You asked for more information on our use of oxygen with Augie who is 9 and has cardiomyopathy with more and more frequents episodes of congestive heart failure(not quite 'failure' so far).. Our Credentials: i have many+ years in computing and telecommunications, ray has a degree in music and works as an artist and computer graphics consultant. We adopted (inherited) augie when she was five and she is our only experience, wonderful tho' it has been, with ferrets. So PLEASE check out anything you think might apply for you/yours with your VET. Symptoms for Augie have consisted of coughing/choking/turn herself inside out attacks, or just very rapid, labored, shallow breathing. At first, i.e. last summer, she would run around in a frantic state as if lookng for some 'solution'. Now she just makes enough noise, in whatever way (scratching or scrunching around in plastic bags, etc) to get our attention. Since ferrets are clearly related to the good Dr. Murphy, these attacks nearly always came on weekends or in the dead of night. There is an emergency Vet clinic 15 minutes away that (now, at least) knows something of ferrets and has resources on call. They would commiserate, agree that she was badly congested, confirm that we understood that the heart condition was irreversible, shoot her with lasix and offer to put her in their oxygen cage to ease her breathing til we could take her to her real vet in the morning. Each time they warned that she might not live through the night. Each morning she was stressed and exhausted from trying to fight her way out of the oxygen cage, but calm and breathing normally after the 15 minute ride home. Then, miracle of miracles, Augie had two episodes on weekdays and her vet got to see her in crisis rather than pretty much recovered. ("Obviously she plans to live forever" is the vet's assessment) She tried the same approach, but with only an hour or so of oxygen (about long enough for the lasix to do its work). One of those days, Ray and I went off to have some breakfast: Augie fought and scratched to get out of the oxygen the whole time. The other time we stayed with her and she curled up and relaxed and enjoyed it, which certainly took an additional load off her heart. So we asked the vet about oxygen at home and she put us in touch with her source for the clinic. She also loaned us an air tight plexiglass box with fittings, but said that the system didn't really have to be 'air tight'. I located a plastic garden cloche that fits nicely over the ferret and her covers in her petbed. We plop the tube in the bed, the cloche over the whole of it and if she is particularly antsy, we stick a human hand in with her for stroking. Once we just held the tube in front of her face for a while 'til she calmed enough to stay in the bed. This gets the three of us through the rest of the night, or the rest of the weekend, til we get to the vet and the lasix. We, including the vet, don't think the oxygen is helping the congestion, just de-stressing the heart a bit and the ferret and the humans a LOT. But that was in part why i was asking if others on the mailing have any other theories or practice with oxygen in these cases. And our thanks to Sukie for her information on the CQ10. Donna [Posted in FML issue 2988]