Wayne,

I recently read a post from you on the felineasthma inhaled meds list and
thought to myself, "I believe he's posting in rpca" lately. Welcome to you
and Will and Heidi.

Karen,

You'll probably remember when Sam crashed in January of this year and I had
to rush him to the ER Ted. Sammy, Sam had already had a long acting steroid
injection when my Ted thought he had a cold so the Emergency Ted simply gave
him Trebutaline and kept him in an oxygen cage until he stabilized. When I
picked him up I was given the Trebutaline to use until I could get set up
with the Aerokat with Albuterol and Flovent. Sammy Sam never argued with me
about having to use the mask with the meds. You have a lot of patience and
experience with cats. I don't think you'll have any trouble whatsoever
giving her the drug. You'll need a prescription for both the Albuterol and
Flovent so you'll need to discuss this with your TED. Like Wayne, I suggest
using the Flovent until you know she's stable. You might be able to
discontinue the Flovent but until she isn't coughing at all you'll want the
steroids of Flovent. It is very very expensive. You can get it from Canada
cheaper than you can in the US. I buy from MedSave.com The Albuterol is
cheaper and you might want to get it from a US pharmacy.

Sam is currently getting 220 mg of Flovent once a day. I suspect this will
change when it gets colder and we turn the heater on. We'll see. When I
first began I sat on the floor with Sam and crossed my legs around him with
his butt up against me so that he couldn't back away from the mask. I hold
his head with my left hand and administer the drug with my right hand. Sam
wasn't as interested in treats as positive enforcement as he was with love
so I give him his drug and then love on him and pet him. These days he sees
me coming with the Aerokat and he jumps up on the cat tree and waits for me.

I had to give him some Albuterol this week for the first time in months but
we've cut the grass and stirred up a lot of dust then moved furniture about
which created dust. Also I'm more aware of the ragweed, etc right now so I
suspect that Sam is more sensitive to it as well.

If there is anything, anything at all I can do to help you with this let me
know. Feel free to email me and I'll give you my phone number and you can
call if you need to.

Give Pearl and Sugar snuggles from me and purrs to you all from Hobbes,
Selena, Lacey, Barnabus and especially Sam.

I've decided since she likes vacuuming, I think the aerokat would be
fairly easy to use. I did major clean up and new filters today. Of
course, she is prednisoned up, so this is not really a good test but
she is acting more normal this afternoon. Whenever I've taken her in
about the coughing we've gotten distracted by other health discoveries
(first the arthritis then the heart. I know heart can cause fluid build
up, but she's been doing this even when her heart looked normal on the
xrays). I'll report back. Good idea about printing out the
fritzthebrave stuff. I will definitely do that.