Feline coughing

[Linda and Bear Man]

Bear Man has had isolated episodes of coughing over the last three days, under various circumstances: After being pilled and syringed with water - I assumed he aspirated a bit of water, while lying quietly in his bed, while drinking water, after I picked him up with my hand under his chest, and after climbing from his stair onto the bed. Since we are in a holiday weekend with the vet closed for three days, I took him in to see the vet last night. His heart and lungs sounded normal, temp was normal, and his chest X-ray was normal. Bear has multiple health issues (IBD, hyperthyroid, CRF, CP, pyelonephritis, anemia, hypertension - on meds, Cushing's disease secondary to steroids, some neurological issues, etc) and takes multiple meds. My civie is getting over a 3 week bout of URI, which involved sneezing, but no coughing. The vet doesn't know what is causing the coughing, but has asked me to try to catch it on video (unlikely, as it is so sporadic). He coughs with his head down, not with neck stretched out and head up. The vet said that asthma is a possibility, since he has so many inflammatory issues, but that his coughing posture is not characteristic of asthma. Does anyone have any thoughts on what could be causing this?

 

[Hillary & Maui (GA)]

Wow. I don't know what to suggest, only that maybe it could be asthma - it does come in many forms and really is an inflammation of the bronchial tract (or something like that).

I hope you can figure out what's going on and help him feel better.

Poor Bear man.

 

[Dawn & Nova]

Asthma is a possibility.. not all cats act the same I guess.. one of my kitties has HCM.. so when he started coughing often we thought it was the end.. his heart specialist was shocked during his ultrasound that he wasn't in full on heart failure (he likes to be half-assed about it.. to confuse all his doctors).. I caught an episode on video and posted it for the doctors to see.. and got back "uuh.. we don't know what that is".. chest xrays can help diagnose it..but the cloudiness is very difficult to see sometimes.. with Jerry we ended up just trying using an inhaler for a while.. and it helped a lot and a while later another xray showed the faint sign of cloudiness had cleared up.. so that's where he got his dx from..

Anyways.. here's the video I posted.. he's in a weird position grooming at the time, so it looks sort of funny.. typically his neck isn't stretched out as far.. but I've never seen him raise his head for an attack.. it's always lower.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEPojGkfQHU

I felt pretty bad when the inhaler helped so much.. he'd been doing mini-versions of that for a while..and I assumed it was hairballs until I noticed him really starting to feel crappy day to day.

 

[tuckers mom]

My asthma cat Sam doesn't cough, ECID, he swallows, he could be just sitting on his perch and make this swallowing motion, no food or water, just swallowing air, it's kind of strange that way.

My HyperT kitty Keesha, she used to cough a lot, no asthma on xrays. My vet said that hypert is a growth of the pitituary gland, which we knew, but she said that sometimes that growth is a little lower than expected, that I still don't understand. She felt that Keesha's cough was from the enlarged gland.

Another thought, maybe allergies. Could that cause coughing?

 

[OptOut]

I've just learned much more than I've ever wanted to know about Feline Heartworm and coughing is a symptom. You could add a heartworm test onto his next set of bloodwork. Hopefully, it's nothing.

I saw Bear-man's outdoor pics - he looks so very happy and content to be in the sun! :smile: