Hairball- scary, help

After my cat had her ears cleaned (there was a struggle!), she ran off to clean herself. She has intermittenly made a strangling noise and at one point, her tongue was sticking straight out. Did I hurt her while I was holding her? Is she trying to heave out a hairball? Stress-induced asthma? She has been dealing with a URI the past month, though she has improved mightily, there is a lingering sneeze.

It's really scary sounding and looking. When she had her tongue out, it seemed like she had trouble breathing. And the noise was awful.

She is playing with the the turbo-charger right now...so she seems okay.

Jasper does that sometimes, the vet said it was just hairballs (he makes a loud honking noise at the same time and his chest heaves), is it a long or a short haired cat?

My cats are domestic shorthairs. So is it a good or bad thing that I haven't seen a hairball so far? It's happened a few times in the last couple of weeks to varying degrees. The one I described was by the far the scariest.

Could be either - maybe your cat is still working on it, passed it in stool,... or coughed it up under your bed/behind the sofa.

There are things you can do. You can get an paste/hairball aid to make it easier to pass them. Increase fiber in the diet and/or switch to a higher quality of food if they're on a lower-mid quality one and have a lot of shedding. And most importantly this time of year, brush more - brush all the cats. I've noticed that not only do mine groom each other, if one of them loses a tuff of fur while playing sometimes another cat will come along and try to eat it... (maybe some sort of left over behavior to hide scent from predators? - like some cats peeing and pooing in sinks and tubs ).