18 year old female cat wheezing and hacking

Hi my 18 year old cat gypsy over the past couple of months started to hack as if she was trying to get a hairball up with no avail, but recently this hacking has turned to wheezing, mouth opening and closing during intaking amd releasing of air head pointed forward etc, I know shes an old girl and the thats the first thing a vet will say and therefore the best thing they will inevitably say is PTS, but apart from the breathing she is eating, using her tray and wandering around like some what normal, still following everyone to the fridge to see what she camn get just the normal gypsy if im honest, this is making it harder for me to come to the decision of taking her to the vets and bascially being faced with this one option, shes part of the family, has anyone else had similar issues and have had it diagnosed?

This sounds exactly like what a cat that I had was doing before she was diagnosed with asthma. She was considerably younger than your cat though when she was diagnosed, and she did well for several years with breathing treatments and medications. She died at 14 of unrelated causes. I'm not saying that your cat has asthma, but if she does, it is treatable. Even though she is older, she could live more comfortably for a while longer with treatment.

Our cat had a similar problem about a year ago. We initially thought it was a hair ball and when nothing came up after a few days we realised she was coughing. We took her into the vet and they did the usual x rays of her chest and lungs to check fluid build up. There was nothing of concern on the x rays, so the vet figured she must have an allergy of some kind. He gave us a Theophylline pill to give her for a few days and it seemed to help her. We also gave her some steam therapy which was as simple as taking her into the bathroom with me when I was having a shower and letting the steam build up in the room. We would do this for about 15 mins a day, not sure if it helped but in a few weeks she stopped coughing completely. This may not be possible with all cats as they may panic with the steam and being enclosed in the bathroom, which is not good. 

I would suggest taking her into the vet as it could be nothing or it could be the start of something chronic like asthma or an infection of some kind. If she is in good health otherwise I would not think of PTS, 18 is good age for a cat but it certainly is not too old..

Theophylline is the same medication that I gave my asthmatic cat, as well as Dexamethasone and Baytril.