Asthma all of the sudden?

George is about 4 years old, and has had no recent changes in behavior, diet, BMs, sleep, etc. He's a tuxedo cat and has never had a fur ball that I've ever seen. He does have a particularly noisey snore which I've had a vet look at because I was concern about asthma in the past but he said that it was fine. But today he ran up to me, panicked and did this:   I've never seen anything like it. Did he just have something caught in his throat? Could it be asthma all of the sudden? Has anyone had something like this?

Thank you so much!

-Jenny

No increased respiratory effort/noise, or rate, so doesn't appear related to breathing. Ausculting him would better gauge that, but visually his effort and rate appear normal on the video. Gag/cough with swallowing repeatedly looks more GI related. Has he been productive yet, any hair, bile, food seen?

With asthma, stimulant/catalyst will induce higher effort and rate of breathing, notable just watching a still cat's sides heave. You see abdominal effort to inhale and exhale. This precedes and coincides with coughing occasionally, but breathing effort is the classic symptom to look for feline asthma.

Heart related breathing difficulty can appear the same as asthma, so veterinary ausculting the chest and diagnostics help differentiate the two.

George sounds more GI retch/gag than respiratory noise or sneezing on video, but difficult to discern without having him plopped in front of me in brighter lighting. Sneezing rapidly, but then not recurring or persisting, indicates slight localized irritant discharged with a sneeze.

Persistent, recurring sneezing can indicate a URI, foreign body in the nostrils or soft palate, or allergen causing rhinitis.

PS. many feline patients, as well as own and fosters, have made some loud respiratory rumbles when sleeping. Not as much as the dogs, but definitely wake themselves up with a start when it crescendos!

Thank you so much! That calmed me down a lot. He hasn't spit up anything yet.