The post Cat Laryngitis: Our Vet Explains Causes, Signs, & Treatments by Dr. Samantha Devine DVM (Veterinarian) appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com. Click to Skip Ahead Laryngitis in Cats Overview Signs To Look Out For Possible Causes Care Tips FAQ Has your cat started to have an odd meow? Maybe it’s deeper or really squeaky, but there is no doubt about it: something is not right. Let’s examine feline laryngitis, including some of the potential causes and treatment options. What Is Laryngitis in Cats? Laryngitis is inflammation of your cat’s larynx, a structure also commonly referred to as the voice box. Viral infections can cause the condition. Some cats have no changes other than a change in the volume or tone of their voice. Other cats may show signs of a respiratory infection, such as sneezing, watery eyes, or even trouble breathing. Image Credit: De Jongh Photography, Shutterstock What Are the Signs of Laryngitis in Cats? You’ll typically be able to identify that something is wrong by a change in your cat’s voice. They might also have breathing changes, such as: Open-mouth breathing More noise than usual when breathing Wheezing Coughing Panting Other signs associated with laryngitis in cats include: Sneezing or runny nose Trouble swallowing Bad breath Holding their mouth open Fever Lethargy Unwillingness to eat What Are the Causes of Laryngitis in Cats? Laryngitis can be caused by a range of things, including infections. Viral and bacterial respiratory illnesses can easily impact the larynx. If your cat has this type of infection, they might have watery eyes or be sneezing or coughing. A severe case of cellulitis in the mouth could, in theory, extend to the larynx. Inhaled irritants are sometimes associated with laryngitis. These could include pollen, dust, and even cigarette smoke. Obstructions can affect the larynx as well. While it’s less common to see in cats than in dogs, foreign bodies can get lodged within the oronasal cavities. Tumors in the throat can also cause issues here. In some cats, thyroid gland tumors can lead to hyperthyroidism and even enlargement of the thyroid gland. Trauma to the throat can contribute to laryngitis. As difficult as it might be to think about, some cats are choked. A too-tight collar could also irritate the larynx. Some cats develop facial nerve paralysis. This relatively uncommon condition in cats can contribute to laryngitis. Image Credit: megaflopp, Shutterstock Diagnosing Laryngitis in Your Cat If your cat makes abnormal noises, it’s worth contacting your veterinarian. They’ll want to start with a complete physical exam. The veterinarian will listen to your cat’s chest and may even auscultate over the kitty’s throat with a stethoscope. The vet will gently look inside your cat’s mouth and palpate their throat for size changes, painful areas, and more. If your cat appears to have a respiratory infection, the veterinarian might swab the throat for a PCR panel to determine the infectious agent contributing to the infection. Blood work is quite helpful. Elevated white blood cell counts can indicate infection. A thyroid level helps your veterinary team assess your cat’s thyroid function in case your cat is hyperthyroid. Your vet might use different forms of imaging. Radiographs (X-rays) help examine for structural changes. An ultrasound might be used to look for fluid pockets. A long, flexible camera called an endoscope might be used to image the area internally. Image Credit: PRESSLAB, Shutterstock How Do I Care for a Cat With Laryngitis Treatment varies for cats with laryngitis. If there is evidence of a bacterial infection, antibiotics are often used to treat the disease. One such example is Clavamox, a potentiated version of amoxicillin. Anti-inflammatory medications might be needed. The two main non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that we use in cats are Onsior (robenacoxib) and Metacam (meloxicam). Instead of an NSAID, your veterinarian might suggest prednisolone, a steroid. Beyond pharmaceutical options, some cats need supportive care. If your cat doesn’t panic, steam up the bathroom with a hot shower and then bring your kitty into the room. The warm air can moisten airways and loosen secretions. If your cat has eye or nasal discharge, gently wipe the drainage away with a clean, damp cloth. If this discharge sits there, especially in a long-haired cat, it can irritate the skin. Your veterinarian might suggest changing your cat’s food. A softer food may be easier for your cat to swallow and more enticing to a cat with a stuffy nose. Canned foods are your go-to, but some dry foods can be softened with warm water. Just make sure the water isn’t too warm. Image Credit: Pressmaster, Shutterstock Frequently Asked Questions Is laryngitis in cats contagious? Laryngitis is not typically contagious, but the underlying cause, such as a virus or bacterial infection, can sometimes be contagious. Speak to your veterinarian to see if you will need to isolate your sick kitty. Is laryngitis permanent in cats? Most cats will recover from their bout of laryngitis, but if it is significant enough, the cat could permanently damage their larynx. Nerve damage or swelling could be permanent. Conclusion We hope this article helped answer any questions you had about what to do if you notice a change in your cat’s meow, tenderness, or swelling when you touch its throat or lethargy. The safest thing would be to have your cat examined by a veterinarian. These changes could indicate laryngitis and need treatment. Sources https://www.sharonlakes.com/site/blog-south-charlotte-vet/2021/07/15/cat-laryngitis https://www.applevalleyanimalhospital.com/site/blog/2021/06/30/laryngitis-in-cats}   Featured Image Credit: Cat Box, Shutterstock The post Cat Laryngitis: Our Vet Explains Causes, Signs, & Treatments by Dr. Samantha Devine DVM (Veterinarian) appeared first on Catster. Copying over entire articles infringes on copyright laws. You may not be aware of it, but all of these articles were assigned, contracted and paid for, so they aren't considered public domain. However, we appreciate that you like the article and would love it if you continued sharing just the first paragraph of an article, then linking out to the rest of the piece on Catster.com.

