When I got home last night, the SO said the cat was sick. Shallow breathing, rapid heartbeat, lethargic. I took him to the vet this morning, and got there before they opened.
An X-ray shows no obstruction to his windpipe, and his diaphragm is where it should be. His digestive tract looks normal. His heart is clearly audible on the left side, but slightly muffled on the right. I can hear occasional rales when he breathes. The X-ray shows the top of his lungs to be clear, but there is some cloudiness lower. He’s an indoor cat, and there are nothing new in the house that he might have eaten. We did move the SO’s old furniture into the house Sunday, but he’d lived with that furniture for years before she moved here.
The vet says that she doesn’t know what’s wrong. Sometimes cats suddenly develop asthma. She’s very worried, and says it’s ‘dangerous breathing’. She asked the dreaded question, ‘How far do you want to go?’ She gave him a steroid shot to try to ease his breathing, and an antibiotic for good measure. She is keeping the cat at her office, and instructed her staff that no other animals were to be put into the cage room. She turned off the lights there, and said she’d check in on him throughout the day and call us with developments.
Harvey had a crisis, and they almost lost him. He brought up lots of fluid from his longs. No smell to it, but there was a slight tinge of blood. She gave him a little epinephrine to open things up, though it increases blood pressure and heart rate. He’s on 4 litres of oxygen per minute, but he doesn’t like the mask. She wanted to put him into an oxygen cage, but hers isn’t big enough. There’s one about 10 or so miles away, but she doesn’t know if he’d tolerate the trip. She was going to rig up a box, but he wasn’t having it. She thinks it’s better not to stress him right now. She says the next couple of hours are critical.
