Surviving Epilepsy

Cats with seizure disorders can lead long, happy lives.

My tortoiseshell cat Alice awoke from a deep sleep on the living room chair with a startled yelp and a disoriented gaze. I comforted her, thinking she had just had a "nightmare."

I adopted Alice four months earlier, when she was a 9-month-old kitten, from a local animal shelter. At the time of this first incident, she was just a little more than a year old.

Within two months, her "nightmares" became more frequent, so I made an appointment with our veterinarian, James Booth, of the Aggie Animal Clinic in Dixon, Calif. He gave her a physical exam and ordered a complete blood chemistry panel. What he told me came as a shock.

"Your cat has a seizure disorder," he said.

**Get the October 2008 issue of CAT FANCY to read the full article.**

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Surviving Epilepsy

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Holly Jeffersonville, IN

12/19/2008 6:44:09 PM

I too had a cat that suddenly developed epilepsy with no apparent cause, and all her bloodwork came back "normal". We put her on liquid phenobarbitol twice per day, which did great at preventing the seizures, but it made her a zombie. (Oddly, her brother had and has never head a seizure.) I heard a rumor that the residue from some cleaning chemicals getting on their paw pads and then being ingested during grooming could cause seizures. I decided to switch brands of the floor cleaner I used on my kitchen linoleum and bathroom tile. Apparently that did the trick and we were able to take her off the phenobarb. That was 3 years ago and she hasn't had a seizure since. I'm not going to get into specifics about the brands because its likely that different brands of cleaners can affect different cats' neurological systems in different ways. So to anyone out there who has a cat with "ideopathic" epilepsy (unknown cause), please try changing brands of cleaning products before resorting to prescription drugs.

Holly B.
Jeffersonville, IN