We are treating what we hope is just a respiratory infection (unusual cloudy appearance to one lobe of a lung.) Antibiotic will go into the nebulizer and she will need to stay in the carrier (with a blanket or towels on top) breathing it for 15 minutes. Gentamicin liquid is what will go into the diffuser medicine cup with some sodium chloride solution. I hope this will help. She (my cat Ginger) is already on two oral antibiotics. I think they are helping. Yesterday, I counted her breaths at 36 per minute, but today I counted 20 breaths per minute while she was sleeping. So that is back down into the normal range. I'm really scared though and here's why. My dear cat, Julius died on January 4, 2020. His bloodwork was perfect. He had IBD, but was taking prednisolone and had gotten completely back to "normal" eating and activity levels since starting the pred. On about December 30, I thought he was just a little "off" ... his appetite had decreased a bit and he was not his usual active self. The vet was closed over the holidays. I had made him an appointment for when they opened back up. Anyway, over the weekend he suddenly seemed to be breathing too rapidly and very quickly progressed to open mouth breathing. I took him to the Emergency Vet right away and they took chest x-rays and told me that one of his lungs was consolidated. They said they thought it was pneumonia. They started him on IV antibiotics. He really didn't respond. Overnight he ended up on oxygen and by morning he couldn't really breathe well at all outside of the oxygen chamber. By morning, since he was not responding to antibiotics, they tried a steroid injection, which also had no effect. I had to take him out of the ER vet to my regular vet because the ER vet closes in the morning and only opens at night. He was open mouth breathing all the way there. They put him on oxygen. My vet took a look at his x-rays and said she thought he had a mass in both of his lungs. We made the heartbreaking decision to euthanize him. I'm still having a hard time dealing with this shock. It was just so quick and so unexpected. He just had the most perfect bloodwork (repeatedly). He had gained weight after starting the pred and was back to a normal weight. Then this happened with his lungs.
So when I took Ginger to the vet because she's lost weight. We did bloodwork and it was all good. They did find that she had a urinary tract infection (she wasn't showing any signs of it). So we decided to do full body x-rays and found that everything looked good except one lung lobe which looks a little cloudy. I pray this is not the same thing because if it is there must be something environmental making the cats sick (and no way do we smoke! never have).
So that's a very loooong reply. Thanks for asking, Larry! I hope your kitties are doing well and Snuffles is still getting better BG numbers.
