Cat with severe coughing fits :(

[Arcadien]

I keep reaching for phone to call my vet, but hesitating in fear of large diagnostic bill. I’ll end up making an appointment but figure maybe trying to get some input here will help me decide how to handle appointment (ie how far do I let them go).

I have 12 barn kitties, so only about a $500 emergency vet budget for each, otherwise I’d have whisked my Half-Chin off to the clinic by now.

He started this coughing fit thing several months ago, and it’s gradually getting worse. more frequency of fits & more severe. In between fits, he is perfectly normal & happy. Seconds after a fit, he seems perfectly fine.

The fits are scary, he coughs hard, it seems like he’s trying to throw up, it sounds like something rattling deep in his chest & choking him. Never lasts more than 15 seconds or so.

No upper respiratory symptoms, no fever, great energy & appetite.

He is 12 years old. I googled his symptoms, and came up with heartworms or heart disease.

Of course he’s one of my favorites, comes in each night to sleep on my chest.

What is the collective guess here? Any idea how much $ to treat heartworm in cats in NJ? Just trying to prepare myself for vet’s verdict… :-/

[Judysmom]

Cat’s don’t usually cough with heart failure, nor are heartworms common in the cat. Asthma, however, is VERY common. They can diagnose it with an xray, and then they go on meds.

Good luck with your kitty

Also, I had one do something similar when he was trying to barf up a hairball. Scared the crap out of me, took him for a bunch of tests etc.

And, the same cat later died of cardiac disease, no coughing.

[oliverreed]

Long ago I had a young cat (well, 7) who died of congestive heart failure. No coughing, ever. Good luck.

[RPM]

My 15yo was diagnosed a couple of years ago with allergies as the reason for her coughing attacks. It does sound sort of like she’s trying to hack up a hairball, but she doesn’t bring up anything, and in between she is fine. Terrified me the first time, still scares me but I’ve really gotten used to it. She is not a touchy-feely cuddle cat, but sometimes I will go to her and lay a hand on her and speak softly to her and the coughing ends, and I pray, and that helps too! Really.

[paulaedwina]

Are you sure it’s not a hairball? I had a cat once that completely freaked me out because her hairball urka urka wasn’t urka urka, it was deep coughs in what seemed like a fit.

Paula

[PaintPony]

[QUOTE=paulaedwina;7049696]
Are you sure it’s not a hairball? I had a cat once that completely freaked me out because her hairball urka urka wasn’t urka urka, it was deep coughs in what seemed like a fit.

Paula[/QUOTE]

Same here. My cat sounded like she was dying when trying to get rid of a hairball! I found some hairball meds she thinks are delicious and has never had another episode.

Funny story: I woke up one night to my cat making a horrible noise. It sounded like she was injured or crying in pain. So I freak out, turn on the lights, and go running in to the living room calling her name…and she trotted right up to me with a dead(ish) mouse in her mouth! :lol: :lol:

[Arcadien]

@PaintPony, I have one that has a special “I have a critter in my mouth!” meow too.

Thanks for the responses - I do have a hairball remedy, I will try that for a couple days. The fits aren’t frequent, only 1 a night usually.

You all have given me hope it could be something not so serious, thanks.

[Lazy_Palomino_Hunter]

I had a cat with similar symptoms. He lived in a rescue foster home from 3 weeks to 11 months; he had a terrible URI at 6 weeks and nearly died. After recovering from that, he developed increasingly severe breathing issues from ~9 weeks onward. It gradually escalated over the course of a year, from slight wheezing to full on episodes of respiratory distress. I adopted him at 11 months.

After multiple sets of chest x-rays, three vets, inhalers, injectible bronchodilators, the whole nine yards… all we knew was that his coughing/breathing problems were getting really bad and repeated x-rays were showing rapidly worsening lung and heart damage.

Finally, the radiologist who worked for the (stumped) internal medicine specialist suggested that his pattern of lung and heart damage was consistent with lungworm.