Thierry Breton's Threat to Elon Musk Seems to Have Backfired

There’s no sugarcoating this, so I’ll give it to you straight. We don’t have a competitive domestic computer-chip industry, and we won’t have it in the next 10 years. China will take Taiwan and control TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — the first dedicated chip foundry in the world and the most important). And the U.S. will keep buying chips from TSMC with CCP back doors in them — and pretend it’s fine. That’s the depressing reality of Intel’s failure to provide an alternative to TSMC. The idea that we’re going to just man up and re-shore leading-edge chipmaking is now clearly a fairy tale. But it’s not just Intel’s fault. The problems that got us here are all part of the larger off-shoring of U.S. manufacturing over the last 30 years, and they won’t be solved by propping up Intel with a few tariffs and a couple of billion dollars. When we knuckle under and help China keep the lights on at TSMC, maybe with some face-saving rhetoric, it will continue the last 30 years of optimizing for cheap goods at the expense of national sovereignty. It's the continuity-preserving path. Amid this disaster, we need a complete and total reboot of all U.S. industrial policy, with chip-making as one part of that bigger effort. But even if we can get it together to begin this, the path to pulling it off goes through a long period of time when China’s Communist Party has root access to our domestic systems and steals or sabotages our stuff. At least China doesn’t want to completely wreck us because it needs someone big enough to buy a lot of its stuff. The U.S. has to remain functional enough to support Beijing’s continued rise to world dominance, and, of course, we do supply some of the critical inputs to leading-edge chip fabs that it'll need to run TSMC. So keeping us alive in second or third place globally is a win for them — and us. And because there’s no alternative, we will accept that. We can’t very well take Apple, Google, NVIDIA, etc. out behind the barn and shoot them. We’ll keep buying TSMC output and pretending it’s all A-OK. We’ll make it through the digital revolution as a country, but we’ll get taken down a peg (or two ... or three). Yes, we should’ve thought about this back when we had a choice. Forget about chips — we should never have given the Chinese our factories! The whole industrial policy was so obviously, monumentally stupid. But here we are, so we’ll muddle through. Now, some insist that we can slip the noose because of TSMC’s big, high-profile expansion plant in Arizona. Unfortunately, the Arizona fab was always going to be trailing-edge, negligible in terms of impact on our domestic chip issues. How could it be otherwise? Why on earth would TSMC do anything material to lessen our dependence on it? LOL. Furthermore, if TSMC is already low-key CCP-captured — a development thought likely in some circles in D.C. and Silicon Valley — then China itself would just be giving up its eventual leverage over us by lessening our dependence on TSMC. And if not, there's still no way Taiwan would want us to be less likely to come to its aid when China moves on it. No matter how you look at it, TSMC’s Arizona fab was always whatever the industrial policy equivalent of security theater is. It was maybe a nice idea if we could've executed on it, but it was never a real plan to save us from being dependent on China for our transistor supply. And so, this Intel catastrophe is very, very bad, and there's no real light at the end of this tunnel that isn't an oncoming train. There's no quick fix or way to just throw a few (borrowed) billions at this issue and really make a material difference in a short time. That's all fantasy. We have to find the will to re-industrialize, and we're going to have to do it in a world where China is basically more advanced than we are. We're very fortunate that China has its own massive problems — its own set of dominoes falling from decades of bad decisions. It's good to be bullish on America, but we're going to have to be bullish on ourselves as the underdog. We're going to have a long journey of coming back from behind. If you don't see it yet, you'll get it eventually. Better start now. A bitter pill to swallow A lot of replies to my recent Intel/TSMC thread are of the nature of, "We will surely blow up the fabrication facility if China invades," or, "Why would we not blow up the fab?" etc. