My baby kitty is sickFollow

Last Saturday, we were woken up by cat having what would look like, to all appearances, a rabies attack. He was growling ferociously, drooling uncontrollably, and judging by the amount of saliva he had flung around on the couch, appeared to have had a seizure.

We took him to the vet as soon as they opened, and they quickly determined that it was a seizure, since he had another later. A dose of valium and a referred over to the university's vet school later, he was home.... and just lying there doing nothing.

The university has a neurologist on staff. He was admitted to the hospital, and they ran a whole battery of tests to rule out the obvious things (no FIV, FeLV, intestinal blockages, etc.) They wanted to run a $2000 MRI on him but we put our foot down - his vet bills were already going to cost us well over a thousand dollars at this rate. The neurologist believes he has late stage lymphoma that has invaded his brain, and the only course of action if we didn't want to put him on kitty chemo would be to give him some steroids and see if that reduced the inflammation.

Now, this could be inaccurate, as there are a few more tests that they're still waiting for the results for, but it sucks. He's definitely still not himself, although he's doing more cat things since we picked him up yesterday. (He's washing himself! He's eating! He's sleeping - he didn't sleep at all on Saturday. He's got projectile diarrhea oh god....)

I love this cat. I've had him a decade and he's just been such a teddy bear. He loves being held and petted and cuddled, and he's just so chill and mellow. Even the hospital staff were amazed at how calm he was the entire time he was there. (Probably didn't help that he was exhausted and felt like ****. Poor baby.) The thought of losing him is devastating. We were hoping for another decade with him. That may have been shortened to a few months.

And that's how I spent my Christmas vacation.

I'm sorry to hear that. 20 years is very old for a cat, though, so hopefully he lived a good life.

The kitty neurologist is going to put him on anti seizure medication today, to see if that improves his behavior. At least the potty problems are under control. He used the litterbox somewhat normally last night.

Puppy training pads are the greatest invention ever. Our carpet is already in bad enough shape.... the cat poo everywhere isn't helping. But if we can convince him to lie down on the puppy pad, if he has one of his micro seizures and loses control of his bowels, he'll get it on the pad and not on the carpet. They're sort of like flat diapers.

Congratulations on that. Seems to have been a bad season for felines.

We're wondering now if he might have amnesia. Our room mate noticed that he seemed entirely unfamiliar with her room the first time he wandered into it since returning from the hospital, as if he'd never been in there before - despite having been in there many many times. He also seemed unaware that he was welcome to sleep on the bed with the humans, but after I brought him to bed with me last night, he stayed there all night with us. (It was cold, we were warm. It was nice and snuggly with the cat.)

He has a follow up visit with the neurologist next week. We're going to ask about that....

Glad to hear he's re-learning the important stuff! Hope the improvement continues!