caged animals like hamsters because of the constant contact will cause breathing problems. Maybe a change to newspaper litter, something with no dust might help.
Thanks about the moist air - the problem with both conditions at once is moist air is the first thing anyone recommends for congested sinuses.
I use Exquisicat fragrance free micro crystal litter. I use E cloth products for cleaning, no chemicals. I clean the cat box with blue Dawn.
When I first fostered my current cat the previous owner told me that she had a chronic chest congestion problem, and had to be put on antibiotics a lot.
I noticed that she had this gagging behavior - she'd jerk her chin forward, you'd recognize it as the same behavior a cat would display when she's getting ready to throw up a hairball. But she wouldn't throw up, and it looked like she was having trouble breathing when she did that.
That was just one of many problems she had, including a nail fungus that wasn't ringworm. So she was taking meds, and having to deal with me cleaning her nails every day and applying ointment that she'd just lick off anyway - she was a mess.
Anyway - fast forward a year and her fungus still comes and goes on her dewclaws, and she's almost completely stopped the gagging behavior. I concluded that it wasn't a chronic congestion problem - it was an allergy of some kind that she'd been living with in her previous home. Possibly scented litter. I switched to unscented around 4 months after getting her, and switched her to all-wet meals, with a grain-free kibble only as treats and at least 2 raw meals a week.
The combination of all of this, and possibly her just "growing out of it" seems to have solved the problem.
Hopefully your cat will recover fully from this ordeal but I have to agree with NYC refugee about moist air. Absolutely not an option for asthma.
My first thought, like others, was an allergic reaction to something rather than a chronic disease of some sort. It could be anything "usual" such as food, litter, water or it could be something less usual like carpets, rugs, laundry detergent, soap, candles, furnace/airhandler filters, etc. ... our air-tight energy-efficient homes do not breathe. Is there any way to give your kitty exposure to fresh air often?
I do open windows for her, even in winter. Sometimes any closed up house will feel stale, even if it's below zero outside. I don't use fragrant things or cleaning chemicals if I can avoid it because I think you get enough indoor pollutants just from cooking and breathing, etc. No carpet, only rugs are doormats.
Vet - current and past - agrees it's allergy-based, but can be almost impossible to track down the cause. I've just recently changed food in hopes of alleviating some and can't find the litter I used to use where I lived before, so have the closest thing.
What I truly do not understand is why vets are so ridiculous about cats with asthma??
You can get online, and it's commonly said on many sites that an asthmatic cat will benefit from inhalers, like Flovent and Albuterol. You can buy the AeroKat spacer on Amazon, to administer those. I got lucky. Stupid lucky. My son was diagnosed and given prescription inhalers for years, but his asthma got better and better, and he stopped using the inhalers without even telling me he had. One day I went into his bathroom and opened a drawer that I had no usual reason to get into, and there were a ton of inhalers. I questioned him about this, and he hadn't been using them for ages! So we had quite a stockpile, and when the cat began having his attacks, I took him to a vet, and I told him that I knew what these attacks looked like, I showed him a video online and said, "It is exactly like this" and first the vet wanted to insist it was hairballs. It wasn't. I argued. Then they wanted to give him a cough syrup. This made it worse. Frustrated and internet-capable, I read about cats and Flovent and what the dosage would be, and luckily my son's inhalers were the right dosage. Albuterol, too. I first went back to the vet and told him what I'd discovered and asked if he'd prescribe Flovent since the cough syrup was only making things worse. And he told me, "I don't prescribe meds that expensive for cats. When a cat costs someone that kind of money, they abandon it or have it put down. I won't do it." Even though I was willing to pay!! Nimbus is family to me, not just oh whatever he's a bit costly let's kill him, jeezus, no! Ugh. So. I ordered an AeroKat spacer. And I started giving him my son's asthma meds, which my son did not use or need anymore. And we've done this for a long time...but now we've run out. And the attacks are coming back.
I know I need to get my boy in and try again to get a vet to give him what he needs, though it's going to be a different vet this time. I just don't understand why this is so hard??? I will pay whatever it costs, for medicine that works, why won't they prescribe it?
NYC refugee ... what kind of flooring do you have?
Old vinyl.
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Gypsy is counting on you, as who else would go to the extremes for her but you two. Paws crossed for this poor little girl of yours & we all here, for sure, await asap info on the vet. Hang in there. 
