I have a senior cat who goes into labored open mouth breathing when he is in a hard purr and also has wheezing and snoring but otherwise acts normal – eats, drinks, and is active for his age. The snoring is even when he’s not in a deep slumber and it can be an airy rattle if that makes sense and he has a little squeak when he swallows. I saw your video on the cat with a polyp and thought maybe this could be what he has except that he’s almost 17 so the vet suggested it probably isn’t since that’s more of a young cat thing but did suggest a scope and CT which will cost me 2500-3500 and he will have to be put under. In reading about breathing, heart disease can also cause breathing problems and since he has heart disease I would hate to spend all the money and put him through that to be told the scope didn’t show anything. I’ve also been reading about asthma, but my regular vet nor the specialist even mentioned that it could be that and from what I’ve read, it’s hard to diagnose. He’s a flame point Siamese and he has early ckd and some heart disease (stage 3/4 systolic murmur and hypertension), so I’m nervous about putting him under. Aside from these “old man” things, the specialist and my regular vet say his labs are spectacular. The specialist said when she is presented with a cat that has these conditions, they bloodwork and labs never look this good. So I certainly don’t want to put him down if he looks good but I also feel like he can’t be comfortable with these breathing episodes. One thing to note, when they did bloodwork a couple of weeks ago, his eosinophils were elevated which I have read can be linked to upper respiratory and asthma. Im putting the link to videos of the wheezing and purring to see if you’ve ever seen such a thing in a cat. I sure wish I had you closer by. Thank you so much!
Jill

Wheezing https://youtu.be/gaf7WCRzu80

Purr/breathing https://youtu.be/kqnd4YORenY

My male approx. 8 yr old cat’s blood and urinalysis came back with some abnormal results. He has a little blood (+1 according to vet’s scale) and protein (+2) in his urine. However, we ruled out kidney failure/issues. He has passed a stone in the past and had noticeable blood then, but the vet is saying he doesn’t know if that’s the cause now and wants to treat it as idiopathic cystitis, thus no known cause = no set treatment.
For various reasons, I have had suspicions that my vet is not acting honestly in all regards (from severe misdiagnosis, offering unnecessary treatments as only options, and charging me for services that I wasn’t asked/ told about) but will be moving in a month so will see a new vet anyway.
For now though, I want to address any possible issue before the move seeing as stress may worsen it. So this vet is saying since they don’t know what the cause of the test results is but want to give me various antibiotics and meds to treat all possible causes. But he himself said that the medicine he’d put me on (Orbax, 10 day supply) has less expensive alternative options but “they don’t have flavoring so it’s harder to get cats to take them” and I’d have to potentially give it 2x a day instead of 1x. But I don’t care how often and I honestly don’t care how much it costs, but I really care that my vet is acting in the best interest of my cat NOT prescribing just because he can. What’s more, Feline idiopathic cystitis seems to be diagnosed by things he didn’t do as he didn’t culture the urine (and said he doesn’t want to because it’s only 50% accurate), didn’t x-ray, and didn’t ultrasound (source:
https://icatcare.org/advice/cat-health/feline-idiopathic-cystitis-fic).
Based on the urinalysis results and clean blood work, has anyone had any similar experiences that could be a cause? I’d rather not put my cat on antibiotics he doesn’t need and potentially mess him up more… especially if proper steps of diagnosis haven’t occurred. Any advice would be very, very appreciated!