Our story continues with Aggie introduction, part 2..
At this point, I would have chalked the seizure up to the mirtaziprine if it
wasn't for the fact that the day before we gave her the drug, Aggie was meowing
very loudly and had thrown up a bit of a clear liquid. While my wife didn't
see it, she wasn't covered in drool and wasn't disoriented like after the two
known seizures. So, we really don't know what happened, but suspect it was a
milder seizure type incident, and the mirtaziprine made everything worse. My
vet, nor the vet I consulted with at UC Davis, thinks the mirtaziprine was the
major cause, though they did admit that it might be what triggered the grand
mal, and the later, smaller seizure. So, to be on the safe side, she has been
on phenobarbitol for about a month now, with no further seizures (my wife is
home with our 3 month old baby, so she would know). The first three weeks on
it were rough--sluggish, lots of sleeping, and incoordinated with weakness in
her hind legs. (Cat, not the wife, for those of you still reading!) As of
now, she is pretty much back to normal, with just a little residual weakness.
Nowhere near where it was, though.
At present, still getting interferon every day, reloaded her with LTCI weekly
for three weeks, and now moving back to what had become the sweet spot of every
2 weeks (next shot is this Saturday) and hoping for the best. When we next
test her blood in a few weeks, we might see if we can screen for toxoplasmosis
and cryptococcus (I know I misspelled this!) but didn’t have the cash to do it
the first time around. Another possibility is that she might have been exposed
to insecticide, as we had the outside of our home sprayed for wasps a month or
so ago. The day of the first "incident" it had rained, and she was sitting for
most of the day at the screen door looking out into the yard. She was sitting
over the door jam (but still behind the screen, mere inches from an area that
had been heavily sprayed, as it was a problem area, and the recent rain could
have easily washed some of the toxins through the screen for her to breathe or
even lick.
Could have gotten to her paws, and she could have licked them--I don't know.
Other possibilities are of course, a brain tumor, the FELV crossing the blood
brain barrier, lymphoma of the gut that had metastatized (probably misspelled
this one too) into her brain but avoided the lungs and hasn’t swelled up her
lymph nodes enough that the vet can feel, or the aforementioned poisoning,
crypto, and toxoplasmosis. Our other cat, who has lived with us for five
years (and is FELV negative but vaccinated) was a cat that settled on the front
porch of the house we had just moved into. So, it is possible he brought it
in, but her immune system was strong enough to deal with it for 5 years.
At this point, Aggie seems happy, weight is alright, appetite is good, and her
zest for life is apparent. She doesn't mind being around the baby at all, and
we are trying to make every day a party for as long as we have her. She is the
protypical cat, in that she is alternatingly spunky, sweet, and antisocial and
loves to chase my wife's hair clips all over the house. She'll ignore almost
every other toy, but not those hair bands.
Our FELV negative boy--Crookshanks, is the sweetest animal known to humanity.
He loves the baby, and (supervised of course) will sit with her and
occasionally nuzzle her feet. He will sit on the couch above me as I hold the
baby, and groom my head with his tongue. He does the same to my wife, if he
isn’t in her lap. He would love to groom the baby too, but that is a bit much!
So—that is one long introduction! In all likelihood, we are on the downhill
slope of our time together, but who knows—she is a spunky girl and we’ve been
lucky to have her for so long. I’ll keep you posted as we go through the rest
of our journey together. Even though we never met, all of you have given me so
much hope and inspiration. To those of you who have lost cats, my deepest
condolences--and know that I will continue to send good thoughts and purrayers,
as Alice likes to say, your way.
Peace,
Andy
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