An Anxious Moment

I came home early from work today to wait for a carpenter, and the cat came to greet me as she always does. Only she stumbled as walked, almost falling down a couple of times. She seemed weak, and favoring her back legs a great deal.

She's an older cat (seventeen) and I immediately went into panic mode. Several years ago, I lost a cat very suddenly to a heart attack, and any sign of illness in my animals makes my heart race and hurt. I forced myself to breathe, and then to feed her some wet food, both to test her level of alertness and willingness to eat, and also to get some moisture in her system. She managed to dehydrate herself a couple of years ago during hot weather, and needed an injection of liquid at the vet. She perks up a bit at the wet food, and when done, bats at a string, but still seems off to me.

I then called a very local vet (ten minutes away) that I've been meaning to take her to for a check-up, and asked if they could fit in an emergency new client visit that day. Yes, they can! The spousal unit comes home while I'm on the phone, cottons to what I'm on the phone about, starts to panic and I manage to mutter, "She's okay, in the office, but seems off." and the S.U. runs to check her out.

Our kitty still seems a bit feeble, but then it's a hot day with no air conditioning. We're a bit feeble too, and she's got a bad case of old. We finally pack her into the carrier and I make my way to the vet's.

While there, I'm sure I drove them crazy by being generally incoherent. The other thing that concerns me is I used to work for someone who had a kitty that basically had kitty MS, the cat slowly lost the use of its back legs. For quite awhile he got around sort of like a furry walrus, but it eventually got to be too much, especially when he lost control of his bladder and bowels. So I've got that image in front of me as well. Meanwhile, the cat starts to revive in the air conditioning.

The vet did a very through exam of the little thing, heart, lungs, temperature, feeling her up, the usual. Then she did some simple kitty neurological tests. Holding the cat with her paws almost resting on a ledge to see how she uses them while steadying herself. Doing the same with the back paws. Waving objects in front of the cat to watch how the cat tracks objects. And, last of all having me call the cat to me to observe how the cat walked. The vet was able to see the same thing I saw, a funny little wobble in the walk, not as bad as I'd seen before, not causing her to lose control, but definitely there. The rest of her was fine, she seemed healthy and responsive and clearly had use and control of her paws and legs.

The vet speculated that in older cats especially, they can develop lesions on the spine or in the brain, relatively mild damage that may affect motor skills. Her advice was to monitor it, and see how it went, and if it got worse, we could do more intensive tests. Somewhat unsatifying but at least not an emergency situation. There was blood drawn, but I got the impression is was more to cover all bases, I don't think she really expects to find anything unusual. The cat is overweight, so I'm going to slowly cut back on what she gets fed, because anything spinal will be strained by being overweight.

Totally unrelated, some of her claws were really growing out of control (she's triple-pawed and they do that), so we got them snipped while there. This happened at the end of the visit and by this time, kitty was in high maintenance mode, snarling and growling all the while, remind us all of her youthful glory days when she forced vets to handle her with leather gloves. She's usually mellower these days, but the extended exam was just too much for her. Poor thing.

I liked the vet, but the vet's assistant was a bit of a twit. I mentioned at the beginning that the cat tended to be a bit aggressive, and the woman upends the cat carrier, trying to shake her out like salt from a shaker. My guess is that she was trying to avoid reaching in and grabbing a fierce cat, but geezus lady, the cat's sick. Could you not do that?

And besides, the carrier comes apart in two seconds, no need for all that.

Right now the little troublemaker is snoozing away on the office floor. She seems pretty tuckered, but I guess being shaken, poked, prodded, and getting blood drawn will do that to you. I want to join her, preferably after dinner and a drink, and I just watched.