Hello everyone,
Let me start by telling you a bit about our cat. She is a 7-year-old black cat with asthma, which is managed with a daily dose of her asthma pump. This makes the asthma attacks very infrequent. We can go through a couple of months in between each attack, but she still has some small symptoms once in a while, like throat-clearing and small amounts of coughing. Her coughing seems to be mostly associated with her habit of lying down like this on the side of our couch Photo de stock Chatte endormi avec patte pendante à 2021162063 | Shutterstock which puts all the pressure on the chest and makes her cough. Also, since about a couple of months after we got her (2-3 years ago), she has had a patch of missing hair on the belly, very similar to the second picture of the black cat here Fur-Mowing (Feline) - Mar Vista Animal Medical Center. We tried hypoallergenic food for months, which did not make a difference. We also tried steroid medication for a couple of weeks, but she got sick before the end so we had to stop. She does not show any signs of anxiety other than this one. She is not scared of people or sounds and we could not find anything causing anxiety.
As for now, she was seen by the vet about a month ago for symptoms that could either be respiratory or gastrointestinal, it was hard to say. Her symptoms were mostly lip-smacking, some gagging/retching (it sounded like a weird mix of coughing and stomach contractions), vomiting (or coughing) clear foamy liquid only, but with no loss of appetite. When she was resting and we started petting her, it made her purr, which caused the retching/coughing to start again.
We went to the vet, got an x-ray and bloodwork and everything seemed fine, they gave us some antacid medication and gastrointestinal food. Things slowly got better over the next days and weeks but we never felt like she was back at 100 %. She is not lethargic and does not seem in pain, her coughing and appetite are normal. We just mostly feel like we can never get her back to a point where she seems 100 % fine, and also her overgrooming and asthma has ups and downs, which means we are never sure when we should be worried or not. Also, about two weeks ago, she started sitting next to her water bowl and slowly drinking small amounts over 5-10 minutes, when she usually just went to the bowl, drank all the water she had to drink and went away. I saw that this could be a sign of kidney problems or diabetes, so I called my vet and asked if they could look at her bloodwork results from a month ago. They did and told me that the glucose and other signs that would point to kidney problems were all perfectly in the middle range where you want them and that it usually would take more than a single month to degrade to a point where you would see symptoms appearing.
Their water fountain broke a month or two ago, and I bought a new one, I guess we will see if it solves the water bowl situation.
I realized I don't really have a specific question. Would you worry in our situation or would you just monitor to see if anything starts getting worse?
Let me start by telling you a bit about our cat. She is a 7-year-old black cat with asthma, which is managed with a daily dose of her asthma pump. This makes the asthma attacks very infrequent. We can go through a couple of months in between each attack, but she still has some small symptoms once in a while, like throat-clearing and small amounts of coughing. Her coughing seems to be mostly associated with her habit of lying down like this on the side of our couch Photo de stock Chatte endormi avec patte pendante à 2021162063 | Shutterstock which puts all the pressure on the chest and makes her cough. Also, since about a couple of months after we got her (2-3 years ago), she has had a patch of missing hair on the belly, very similar to the second picture of the black cat here Fur-Mowing (Feline) - Mar Vista Animal Medical Center. We tried hypoallergenic food for months, which did not make a difference. We also tried steroid medication for a couple of weeks, but she got sick before the end so we had to stop. She does not show any signs of anxiety other than this one. She is not scared of people or sounds and we could not find anything causing anxiety.
As for now, she was seen by the vet about a month ago for symptoms that could either be respiratory or gastrointestinal, it was hard to say. Her symptoms were mostly lip-smacking, some gagging/retching (it sounded like a weird mix of coughing and stomach contractions), vomiting (or coughing) clear foamy liquid only, but with no loss of appetite. When she was resting and we started petting her, it made her purr, which caused the retching/coughing to start again.
We went to the vet, got an x-ray and bloodwork and everything seemed fine, they gave us some antacid medication and gastrointestinal food. Things slowly got better over the next days and weeks but we never felt like she was back at 100 %. She is not lethargic and does not seem in pain, her coughing and appetite are normal. We just mostly feel like we can never get her back to a point where she seems 100 % fine, and also her overgrooming and asthma has ups and downs, which means we are never sure when we should be worried or not. Also, about two weeks ago, she started sitting next to her water bowl and slowly drinking small amounts over 5-10 minutes, when she usually just went to the bowl, drank all the water she had to drink and went away. I saw that this could be a sign of kidney problems or diabetes, so I called my vet and asked if they could look at her bloodwork results from a month ago. They did and told me that the glucose and other signs that would point to kidney problems were all perfectly in the middle range where you want them and that it usually would take more than a single month to degrade to a point where you would see symptoms appearing.
Their water fountain broke a month or two ago, and I bought a new one, I guess we will see if it solves the water bowl situation.
I realized I don't really have a specific question. Would you worry in our situation or would you just monitor to see if anything starts getting worse?
