Serious Cat Cough

[noviceman1]

We have 2 rescue cats,the younger cat is causing us a great deal of concern.A few months ago following a coughing bout he started vomiting quite a lot of blood.
There followed a further episode even worse than the first one,he became so distressed that he emptied his bowels as well.
Obviously we took him to the vets and treated it as an emergency.They kept him in overnight and did a series of tests on him.The diagnosis was that it could be a number of things the worse one being a tumour.The vet gave him a steriod injection and told us to come back in a months time.The injection did help him, but he still coughs, but dare i say,so far with no blood.
The understanding is that he can only have a very small amount of these injections.
We have got ourselves in quite a state with him because every time he starts to cough we are concerned he may bring up blood again.
The vet has told us that if he has another one of these episodes it would be kinder to put him to sleep.
As you can imagine we are on a knife edge and really do not want to lose him.
Has anyone out there had anything like this with their cat or pet.
We are both going crackers watching him all the time,any help would be very greatly appreciated.

[friedgreentomato]

I would seek a second opinion, they would surely be able to tell from Xray and tests if he had a tumour or not.

It was wrong to give the cat the injection and then say but we will have to put him to sleep as we can't give many of these injections.

Do you have another vets near by?

[noviceman1]

Thank you friedgreentomat,i did do my homework regarding the vet i went to.The vet is a very experienced "cat man" and I hope I put it over pretty well as to what actually happened.
I wondered,as you did,why a tumour could not be spotted from the tests they did,but as i understood it would involve a more involved type of test,and at he end of it all we would have to ask ourselves were we prepared to put the cat under so much stress.
If it was a one off sort of thing we would go ahead but.....we do not know if there was a situation where there could be secondary problems.
I should have emphasised that the cat is very nervous and stressed most of the time,he does not like being picked up even,and nearly broke out of the pet carrier on his journey to the vets.
Thank you so much for your interest and advice.

[wolf63]

My cat has an ongoing cough. He has been diagnosed with feline asthma. He gets regular steroid jabs and they help control it. No blood though.

I started him on daily inhalers. Actually giving the inhaler was simple. Catching him to give him the inhaler was a nightmare.

The steroid jabs have many long term problems - but my vet said that if it improved his quality of life NOW it was worth the risk.

F.A.B. is an excellent site. http://www.fabcats.org/owners/disease.php and Petethevet on facebook can give good advice.

It is such a worry. Frankie sounds awful when he is coughing.

Good luck