Risk factors for lungworm: being an outside cat, eating infected birds. Much higher risk for animals in the UK.

My cat: a fat lump of an indoor cat who had lived indoors literally his entire life. In the Midwestern US. The theory is that he contracted it from sharing a litterbox with an infected foster cat when he was young and immunocompromised.

But lo and behold… after $1300 in diagnostics and driving all over Northeast Ohio… a $5, 10-day round of Panacur fixed him right up. He still has the occasional cough from residual damage, but I never wake up hearing him gasping for air like he’s dying.

He had been dewormed in the time I’d had him, but a normal 3 day go-round isn’t enough. Lungworm takes a longer cycle to kill.

So my advice: have a fecal done to check for lungworm eggs. Heck, you could even do a longer round of Panacur just to make sure.

[LauraKY]

There’s also blastomycosis. You need a chest xray to diagnose. It looks like cancer on the xray.

I would at least run the cat into the vet for an xray and basic bloodwork.

[Arcadien]

@LPH that’s interesting. It does seem like something is in his lung - didn’t know there was such a thing as lungworms! If the hairball remedy doesn’t help, I’ll get a fecal check done. Thanks for sharing!

[Holly_Jeanne]

I have one that has a coughing fit from time to time, usually when the weather is really hot or he’s been really active. Vet says asthma. He had a serious URI when I got him that took two different antibiotics to kick. He’s 1 1/2 and vet says it will eventually get worse but I’ve seen no change in him in the last year.

[red_mares]

I’ve got 2 Siamese with asthma/allergies. They’ve had it for 5+ years and routinely try and cough up their lungs (usually at 3am next to my pillow). My 2 aren’t real amenable to taking medication other than on their food, so it’s been managed mostly with Depo and claritan. It has gotten worse over the years. I can tell when the pollen is bad and this year I finally relented and have left the a/c on & the windows closed for them. They’re 14 & I’m not too sure how many years they have left.

[Sempiternal]

My bengal boy (3 years old) has shown signs of allergies since I got him at 4 months old. However, this year he start “coughing” violently. I freaked and took him to the vet with a video of one of the coughing fits. Vet told me that it was reverse coughing (like trying to clear his throat), which seems to be more common in dogs than cats, and given that his coughing/sneezing fits seemed to corresponde to seasons and with my allergies, came to the conclusion it was allergies. He told me to give him 1/4 of a zyrtec pill per day and see if that helped.

While I’ve had to up the dosage a little, as long as he is taking the zrytec there are no issues. No more reverse coughing, sneezing or wheezing.

[SquishTheBunny]

Start with horses, then look at zebras.

Most common thing to cause a cat to cough is asthma/allergies. Very common, and yes can cause major coughing.

URI - usually nasal discharge or a wet cough is noted…but not always.

Lung pathology such as bronchitis, pleuritis, fungi such as blastomycosis. Not super common.

Lung worms arent common, but yes - they do appear sometimes. Panacur trial should give you improvement if the budget is tight. But…again, not very common.

Heart conditions generally dont cause cats to cough…and if they do, it would be BAD and the cat wouldnt be alive to cough for 3 months.

I would recommend seeing the vet and getting some chest radiographs before bloodwork is done. Ask for dewormer (panacur) and then discuss rads. Asthma is often easy to diagnose on radiographs, especially comparedto other lung pathology. If it is - relatively easy and very inexpensive fix

[Alagirl]

My kitty bear tends to have coughing fits, very similar to the described ones.

I took him to the vet, they took X-rays and some blood I think (it was a couple of years ago) and gave me some bronco-d…some medicine to relax the broncies.

it seemed like he had an infection that triggered allergic reactions and astma attacks. The vet told me that those astma attacks can be under certain circumstances rather fatal for a cat, and that happens rather quickly.

The cat still has the coughing fits now and then, but seems to have overcome most of it.

The medicine is called Theophylline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophylline
Of course, feeding him the pill was a challenge…