How To Train Your Cat To Accept An Asthma Inhaler 

We discovered the same thing. In our case, the sound of the puff has never seemed to scare the cat-but the forced movement of air in his face made him pull away. We put a thumb down in the mask, to cover the hole where it joins the chamber, then do the puff, then gently remove the thumb.

These two tips have helped me and Minnie the most. Jill and Smadaf, thank you. I hold the device off to the side and say a bit loudly , okay let's do it, while doing the puff. And as Smadaf says, I put my finger down into the mask all the way through to the green tip while pushing the puff. This helps keep the med off the mask including the short connecting tube. Minnie does NOT like the smell of the med. Then I smear some tube (churu) chicken puree all around the inside of the mask. Also wipe off the finger. This seems the most successful so far. Also clean it all right away after, so it's dry for the next session. Thanks you two!

Can you please share the brand of toothpaste you use or an Amazon link to it? Can't find anything malt flavored

How's it going after 2 months? I just started and I'm freaking out trying to get him used to it

I really hope it worked out. I know it's not really helpful for this specific situation anymore, but it is always, always, ALWAYS worth checking to see if there are instructional videos from the manufacturer for whatever you're using. The makers of the AeroKat have a whole series of videos on training your cat to use an inhaler spacer. There are a lot of helpful details that you just can't fit in a 4 minute overview. And unfortunately the missing parts are details that might be helpful for a cat that's more fearful. I don't think there was any explanation of why the "muzzle" cue was being given or how to use it. It's also important to wipe their faces clean after treatment to prevent any irritation from the residue, particularly to the eyes, which brings me to my biggest concern here: The mask should never extend over their eyes during treatment because the medicine can get in their eyes that way. So a pediatric mask may only be preferable if you have one of those poor flat-faced kitties and you cannot get a good seal with the cat-specific mask. I've seen vets advise against using pediatric products because the masks are improperly sized/shaped for most cats and the flow indicators are not sensitive enough to reliably respond to the smaller capacity of a cat's lungs. So if your cat's breathing is too shallow to see well, you may not be able to count how many breaths they've taken And they might not get enough medicine. (My understanding is that the standard prescription is 7-10 breaths 2× daily. At the very least, that's what my cat's been prescribed and the impression I got from her vet.) I only have her rescue inhaler right now but I've been trying to find out how to get her started because she came to us as a pregnant stray and has not enjoyed being handled for medication. We have some oral steroids to manage symptoms while her maintenance inhalers are in transit. I'm going to train her kitten (5 months old) to take treats from the mask so she knows it's safe. He's probably at increased risk to get asthma too, so having him comfortable with the mask early isn't a bad idea either. I hope it never matters for him though.

Vets only want your money

He might have pain related to his teeth if he doesn't like his head being touched. Did the vet ever do a dental x-ray on him? FORL is really common in cats, you can't see it just by looking at the teeth and it causes a lot of pain that goes unnoticed

I believe the wet food in the syringe that Samson is enjoying is : Hills Prescription Diet "urgent care" a/d. Hills a/d canned food is for supplemental feeding only; it is a nutritionally dense food that is pork & byproduct-based and can be fed to cats, dogs, or any carnivore, I assume ;) It is intended for recovery care or getting a finicky kitty to eat. It's supposedly highly palatable. The consistency is very smooth, somewhere between baby food and regular pate cat food. I have fed it to many kittens and cats over the past 18 years, many times by syringe. I always keep many sizes of syringes and a few cans of a/d because you never know! You do need a rx from your vet and the food is not cheap or nutritionally complete for the main diet. The idea to feed "nectar of the cat gods" through a syringe through the mask is 🌟BRILLIANT🌟 we have been using tiny pieces of freeze-dried chicken breast and pill pockets, but if we had known that trick, I bet my 16+ year old DLH, Miata, would have made more progress in fewer sessions. Remember to always keep it a positive and yummy bonding experience!

I wanted to know the same thing but I seen that there is no response. :(

If your vet prescribed an inhaler and never told you that you could administer the inhaler at home, but just kept charging you money to do it at the office, then maybe it's time for a new vet.

Arrêtez cette marque de croquettes et cela ira mieux

@Daniel Vanzin no unfortunately. I had to go back to pred .75 twice a day. She still has asthma attacks daily but no respiratory distress which is good but keeping her on pred is not ideal due to its side affects with long term use. She tolerated the aerokat a few times but those were rare occasions. She is still having wheezing and near attacks when i try to give her flovent with the chamber and hides under the bed.

