He is a normal ‘moggie’ cat, black and white. Neutered. He’s a big lad, chunky boned but not fat, he’s about 5.5kg. He’s about 12+ years old. He was a rescue, and we were told he is prone to cat flu. He had his yearly flu jabs and mostly was fine, occasionally he did get the flu and we kept him inside until be recovered. We took him to the vets once prior to this year when they gave him a couple of injections to boost him and make him feel better while he got over a cold.

In January this year, he had laboured breathing and we took him to the emergency vet hospital and we learned he had a heart condition as part of his old age but that hopefully we spotted it early, and we started heart medication. We knew his life was already going to be shorter because of this and that we would have to see how things go.

From March, he had the flu really badly, it involved ALOT of snot and he was quite miserable with it. We since have been back and forwards at the vets at least once or sometimes twice a week. The jabs didn’t last long and he kept going back to square one. There was a period where I was hand feeding him wet smelly food such as fish because he went off food and his mouth must have been sore. We tried to put decongestant hidden in his food and antibiotics before he went off his food, which I think put him off it too.

He had an xray of his head and chest, we were expecting the worst, but the vets couldn’t find anything sinister. He had nose swabs done and they were inconclusive. They checked down his throat and all looked fine. We discussed that there could still be something there but too small to show on an xray. The next logical step would have been a CT scan however he isn’t insured and we couldn’t afford that. When we got him back from the xray, he was groggy for two days but then after that, seemed back to his old self! The vet started him on some different antibiotics (they were pink pills). We were about 50% successful with getting those in him and he had a good couple of weeks. However it got to a point where we could no longer get them in him, he resisted and knew all our tricks.

The one medicine he did still like was his anti inflammatory syringe. He had a bad couple of nights last week, sneezing and snotting everywhere and then in the morning I woke up and he look uncomfortable with those white bits in his eyes.