Lusha has been unlucky in health all her poor life. I don’t know why she has been condemned, but she has likely used up several of her nine lives.
Adora has faired better, but is not immune either. He has been coughing for a several months. It is clearly more than just an innocent cough. It is a weird, wet, gurgly cough that comes from the lungs. Listening to his chest (assuming that you can listen when he’s not purring), is even more distressing. It is unclear whether the gushing, gurgling is coming from his lungs or his heart, but neither one is good.
One diagnosis is that he could have asthma which while not good, is probably the least-worst.
I do however strongly suspect that he has the same problem that I do. The house—and especially my room—is extremely dusty. Breathing in a room as dusty as that fills our lungs, throats, tonsils, sinuses, ears, etc. with dead skin cells. The moisture of our mucus membranes rehydrates the dead cells and turns them into disgusting, chunks of rotten flesh, festering inside us (and they smell like grim death—and old people). Not good; not good at all. I have noticed that sometimes when my tonsils get full of that junk, my throat will hurt pretty badly, and picking them out will let my throat heal soon. I have thus been picking them out of my throat whenever I can. Unfortunately, I cannot pick them out of Adora. He keeps hacking a few times a day, but cannot seem to get them out. I hope that if I can clean the house well enough so that there is no dust to replenish the supply, that he will be able to expel what is stuck in him and clean his lungs and stuff out.
I still worry about heart-worms though. It took several months to convince my mother to have Lusha examined, and now we are even more broke (read in debt) than before with the cost of Insulin, syringes and special food, so paying for a check-up and x-rays is hard, especially with vets like those.
Merry freaking Christmas.