Chronic Infection - Looking for Advice

Hello,
Lola, my female Balinese cat is 3 years old and ever since she was a kitten she has sneezed green and sometimes red-ish snot. She wheezes and at times when she breathes you can hear the mucus in her airways. Her nose cakes over with snot(I remove it to help her breathe), her eyes are leaky often and barely has a meow, just a scratchy or silent attemp. She is only 7.5lbs but seems healthy by the fact that she eats and drinks and also fetches a ball until Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m tired not her. Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]ve brought her to numerous veterinarians and sheâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s been on several different antibiotics which only helped for about a week and the symptoms returned. I worry a lot about her, is there any way that I can make her more comfortable. Or has any one heard of an infection like this that never goes away? Please help if you know anything about it.
Thanks,

Jeff & Lola

Sounds like she has a secondary infection caused by feline herpes. I would take her to the vet and ask for a culture & sensitivity test on the nasal discharge. The culture will tell the vet exactly what type of infection you're dealing with and the sensitivity test will tell the vet which med(s) will best treat the infection. You can also have her tested for feline herpes with the Real PCR-URD test. It's extremely accurate. You can read more about the tests on the Idexx lab page. http://www.idexx.com/view/xhtml/en_u...sts&SSOTOKEN=0

If she does have herpes, it's easy to manage. The first thing to do is to add L-Lysine to her diet. I use the powdered form of Lysine (I buy it online, but you can find it in health food stores.) and add 1/4 teaspoon (500 mg) to my kitty's food twice a day. I add a little bit of water to the wet food and the lysine dissolves when mixed together. It can take about a month to see results, but know that it does work if you give it time. The important thing is to give it twice a day so the lysine stays in your kitty's system. The normal dose is 500mg daily, but since your girl is having such a difficult time, you could bump it up to 1000mg daily.

Another thing you can do is switch her over to a totally grain-free diet. Some research indicates that the arginine in the grain helps the herpes virus replicate, thus making it even more difficult for the kitty to get well. If you can work on upgrading the diet, then you're ahead of the game.

Start with a trip to the vet, though. If your vet doubts you, then take your kitty to a different vet who'll work with you and listen to your concerns.

Hi & Welcome to TCS! I'm Natalie, owned by a bunch of cats but your story rings a bell in my head.

About 5 or 6 months back I took in a cat from an acquaintance, to foster for the humane society & adopt out. This person neglected to mention she wheezes when she breaths & continually has snot coming out her nose - and has for her entire 8 years of life!! Sophie is a purebred Himalayan, with an extremely flat face. The first vet I took her to tried multiple courses of a variety of antibiotics to no avail. Another vet did surgery (and more antibiotics) which cleared things up for about 6 weeks. She is much improved after the surgery than she was when I first brought her home. But her congestion is still there. Given her health issues, and a small litter box 'idiosyncrasy' I am keeping Sophie. I'm dealing w/ several vets currently, gathering ideas from them all. I will be getting her in for a 'snot culture' in the next few weeks to tell us which route we need to go - more about the infection & what antibiotic does it respond to best. For Sophie, the Lysine didn't help (and it's a nightmare to get in her), but with the right antibiotic I do wonder if it won't help her kick it.

Sophie is also a small cat, just under 8 lbs, which is an entire pound more than she weighed when I got her!!! She was so thin, snotty, congested, & dehydrated when I first brought her home.

I have found with my Hannah that the change of seasons causes her to be more snotty and sneezy, which just exacerbates her problems. She also wheezes and is a smaller cat with a very short snout, small mouth, and short throat. I'm sure the turbinates in her nasal passages/sinus areas have been permanently affected by the chronic snot problems.

When Hannah was diagnosed with herpes, we started a long 7-month journey of various meds and treatments to get her well. She'd be fine for about 2-3 weeks after finishing the antibiotics then would start the whole stuffy nose, gagging, projectile sneezing thing again. Finally, a very thorough (& expensive!!) vet suggested the culture & sensitivity test. That's when we discovered she had a psuedomonas infection that would've killed her if not diagnosed. We did 2 MONTHS of antibiotics and got the numbers down to an acceptable range. It flares up every now and then, about every 18 months or so, but at least now we know what to do about it.

Since that time, Hannah's been on a daily dose of Claritin. We give her 1/4-1/2 of a 10mg tablet once a day. We get the generic Wal-Mart brand and mix it into her wet food concoction in the morning. This helps with what I call the "sniffles" and decreases the sneezing on a maintenance basis.

All canned high quality diet, and l-lysine daily. Why do vets not prescribe l-lysine for these cases, I just don't get it.

I, too, use l-lysine in the pure powder form. 1/4 teaspoon is 500 mg, which is the daily therapeutic dose. Once symptoms have been controlled for a year or so you can try dropping it to 250 mg a day or 500 mg every other day.

I've been using l-lysine for my herpes boy for over 10 years, but there are still vets who never heard of it.

Lola