We've had our cat Jimmy for 6+ years and before that he had been found living on the streets and then became the clinic cat at my vet's office for a year. He was making wheezy sounds back then and the vets put him on Prednisilone. He's been on it for most of the last 6 years. An xray was never done when I first adopted him and it was just assumed he had asthma. Recently, I brought him into the vet because he wasn't doing well and they did a chest xray. The vet was surprised that he had been diagnosed with asthma because his lungs didn't show any signs of it. They kept him on the pred though because he also has Irritable Bowel Disease and it is helpful for that.
We've tried everything from changing his litter to wheat, corn, other grains to pine and back to scoopable. We've used air filters and have him on hypo allergenic food. Nothing ever changed and he remained wheezy. He still plays and has fun but breathes heavily at times.
Over the past few months Jimmy started vomitting up water. Thankfully the Medi-Cal Hypo Gastro food he is on has all but cleared up his IBD and he is making normal poops now instead of diarrhea. But he is coughing now. It is a little cough and he doesn't even open his mouth but he does it every 10 minutes or so.
I took him to the vet and they did xrays. She showed me the bronchial donuts that were in his lungs and said that she believes he has bronchitis instead of asthma. She put him on a higher dose of prednisilone and then I was to wean him down to every third day. She thinks that the bronchitis could be causing him to throw up.
He is still vomitting up water and still coughing after weeks on the higher dose. I called the vet again today about it and she is now wondering if he might be dealing with lungworm! She said that it's possible this is what he's had the entire 6+ years and it could have been misdiagnosed as asthma etc.. I do have two other cats who cough (Oliver and George) and I've brought them in to the vet because of it and it was thought that it was probably just hairballs. But they cough alot and the vet is now saying that maybe they too have lungworm.
She is prescribing Panacur for all my cats and she said that within a week, there should be some improvement if it is lungworm.
If there is no improvement she will try Jimmy on broncodialator tablets.
Does anyone know if lungworm can be seen on an xray? I'm wondering if those little donut things could be parasites? Or maybe they are just the bronchial things that are inflammed because of the parasite??
p.s. it was also recently discovered on the xrays that Jimmy only has one working kidney. It is enlarged and doing all the work while the other one is all shriveled up. But the vet doesn't think the vomitting is due to this. I'm wondering about that though.
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