Alex, post seizure. He’s doing better now

---

At some point in my life I have ended up cutting up lines of valium in the kitchen, using syringes and cleaning up piss and feces on a daily basis. This is life with an epileptic cat.

Hissy Fitz had kittens. They all shivered and died except for Alex who was, if anything, the runt of the litter. When I took him in he had a fat fat belly and couldn’t use his front paws. He walked around like a crab with his front legs flopped almost backwards. We thought it was cute until he took a bit wormy shit and we had to rush him to the vet.

Since then he’s been dewormed and I’ve been giving him multi-vitamins through a syringe. He does not like this and I get sticky stuff on all of my clothes. He was doing great for a while, began walking like a normal cat and not dragging his face around like a snake for once.

Sometimes, however, he would spring out of his bed and bolt across the room, crying inconsolable. He would also twitch a bit, tho I thought he was dreaming. It really hit me when he had a full seizure, twitching uncontrollably and shitting and pissing himself. So here are am wiping this cats bum and trying to hold him, but these seizures seem to make him really sad.

We took him to the vet again, who prescribed diazepam in case it happened again. On the drive home he had another seizure and so I pulled over and asked for the scrip. The girl said two Rupees and I was a bit confused, had to rummage for change. His scrip is an eighth of a tablet morning and night. I cannot imagine getting this into his mouth by hand, his teeth are really quite sharp, so I’ve been putting it in his food.

I’m not sure if it’s the Valium, but now he inhales his fish or chicken and even tries to eat the bowl. Bit odd. The first day I gave him too much and he stumbled around like a drunk. That night he was really quite gone. I put him on my chest to sleep and he just turned and gave me a blank stare for literally a minute. I had to break gaze. There was nothing there, just a vacant pain.

I’m not sure if it’s the Vallies or what but he’s doing better. For a while he did these semi obsessive-compulsive paces around the house, but now he pounces and plays like a regular cat. He still doesn’t really land on his feet and he falls over randomly, but he’s appearing slightly less retarded. The seizures have stopped and I’m hoping it’s not full blown epilepsy but just a phase.

We thought he was a girl, but the doctor’s said he’s a boy. We thought he was blind, but they say he can see. I thought he’d never walk properly, but he kinda does. He’s just a very strange idiosyncratic cat who probably shouldn’t have survived but he did. I think he would have died without this medical help, but with it he’s growing up to be a slight disabled but functional cat. He kinda reminds me of myself, half blind, allergic to stuff, but getting vaguely more normal as I age.

He’s rather nice to have around and I hope he lives. He crashes here at night and in the morning his generally anti-social mother comes to pick him up. She hates humans but she looks at me rather respectfully cause she can see that her poor kid really has changed. Still no petting though, she hisses. Watching the mother and child reunion in the morning, however, is one of the highlights of my day.

Posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 in Nature, Personal, Photography.