Mina is the Queen of All She Surveys, and now I have a title as well….
I am officially:
Egbert the Twitchy
Started about a month ago. I started flapping my ears and turning around to attempt to bite my side. Sometimes my “events” were so violent that they caused me to attempt to run away from my “attacker.” Mom dragged me to the vet. I hate the vet. I hate people, period. This was NOT fun. They drew blood from me (and while they had me they cleaned my teeth and had the audacity to pull a fang!) and ran some tests. Everything looked normal. They were stumped. I did enjoy the post-anesthesia loll about the house but in a couple days, I was back to twitching again. So, my mother dragged me to the local University Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Yeah, that was fun. I nearly killed them. Sans fangs. They didn’t get to see nothing! HA! Serves them right. So, my mother had to leave me there for me to be sedated – AGAIN! – and more blood drawn and an X-Ray taken. My blood levels were all atrocious (Ya think? It’s called STRESS!) and there were a few masses in my abdomen on the X-Ray which were aspirated. Nothing conclusive. They shaved my stomach for this! To quote The Incredibles, “Not happy, Bob. NOT happy.”. My head’s too small (no snide comments! I bite, REMEMBER??) for them to really see my brain inside my skull cavity, so they couldn’t tell if I had a mass pressing on my brain, causing this neuro-fun. So, I was put on high-dose antibiotics for a week. Horse pills! Horrific! Thank goodness my parents found “Pill Pockets” by Greenies! Antibiotics didn’t do sic-em. Just to make everyone crazy I just stopped eating. Serves them right! Mom called my local vet AGAIN….. she said that we needed to start Phenobarbital to stop the seizures and give me an appetite. So now I’m on drugs. Greeeeeat. I’m floppy cat. My back end doesn’t communicate with my front end. I can’t jump. I can barely walk and walking down stairs, well, it was embarrassing! Mom called the vet AGAIN and she said to cut my dose in half after two weeks of drunk-walking. It’s been three days on half-doses and already I’m perkier, less floppy and more communicative. I still have some coordination issues, and my seizures are a little more pronounced than they were before but at least I’m not a zombie.
Anyone else EVER have this problem? How do I fix it? I’m only 5! I’m too young for this nonsense!
Hope the rest of you Weekend Cat Bloggers are feeling better than I am. BAH!
Crabbily,
EtT
One of our cats had a reaction to his yearly shots, and his tail would twitch violently, he would try to run away from it, try to lick it to make it stop. When it happened again the next year, the vet had us put him on chlorpheniramine (an antihistamine) for a week prior and a week post to his shots, and it’s nearly 100% better.
If the Pheno is working though, sounds as if it might not be just an allergic reaction.
Hope it works out!
jkm
Hi Egbert. We’re so sorry that you’re having a hard time! Our sisfur Gree had a similar problem. But she could walk ok, just her back legs twitched a good bit and her butt and her tail. She kept thinking her tail was attacking her, so she attacked it back. She even bit a hole in her tail! They couldn’t find anything either, and thought it was hyperesthesia from a pinched nerve in her spine somewhere. (She didn’t get it after shots like jkm’s kitty tho. She just got it out of the blue, or if Gree knows she’s not telling.) For weeks she’d get better for a while, then get worse again. So the vet made Mom give her buprenorphine (I made Mom spell that out for me it’s a painkiller) for a while. And Mom and Grandma got to where they’d put a blanky over her butt half if it was twitching while she was lying down, and then Gree didn’t try to kill her tail any more. Mom also discovered that if she could get Gree to lay down on one side, the twitchies would get less. Now it’s 100% gone, though, and she’s all ok! We hope you get it 100% gone fast and all ok. We will send purrs and purrayers for you.
Fanks for joining WCB this week even though you’re not feeling so good!
Purrrrrrrrrrrs,
Mini