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Asthma in cats is exactly the same as asthma in people and is treated the
same. I was diagnosed with asthma last year, and it took a month, 3
antibiotics not working, and 4 cough medicines and decongestants not working to
figure out my bronchitis that didn't clear up after a month was actually an
asthma attack. Mine is triggered by birds, dust mites, house dust, and
spring air. It can be tricky to diagnose in both people and animals.
Shortly after I got sick in the end of January last year, I took on a
kitten (Elrond) with an enlarged heart that "nothing could be done
for" who was only supposed to have 3-6 months to live, according to the vet he
was taken to. I have other cats with enlarged hearts who are doing
beautifully on atenolol, so I took him to my internal medicine vet and found out
his heart is fine with an ultrasound (they just did a chest x-ray at the first
vet before I got him. 2 weeks after the IM vet visit, I was diagnosed with
Asthma. I was doing spring cleaning to keep myself moving to keep from
getting pneumonia when I was diagnosed, and I continued on while I was doing the
nebulizer treatments every 4 hours with albuterol. 3 weeks after I was
diagnosed, I brought a stack of old magazines out to go through them and throw
many of them out. Some were dated 1997 and hadn't been touched since
1997. I plunked them down on the end table, then Elrond bounced
up to see what I was doing, took a couple big sniffs of the dust on the
magazines and went into a full blown asthma attack. I had some
aminophylline and prednisone from a cat with lung cancer a while ago, so I gave
him a 1/2 dose of those (1/2 what the cat with cancer got - he was twice
Elrond's size), and I watched him overnight and took him to the vet the next day
to get him started on meds and get a proper dose. Now, he'll have a week
or two where he wheezes a lot, then go for a couple months without a
cough. We seem to be triggered by the same things. When I'm having a
hard time outside, I can guarantee Elrond is going to start if he hasn't
already, and when I see him wheezing, I know that there's a good chance I will
be too soon.
When we were both getting our asthma settled down initially last year,
Elrond would come up and sit with me while I had my albuterol. I'd hold
the mouthpiece up so some of the mist would waft across his nose, then he'd take
a couple cautious sniffs, then stick his nose into the end of the mouthpiece I
wasn't using and inhale deeply. When he started feeling better, he'd
bounce off and go play. It was a bonding thing. He won't do that
anymore, but he is usually very willing to get his breathing treatments.
Albuterol nebulizers are easier to use on cats than an inhaler.
Nebulizers sold for animals are much cheaper than the ones sold for people, and
they're virtually the same thing. I have an asthmatic cat who uses mine
when he has attacks and also gets 5 mg pred 2x/day and 100 mg aminophylline
2x/day. I keep a small carrier set up with packing tape over the vents -
with two openings on each side at the back of the carrier, and packing tape
wrapped around the grid on the door. I have the mouthpiece of a hand held
nebulizer going through the door grid and I hook up the medicine cup with 3cc's
albuterol (.083% - the standard dose for people too) to the mouthpiece from
outside of the carrier. Once I have everything ready (I keep a carrier
taped up with a mouthpiece through the door all the time and just have to get
out the nebulizer pump and medicine, and medicine cup - it's very quick that
way) I put Elrond in the carrier and turn on the pump and let it run until all
the medicine is out of the cup (takes about 15-20 minutes). There's no
problem with not getting enough air - even with the pump off. The gap
around the door is untaped, there are a couple open vents toward the back, and
then there's the mouthpiece letting some air in. I usually tape up the
opening on the mouthpiece that lets you exhale without blowing it back into the
medicine cup, and it's important that if you use one that closes itself off when
you are not inhaling that you rig it so it stays open (there's usually a button
you can push on or tape down) or hold it open - otherwise, no medication
will leave the cup (found that out the hard way - luckily, it only took a minute
or two). You can just cover the carrier with towels also, but I like being
able to see through the tape better - I can see if he's okay without letting out
the mist. I hope they don't put the poor guy down just for this. It's very
treatable once they know what it is and realize that using a vaporizer on them
doesn't do the same thing as a nebulizer. It took a while for my regular
vet to figure that one out. My regular vet bought a nebulizer after I left
mine with them when Elrond needed to stay there for a night or two once or twice
when I had to go out of town. They saw how much better the nebulizer
worked and got one because they have other patients with asthma too.
In a message dated 3/15/2005 10:24:40 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I sent a message for my sister on a yahoo site for asthma -hoping I would get some advice like here-but I was just trying to get some help in a bad situation and no luck. I got one response from someone and it was more or less advising me that they are not a vet -which I knew already but I guess they were just trying to get me familiar with their site. Where there's Life, there's Hope
Kathy "There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and there is nothing so gentle as real strength." ~ Sir Francis de Sates |
