What should you know about cats and asthma?

Cat allergens can become airborne or settle on clothing, furniture, carpets, and bedding. In a sensitive person, exposure may lead to wheezing, cough, chest tightness, or shortness of breath. Symptoms can start during contact or after the person leaves because allergens remain indoors. A runny or blocked nose and itchy eyes may occur with allergic rhinitis and can make asthma harder to control.

Fur is not the only issue, and a short-haired cat can still produce allergens. A pattern of symptoms around a cat suggests a possible trigger but does not prove an allergy; other indoor triggers, including house dust mite allergy, may be involved.

Keep the cat out of the bedroom and away from bedding, use ventilation where practical, wash hands after contact, and clean surfaces regularly. Ask someone else to groom the cat and avoid brushing it indoors. These steps may reduce exposure but cannot remove allergens completely. Use your prescribed asthma medicines and written action plan, and arrange a review if symptoms occur often, disturb sleep, or limit activity. Do not stop controller treatment without clinical advice.

Follow your asthma action plan when symptoms begin. Seek urgent care if wheezing or breathlessness is worsening, reliever medicine is not helping as expected, or speaking and walking become difficult. Call emergency services for severe breathing difficulty, blue or grey lips, exhaustion, confusion, or inability to speak in full sentences. A clinician can assess triggers and check whether treatment needs adjustment.

Ask whether allergy testing could help, how to separate cat exposure from other triggers, how to use your inhaler correctly, and what your personal emergency action plan should say.