# How to tell if your cat has asthma > Between 1 and 5 per cent of cats have it. The signs are a dry cough, wheezing, and a crouched posture with the neck stretched out — and open-mouth breathing is an emergency. - **Publisher:** VOTVS (Fair coverage for everyone) — https://votvs.com - **Author:** VOTVS - **Published:** 2026-08-19 - **Language:** en - **Topic:** Animals - **Canonical URL:** https://votvs.com/tr/articles/cat-asthma-signs - **Tags:** cats, pets, animal health - **Facts last verified:** 19 August 2026 --- Go to a vet now. Cats breathe through their noses. **Open-mouth breathing, or visible effort to breathe, is an emergency** — do not wait for an appointment slot. Everything below is from the Cornell Feline Health Center. It is here to help you recognise a pattern and describe it accurately to a vet, not to diagnose or treat your cat yourself. Cats with asthma are frequently missed, because the main sign looks like something else. Owners describe it as the cat trying to bring up a hairball — a hunched posture, a dry retching cough, nothing produced. That is often not a hairball. It is a cough. ## What you are looking for The Cornell Feline Health Center lists the signs as **difficulty breathing, wheezing, rapid breathing, coughing or hacking, and open-mouth breathing**. Vomiting sometimes happens alongside. The posture is the tell. During an attack, cats **hunch their body close to the ground and extend their necks forward**. If your cat does that and produces a dry cough with nothing at the end of it, note when it happens and how often. Presentation varies. Some cats have sudden respiratory crises. Others have a low-grade cough for months that never seems urgent enough to book an appointment for. ## Who gets it **Figure (StatRow):** Feline asthma — Cornell Feline Health Center. Sex is not a factor. Some studies suggest Siamese cats may be predisposed, but Cornell says this remains unproven — so a non-Siamese cat with these signs should be taken just as seriously. ## How a vet works it out There is no single definitive test, which is why a phone description will not get you an answer. Cornell lists chest radiographs, which can show a **characteristic bright branching pattern** in the airways; CT imaging; bronchoscopy, where the airways are looked at directly; and cytology, examining cells collected from the airway under a microscope. Part of the work is exclusion. Chronic bronchitis, lungworms and pneumonia can all look similar and are treated differently — which is the main reason self-diagnosis from a video on the internet is a bad idea. Lungworm treated as asthma does not get better. ## Treatment The standard is **corticosteroids to reduce inflammation in the lungs, with or without bronchodilators**, given orally, by injection, or inhaled through a feline spacer and mask. One detail worth knowing: **bronchodilators alone are not effective**. They open the airway but do nothing about the inflammation causing the problem, so a cat maintained on a reliever alone is being under-treated. Asthma is often progressive, and Cornell is direct that cats cannot truly be cured of it. With monitoring and the right medication, they can live comfortably for years. ## What to bring to the appointment Vets rarely see the cough, because cats do not perform on demand in a consulting room. Film it. A phone video of an episode — the posture, the sound, how long it lasts — is more useful than any description you can give. Note how often it happens, whether it is worse at particular times, and what is in the house: dust, smoke, aerosols, scented litter, a new cleaning product. ## Questions people ask ### How common is asthma in cats? The Cornell Feline Health Center puts it at between 1 and 5 per cent of cats. The average age at diagnosis is 4 to 5 years, and sex does not appear to be a factor. ### What are the signs of asthma in a cat? Difficulty breathing, wheezing, rapid breathing, coughing or hacking, and open-mouth breathing. During an attack cats often hunch close to the ground and stretch the neck forward. Vomiting sometimes occurs. ### Is a coughing cat an emergency? Open-mouth breathing or laboured breathing in a cat is an emergency and needs a vet immediately. A cat that coughs occasionally over weeks is not an emergency, but it is not normal either and should be examined. ### How is feline asthma diagnosed? There is no single test. Cornell lists chest X-rays showing a characteristic bright branching pattern, CT imaging, bronchoscopy and cytology of airway cells, plus ruling out chronic bronchitis, lungworms and pneumonia. ### Can feline asthma be cured? No. Cornell describes it as often progressive and says cats cannot truly be cured, but that with monitoring and treatment they can live happily for years. Treatment is corticosteroids to reduce airway inflammation, with or without bronchodilators. ## Sources - Feline Asthma: What You Need To Know — Cornell Feline Health Center, Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. https://www.vet.cornell.edu/departments-centers-and-institutes/cornell-feline-health-center/health-information/feline-health-topics/feline-asthma-what-you-need-know --- Published by VOTVS. Free to quote with attribution and a link to https://votvs.com/tr/articles/cat-asthma-signs.