Sneezing Cat? 5 Effective Home Remedies

If your cat is sneezing and you're wondering what you can do about it, then you should be watching this video. Today I'm going to be showing you five home remedies that you can use that can quickly and easily help your cat at home. I'm Dr. Andrew Jones. In this channel, I show you how to naturally treat dog and cat disease to keep your pets healthy and ultimately extend their lives. And if you like what I do, please consider clicking there to subscribe to my channel. In today's video, we're featuring Jasper, who's not super keen being in the video. So what I'm going to do is just show you a couple things that you'd expect to see if your cat was sneezing and, you know, that would make sense for you to be using some of these home remedies. So the big thing for most of the cats, if they're sneezing, they've got an upper respiratory tract infection. So I'm just going to show you what, at least I'll see what Jasper will let us show you on them. So most of these guys, not only are they sneezing, you're going to see a bit of mucus or discharge here in the end of their nose. And a lot of the guys are going to have plugged up nostrils. Often too, that's going to be accompanied with weeping eyes. You're going to see discharge in the corner of both their eyes. And for most of the cats, also the conjunctiva, that red tissue around the eye is going to be swollen and a little bit red. So for most of the cats, if that's the case, and that's what your cat has, they likely have a condition called the cat flu. So I'm gonna let Jasper take off now. Thanks Jasper. And then we're going to get into some of today's remedies. So the first big principle in dealing with a cat that is sneezing, you're trying to decrease the congestion and that inflammation, is some real simple home remedies. So the first big principle is just doing added humidity. So there's a couple different options. One would be, you know, just bringing your cat into the bathroom, cranking the shower on hot and steaming up that room. Or secondarily, having some type of humidifier that's going to add additional moisture. That alone can go a long way in easing some of that congestion. What I have here, you guys, this is a humidifier. It's also used with some of the essential oils. So you can go ahead and just use warm water, or to potentially help a little bit more, you can add in a couple different essential oils. The one I prefer when we're dealing with our cats is lavender oil. So I would add into this here, I'd add in about a cup of water. Show you here. So it fills in about that space there. I'd add in a cup of water, and then I'd add in about five to ten drops of lavender essential oil. And I'd let that diffuse sort of throughout the day. And I try to keep it into a mid-sized room my cat is going to be, you know, say for instance the bedroom or something. Then he's going to get the benefit of the additional moisture, as well as some of the decongestant properties of that lavender oil. The next thing that many of you have probably used is a topical decongestant. This is what I have here, a cold and allergy decongestant. Preferably you're getting the one meant for children. There's also called pediatric. We used to go by the brand name Otraven. There's many other now. It's now no longer a patented product, so you can buy it as a generic spray. The big point is you're just using one or two drops, and you're just using it for a short period of time. Somewhere between three to five days. It's not meant to be long-term, and it's not meant to be really frequent. I mean maximum I prefer you to give it is three to four times a day. But for these cats that are really congested, it can really really help. Because what happens, first of all they feel more comfortable. They're decongested. Your cat's going to sneeze a lot less. And then thirdly, what I'll find is because your cat is unable to smell, he's more likely to start eating that food again. And it's going to make it such a big difference in terms of helping them deal with that virus in the first place. The third thing is something to help with the virus itself. So for majority of cats, they've got a virus called the feline herpes virus. And then a smaller percent are going to have a virus called the feline calicivirus. I mean that is the most common cause of the cat flu. And that would be the most common cause or the reason why your cat is sneezing. So the first big thing in terms of helping that is some type of nutritional product that's going to be antiviral, but it also safe for your cat. And so what I actually have here is elderberry juice concentrate. And locally we have elderberries that are growing wild. So I've just picked the berries, had them sit in a pot. They simmer for about 20 minutes. I let it sort of simmer down. A lot of the moisture started to evaporate. I then sort of crushed the outside of the skin and use a sieve to just take away the seeds. And the seeds may contain arsenic, so we're going to get rid of the seeds themselves. What you're left is this really concentrated juice called elderberry juice concentrate. It's very safe to give to ourselves, our dogs, our cats. When we're looking at a cat dose, we're looking about one teaspoon given three to four times a day. You just be giving it for very short term, somewhere between three to five days. But if you needed to give it long term, twice a day, that would be fine. It also has additional vitamin C. When I was sort of looking, researching this, trying to looking at what are some of the remedies that are actually effective for the flu, it's one of the few things that's been studied. And what they found specifically in people, that it decreases the severity and shortens duration of the flu in people, being specifically antiviral. You're also able to get it as a product called Samugard. If you look up there in the corner, I've got a picture of it. I don't have it on me now. And Samugard is made from an elderberry juice concentrate. They've also got elderberry flowers as a concentrate. And they've added in something else additional, also using honey. So if you're using the Samugard, I would be giving sort of one teaspoon for my cat. And I'd be giving that three to four times a day. As I said, for most guys, somewhere around five days should be enough and they should be treated. But for some of the cats, it can be a recurring thing that happens again and again. So you may need to give it for up to two weeks. The fifth one I want to talk to you about is this honey. The big thing about honey is it's primarily antibacterial. But it also has appears to have some antiviral properties, which is most of the time, that's what's causing the sneezing in our cats in the first place. So it's very safe to give to our pets. When we're looking at sort of a cat dose, I'd be looking at about a half a teaspoon. Sort of per cat, I'd be giving that twice a day. So I think a really good combination would be combining the elderberry juice along with the honey. So you could do something simple here, where I'm just going to about two of these is going to be about one. So I've got one teaspoon of the elderberry juice. Then I would take, say I'm going to take about a half a teaspoon. I've got about a half a teaspoon here of the honey. I'm just going to mix that in. The last thing I want to talk to you guys about is L-lysine. So lysine here is an amino acid and it's shown to be antiviral and in particular really helpful for these cats to have recurrent upper respiratory tract infections. Be it with feline herpes virus, which is the most common cause of it. So we're looking at lysine doses. We're looking at this about 100 milligrams per cat per day, which is what this lysine is here. This one comes as a tablet, which would mean you'd have to crush it up, put it into your cat's food. These are pretty big tablets. I'll show you here. I would prefer that you give it a little bit easier. So I have a couple different options to do that. One, you can actually get N-acil, which is a lysine paste. So it's a real easy way to give it. So you'd be, you could be giving upwards of a hundred milligrams twice a day. And, or you can use that, what I've got up there. That's actually a picture of my cat supplement, which has lysine in those therapeutic levels in it as well too. When you're giving it, it's not something that's going to sort of mean all of a sudden your cat's going to stop sneezing tomorrow when you're giving it. More, you're going to want to give it for up to eight, up to 12 weeks. So what we're trying to do is ultimately eliminate the virus from your cat. So for many of these guys that have recurring episodes of sneezing, it's because this virus can remain latent, which means it sort of can live within a nerve called the trigeminal nerve. It can stay dormant and then during times of stress, it comes out again. And lysine seems to be the only thing that's ultimately able to actually kill that virus. So it doesn't keep coming back and back again.