|
|
|
CHRONIC UPPER
RESPIRATORY INFECTION |
|
Andromeda and her brother Orion both came down with an
upper respiratory infection shortly after we got them, which didn't surprise us since one
of their littermates had been ill. Orion recovered quickly, but Andromeda continued
to sniffle and sneeze and periodically get a fever despite several rounds of
medication. She was about 8 weeks old when she first got sick and it wasn't until
she turned almost nine months old that the symptoms finally ceased. She wasn't
miserably ill the entire time, of course: it's just that the sniffling and congestion
never went away. |
|
We delayed having Andromeda spayed since her condition
made her a surgery risk, but when it was apparent she'd recovered, we scheduled her.
Naturally, she went into heat several days before the appointment and made an incredible
amount of noise. |
|
She had several more upper respiratory infections in
the second year of her life and seemed to catch them at the drop of a hat. We think the root
cause of her problems may have been a herpes virus, but we'll never know for sure. She
recovered quickly from the later infections after being put on antibiotics, which doesn't
make a whole lot of sense if she had a virus. |
|
When she
had infections, Andromeda produced an amazing amount of snot, and since she's a friendly, people-oriented cat, she
tended to sneeze all over us. I'm sure she didn't understand why we screamed and
ran... |
|
Fortunately,
she seems to be over the infections now. If they crop up again, or
if I have another cat with chronic upper respiratory infections, I'm
definitely going to try alpha interferon. It's being used more and
more often in cases like this and we had great results using it on Penelope
when she ran into the same problem. |
|
|