Good morning,
I am struggling with a new issue with my cat, Maggie, and was wondering if anyone else had any similar issues. Maggie is 16 years old. She has never had any history of sneezing or congestion or Upper Respiratory infections (we adopted her when she was 6 months old). In Feb of this year she starting sneezing out of nowhere and ended up getting so congested that she could barely breathe through her nose (we could see her mouth breathing). She would also have breathing "spasms" that she appears to not be able to control. Our vet examined her and found nothing out of the ordinary except for what appeared to be a "cold". She gave us an antibiotic and said to let her know how she did. That seemed to fix her right up for about 2 months and then it started all over again in April. This time we took her into the vet office for some xrays and also a sedated exam to see if there were any nasal polyps or other abnormalities that might explain the sneezing. They did not find anything. Since she was once again quite symptomatic (and not wanting to eat much due to her reduced sense of smell) the vet gave her a shot of antibiotics and that cleared everything up again for a time. She just started sneezing again and we tried a course of steroids to see if that might help calm things down to prevent it from getting to the point where she needs an antibiotic. It seem like maybe it was helping...but now she is right back to so congested that she struggles to breathe from her nose. I have emailed the vet again to see what she thinks, but I am wondering how we can manage this. Maggie is our only cat and she is strictly indoors. She does seem to have some allergies/sensitivities (was having skin issues) and is on a special diet for that and also for her kidneys (cleared up her skin issues and improved her kidney values). The vet said we could consider sending her to a specialist to have her "scoped" to see if they can find anything else that could be to blame. I am hesitant to do that because she is 16 years old and it would be very traumatic/risky for her. Plus they may not find anything or nothing that they can even help. Aside from the misery of not being able to breathe well Maggie seems otherwise her happy self. We just want to be able to manage these symptoms better. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance!
Lisa
I am struggling with a new issue with my cat, Maggie, and was wondering if anyone else had any similar issues. Maggie is 16 years old. She has never had any history of sneezing or congestion or Upper Respiratory infections (we adopted her when she was 6 months old). In Feb of this year she starting sneezing out of nowhere and ended up getting so congested that she could barely breathe through her nose (we could see her mouth breathing). She would also have breathing "spasms" that she appears to not be able to control. Our vet examined her and found nothing out of the ordinary except for what appeared to be a "cold". She gave us an antibiotic and said to let her know how she did. That seemed to fix her right up for about 2 months and then it started all over again in April. This time we took her into the vet office for some xrays and also a sedated exam to see if there were any nasal polyps or other abnormalities that might explain the sneezing. They did not find anything. Since she was once again quite symptomatic (and not wanting to eat much due to her reduced sense of smell) the vet gave her a shot of antibiotics and that cleared everything up again for a time. She just started sneezing again and we tried a course of steroids to see if that might help calm things down to prevent it from getting to the point where she needs an antibiotic. It seem like maybe it was helping...but now she is right back to so congested that she struggles to breathe from her nose. I have emailed the vet again to see what she thinks, but I am wondering how we can manage this. Maggie is our only cat and she is strictly indoors. She does seem to have some allergies/sensitivities (was having skin issues) and is on a special diet for that and also for her kidneys (cleared up her skin issues and improved her kidney values). The vet said we could consider sending her to a specialist to have her "scoped" to see if they can find anything else that could be to blame. I am hesitant to do that because she is 16 years old and it would be very traumatic/risky for her. Plus they may not find anything or nothing that they can even help. Aside from the misery of not being able to breathe well Maggie seems otherwise her happy self. We just want to be able to manage these symptoms better. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance!
Lisa