@Daniel Vanzin thank you, I'll try to keep it a little farther from her face but im worried she won't get enough medicine

Ava Lt, maybe some of our story will help you. Our cat was on prednisolone for months, while we figured out how to get him to take his inhaler. The first ideas we encountered, at the vet and online, just weren't working. What has worked for us is Temptations treats. These are sold at supermarkets and come in two kinds of package: a resealable pouch (like a zip-top bag) and a tall, clear plastic box. The box costs less per treat than the pouches, but it has three problems. The first problem with the box is that, once you tear away the clear plastic seal, which is under the lid, the container doesn't seal anymore: there's a little 'door' in the lid, and when it's closed you can look right through the gap at the corner of the door. If you buy the box of Temptations, immediately transfer them to an airtight bag, to help them stay fresh (appetizing!). The second problem with the box of treats is that it's rigid: as you use up more and more treats, ever more space in the box is empty space, where air, even with the lid closed, makes the treats go stale-and, again, the solution is to move them all to an airtight bag right away. The third problem with the box of treats is that it contains so many: even if you move them all to an airtight bag, by the time you've used them all up in inhaler training and inhaler administration, you will have opened the bag so many times that the ones toward the end will be significantly less fresh than the first ones you took out, when the package was new. So things may work better if you buy the small pouch of Temptations instead. Open the pouch just long enough to remove the treats you will use in one session of training or administration, and immediately close the pouch. Squeeze the air out, fold the empty portion flat over the part filled with treats, and zip it shut. When you store it, keep the flat, empty part under the rest, to inhibit leaks. It may be a good idea to associate the treats exclusively with the inhaler. If your cat knows she can hold out and get treats at some other time, without all this inhaler silliness that humans bring along, she may resist the inhaler part of the deal more than she would if accepting it were the only way to get treats. I get out about nine treats and put them in a little white glass bowl with me while I kneel on the floor. The bowl is there for five reasons: to keep the treats together, to make them easy for our cat to see (dark treats in white bowl on dark floor), to keep them off the floor, to give me a hard surface against which to break the treats in half, and to take the crumbs that result from the breaking. Then I break one treat in half, put half of it in the lip that runs around the rim of the inhaler mask, and put the other half on the floor and hold the whole inhaler affair (mask attached to chamber (spacer) attached to inhaler; let's call this trio "the apparatus") near the treat that's on the floor. This is before I've done a puff; this is to reduce the chance of wasting puffs: if he eats the treat on the floor and then eats the one in the mask, it's likely (but not certain) that he'll continue to go after more treats, when I put them in the mask after quickly doing a puff. Sometimes he doesn't want to play the inhaler game, and there's no point in spending money on puffs that he ends up not taking. There are three reasons to break the treat in half. One is that it exposes the inside, which is more enticing than just the outside. The other is that the smaller, half pieces work better at getting him to dig his face in to the mask in a way that means he gets the drug: a whole treat, not broken in half, is too easy for him to remove from the mask quickly. The third reason is that, once he has gotten it from the mask, it takes him less time to eat, so be puts his face back into the mask (for the next treat) sooner. The drug in an inhaler is a very lightweight powder: it is a powder, not a gas (just the propellant is a gas), and it does eventually settle, so we want our cat to inhale with his face in the mask as many times as we can get him to, as soon after doing the puff as possible. (A note on buying inhalers. Living in the United States, we've found that the cheapest way to get fluticazone inhalers for our cat is to order them from Northwest Pharmacy, which is based in Canada and focuses on mailing prescription drugs to people in the United States. If your cat has insurance, maybe you have a cheaper option.) Continued . . .