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company getting wrecked is the scenario I outlined in this article from a few years ago, and it's what I obliquely refer to when I say the U.S. will not take NVIDIA, Apple, Google, etc. out behind the barn and shoot them. Our whole tech sector would be massively damaged, some parts of it maybe fatally, by the direct and indirect impact of the sudden loss of TSMC. From my previous article, there are a few important details about the semiconductor business you have to keep in mind going forward: "The market for advanced microchips fits together like this: The equipment and tooling for making leading-edge chip fabrication plants comes from the US and Europe. The two leading-edge fab makers, who have the proprietary know-how to turn that equipment and tooling into fabs that turn out chips more advanced than anyone else’s, are in Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung. (There are actually sort of two-and-a-half leading-edge fab makers, with Intel being the half. It has stumbled but will recover and join the other two, soon.) The customers for the outputs of those leading-edge fabs are global, including in the US and Europe. Porting a chip design from one company’s fab process to another is costly and painful. It’s not like you send an email with some files to a different address and a few days later identical chips come off a new production line in a different factory. No, customers are tied to specific companies’ fabs, and suddenly losing access to that fab means suddenly no more chips until you complete a lengthy, costly re-targeting process.” If TSMC suddenly goes dark, what happened to Intel's share price the other day will happen to the rest of the NASDAQ — instant, massive carnage. Imagine Apple can't release new iPhones for some indefinite number of years and can't say when it'll be able to. I simply don't think we're going to do this to our tech sector. Instead, we'll keep TSMC running under CCP control if that's at all an option that's on the table post-invasion. And I suspect it will be, because I think TSMC is already likely de facto under CCP control. There have been many similar replies to the effect that the U.S. won’t “lose” TSMC. I can't imagine being this confident that the U.S. will suddenly put some great power rivalry with China ahead of its own naked commercial interests like this, after decades of us doing the exact opposite (which is why we're in this bind!). Imagine a country that sent all its manufacturing overseas to save money suddenly being willing to slaughter most of the NASDAQ in the name of sticking it to China because, hey, it's a rival, and you can't trust those guys! Sorry, I'm not seeing it. When we knuckle under and help China keep the lights on at TSMC, maybe with some face-saving rhetoric, it will continue the last 30 years of optimizing for cheap goods at the expense of national sovereignty. It's the continuity-preserving path.

An Axios report found that the Kamala Harris presidential campaign is editing headlines from the mainstream media in Google ads in order to make it appear as if publishers are on her side. The report said that other campaigns have used the tactic previously but that the Trump campaign was not doing so currently.Axios posted examples of the edited headlines and accompanying text. In one example, the headline read, "VP Harris Fights Abortion Bans - Harris Defends Repro Freedom," and had text beneath reading, "VP Harris is a champion for reproductive freedom and will stop Trump's abortion bans."In another one, the edited headline read, "Harris Will Lower Health Costs," with extra text reading, "Kamala Harris will lower the cost of high-quality affordable health care."The links on the ads go to the regular news stories with their unedited headlines. While the practice does not go against Google standards, Axios said the format of the ads could mislead readers. "Election advertisers are required to complete an identity verification process and we prominently display in-ad disclosures that clearly show people who paid for the ad," read a statement from a Google spokesperson. A spokesperson for the Guardian told Axios they were looking into the practice. "While we understand why an organization might wish to align itself with the Guardian's trusted brand, we need to ensure it is being used appropriately and with our permission. We'll be reaching out to Google for more information about this practice," the spokesperson said. Other brands said they weren't aware of the ads by the campaign. Axios warned that the practice opened up platforms to accusations of indirect bias supporting the Harris campaign. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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Valve once imagined that every PC maker could have their own "Steam Machine," a PC game console running the company's Linux-based SteamOS. It took a decade for that dream to evolve into the company's own internally developed Steam Deck gaming handheld, but the original dream isn't dead. The company's long said it plans to let other companies use SteamOS, too — and that means explicitly supporting the rival Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld, Valve designer Lawrence Yang now confirms to The Verge. A few days ago, some spotted an intriguing line in Valve's latest SteamOS release notes: “Added support for extra ROG Ally keys.” We didn't know Valve was supporting any ROG Ally keys at all, let alone extras! Maybe Valve was just supporting those... Continue reading…

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