Is it a hairball or is it feline asthma?

Our cat, Daisy Snowshoe (aka Kitten) has feline asthma.

One of our cats, Daisy had been trying to hack something up for a few days. Sounded like the rest of the cats we have. Thank God for the pergo-type floors as well. Nothing like waking up in the morning and entering a dark kitchen and seeing a hairy goop on the floor. We’d been giving her Laxatone for a couple days. The stuff works great for the other cats. This one was different though. She was not getting better. This morning we noticed she was struggling to breath. She was really making labored attempts at breathing. She seemed fine though. She raided my cereal bowl. Chattered like her half Siamese breed does. She just looked like she was having some trouble breathing. At 5pm, we decided to take her to the vet. I know, Sunday, wow… nice vet visit bill. We weighed it out though. On one hand we’d save 60 bucks by waiting until tomorrow but if something was wrong, we wouldn’t have noticed with the high vet bill.

Turns out it was the best thing to go tonight. We went into the examination room quite quickly. The examine seemed normal until the vet scooped up the cat and hurried off. Daisy was having asthma attacks. The vet noticed that her gums were blue. She immediately gave her a shot to clear her lungs and then put her in an oxygen chamber. I was sorta shocked. I couldn’t believe a cat could get asthma. It happens!

We hung around the vet for a while. The vet came back with these cool xrays to show us the diagnosis. (I have more on my photo blog) What an amazing feat of technology. She pin pointed the expanded airways and what she called “donuts” in her lungs from the asthma attack. I was still in disbelief. It was more shocking than the bill which was $ 500 bucks! It doesn’t matter though. We really love Daisy. She is the funniest cat we have because she talks back. She’s sassy, loves to play and loves her little life. We were able to bring her home tonight. I thought it would be a good thing to post this because there is nothing on the net that referenced asthma with hairballs. It’s a scary thing. She could have been in some real serious trouble if we had not taken care of her. We had to get her an asthma inhaler just like a human being. They have a feline adapter for it so you can juice her when she is hacking. Unbelievable!

I wanted to write and post the photos tonight because I think it makes blogging sort of more real when I see stories like this. I also thought it was cool that vet gave me the xrays on disk. They were so going on the blog…

Here’s a very informative link on feline asthma.