. . . Continued. If he refuses these first two half-treats, we try again later. (Hunger helps.) If he takes them, then I break another one in half, do the first puff, and put the treat in the rim (or put it in the rim and then do the puff). I always make a point of letting him watch what I do with the treats. (Sometimes he goes after a treat in the mask, can't get it out, and stops trying. When this happens, often it's because the treat has moved to an area that he can't reach. When that's the case, I tilt the apparatus down and gently shake it, so that the treat falls back down into the rim. He often thinks there's still no treat there after that, and doesn't bother to put his face in, so I just pretend to get another piece from the bowl and pretend to put it in the mask; the mimed movements do the trick.) While he's digging his face in the mask for this treat, I may start breaking another one in half. In the past, I would break all the treats for that session before I even got down on the floor with him, and this was fine. Later, he became a less reliable inhaler-taker (more on that in a moment), and so I started breaking only one treat at a time, because I didn't want to break each treat until I had a good sign that he would be willing to go after it in his inhaler mask right then. While his face is in the mask, I keep a close eye on the little flap, at the mask end of the chamber, that indicates air movement. I always make sure this side of the chamber is turned upward, not facing the floor, so that I can see it. When the little flapper valve moves, it means the cat is inhaling the contents of the chamber. If the valve isn't moving, he's getting little or nothing from the chamber, regardless of how much air he may be inhaling from elsewhere. At the beginning of each inhaler session, make sure the apparatus is free of treat crumbs. It should be, if you shook it out at the end of the previous session. Also at the beginning, before you do any puffs and treats, you can put the mask over you own mouth and inhale, to make sure that the little flap moves. Sometimes it gets stuck; your powerful, human inhalation can unstick it, so that it's sure to move when your cat inhales with her face far enough in the mask. Anyway, you'll have to experiment with both the height of the apparatus (above whatever surface your cat sits on for taking her inhaler) and the angle that you hold it at, so that she puts her face far enough in, and at a good angle, so that there are moments when her face is pressed well into the mask and her inhalations are pulling air (and medicine) from the chamber. Cats breathe a lot when they eat-so, if your cat is pursuing a treat with her face in the mask and you don't see the flap moving, it probably means she isn't sealing her face against the mask. Try other angles and heights, and you should be able to find a combination where many of her breaths are opening the flapper valve as far as it goes, a full 90 degrees. When I give our cat his inhaler, we usually do it on the kitchen floor, next to a stack of two heavy boxes. The stack of boxes has two benefits. One is that the top edge of the bottom box is a good height to hold the apparatus at, so that our cat makes good facial contact with the mask: the box makes it easy to remember exactly how high to hold it; we just go for the top edge of the bottom box, rather than try to guess what height. And the stack of boxes is heavy enough that I can hold the apparatus in one hand, pressing it against the stack of boxes, to keep it stable despite the pushing movements from our cat as he seeks the treats, while I use my other hand to break the next treat in half. The stability really helps: think about how it would be for you: would it be easier to lick food (without using your hands) from a bowl that was glued to a wall, or from a bowl that was hanging on a rope that wouldn't hold still? Continued . . .

. . . Continued. Anyway, when he's had about eight half treats from the mask after the first puff, I shake the inhaler again and do the second puff, and then we do about eight more half treats. Really, I keep it up as long as possible, because I want him to get as much from the puffs as possible; but he usually stops after about this many half treats, probably because of the 'whisker fatigue' that comes from putting his face in the mask. (When I see a RU-vid video, such as this one, in which the mask is only on the cat's face for three or four seconds, and the cat inhales only three or four times, I don't know what to think. Our vet said that one dose should be a puff, fifteen inhalations, a second puff, and fifteen more inhalations.) Whenever I do a puff, I - take the inhaler out of the chamber - shake the inhaler vigorously - put it back in the chamber - put my thumb down into the mask, completely covering the hole where the mask connects to chamber - do the inhaler puff - gently remove my hand - present the apparatus to our cat. I have big hands. If your thumb is too small to cover that hole, then another option is to use the palm of your hand to cover the big, open end of the inhaler mask. Press firmly enough to seal you palm against the mask, but don't press so much that you deform the mask: if you compress the mask, then the first thing that will happen when you remove your hand and the mask springs back into its normal shape is that some of the content of the chamber (the expensive drug you've just put into it) will be sucked out and wasted. That's also why you should remove your hand *gently*. Another option is to use a flat area of your arm, your leg, or your belly, to cover the open end of the mask: again, don't deform it, and do move gently. At the end of the session, wash the mask gently with your fingers, warm water, and mild dish soap. Unscented soap may be better, because scented ones may be unpleasant to your cat. Speaking of treating the mask gently: Early on, our cat tried to use his hand to get a treat from the mask, and made a small tear in the silicone. This got bigger as the months went on, until finally we had to buy a replacement mask. The replacement actually has a better design than the first mask, but anyway I want to warn you against letting you cat tear the mask with her claws. Continued . . .

Get a wide neck syringe it’s easy.

No, the dose is too high

Take some kibble out of their regular meal and use them as treats. That way they do not increase food intake and stay healthy

I thought she mentioned Hill's ID.

@@lj7167 Hills A/D. I'm gonna try meat baby food~~

Maybe mush normal cat food with a spoon and add some water to it. Then suck it up in the syringe.

That was probably the dumbest thing you could have said.

wrong, the x rays clearly show asthma, I have both bad allergies and asthma. allergies don't make you wheeze. When my cats having an episode, it looks like a violent hairball, but they are horse and coughing. My other cat has allergies his eyes weep a lot, he sees the vet, and it's allergies, nothing else, and he doesn't do this.

I wish my cat just had allergies. Unfortunately, he had X-rays done that showed bronchial patterns in his lungs, which is associated with asthma.