Cat coughing after drinking

HydeRoad

Jim is a year and a half, and over the last while, straight after drinking water, he hunches down on the floor, and has a little choking fit, which seems to be more like belching or something. He doesn't throw up. He coughs and belches for a minute or so, then he is fine. He doesn't do it after eating, only after drinking water. His sister Rosie doesn't do this at all. What might this be?

The Sweeper

Cats cough for a number of reasons - hairballs are common, upper respiratory tract infections are another possibility, and a different kind of obstruction could be another reason. Unless you have reason to believe your cat could have something stuck in its throat, the first two possibilities are a hairball or a URTI.

You say he coughs after drinking water - often cats will have a hack attack caused by a furball immediately after exertion, like play with his sister - and often they'll also have a drink of water immediately after playing too, just like us. It's possible the water isn't directly linked to the coughing.

Are there any other symptoms? Sneezing, one or both eyes running, a wheezing sound when breathing? How many cats do you have, and is Jim the main groomer between him and his sister?

Hopefully it's just a hairball - try switching to either a hairball control food, or put a little vegetable oil on their existing food to help pass it through. Also if they're quite fuzzy pusses, groom them during coat-change seasons - winter to summer or summer to winter.

I find a cat's diet plays a big part in hairball control. Cats need a diet that's far, far higher in protein than dogs. The cheap, supermarket-brand catfoods and tinned foods don't have the amount of pure protein a cat needs, and soft, cooked food does nothing at all to help hairballs.

A raw diet won't suit every owner (because let's face it, what you feed them needs to suit you as well as them), and if you go down that route you HAVE to do your research and feed properly, or your cats won't get the right balance of vitamins and minerals. However, a properly fed raw diet with the appropriate supplements helps to keep your cat's digestive tract acidic and that acidic environment keeps hairballs under control.
Buy the best dry food your budget can afford for your cats and supplement with different things to keep it interesting - again you have to stick with what you can afford.

Personally I don't have the time or inclination to exclusively feed a raw diet that involves preparing the cats' dinner daily at the same time as preparing my own, so I alternate Hills Science Diet dry food with various wet foods. I tend to go for fish-based wet catfood products, as opposed to chicken or beef, because I believe there's less processing involved.

Either that, or I feed my bunch raw game meat - kangaroo, rabbit, venison - I'm in the back end of the countryside here though, so that's not as far out as it sounds. Someone local to me can go shooting and give me a bag of offcuts that'll feed my bunch for months. It goes into the freezer the day I get it, and is allowed defrost to room temperature and then mixed with a vitamin powder before it's served up. They go absolutely bananas for it, and I step it up serving-wise if I hear a hairball hack (e.g. they get it every day instead of every third day or somesuch) and it usually sorts them right out.