Hind legs not working? =[

xcamisadox

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Hi all,

I have a 14 year old cat, Thomasina. She has never had a health problem in her life until a few months ago. We came home one day and she was walking around, but holding her back legs very stiffly, kind of bouncing on them when she moved. We took her to the vet, who gave us medication for something to do with inflammation. It seemed to help her quite a bit, and some days she was almost back to normal. Recently she had gotten pretty agile again, and started trying to jump onto things, i.e the coffee table, recliners, beds, etc. She would make it up, but when she jumped down would sometimes do a somersault forward when she hit the ground.

Last night my mom went in to feed her, and she crawled out from under the bed like usual, but then just sat there. Then when she tried to move, she had to drag herself because apparently her hind legs have stopped working. She came out and ate and drank, and just stretches out and purrs when anyone pets her. Today she is still dragging, but is not stretched out. She sits up and basically walks normally except for having to drag the back legs. It looks like she is able to move one of her hips, which i did not see her doing yesterday. She also seems to have feeling in them, she turns her head and watches when i touch them.

She has also attempted to get onto the bed (again). I came in and she was hanging onto the bedspread and had almost pulled herself up. I put her the rest of the way up, and I'm watching to make sure she doesn't try to get down by herself. At the moment she is just napping in a sunny spot.

Does anyone have any ideas what might have happened?

We do have two dogs, a German Shepherd and a Shiba Inu. The Shepherd is best of friends with her, but sometimes can play a little roughly with her big feet. We are thinking that the initial injury was something caused by the dog, and that she has just aggravated it by insisting on jumping and playing normally.


She is acting entirely normal, except for staying in "her" room and the living room right next to it. That's understandable, since it must be tiring to have to drag your back end around. My dad is trying to convince me that her quality of life is not going to be good, and to put her down, but I am refusing as she is acting normal otherwise, and this might improve itself like it has the other times. She has been with me since i was about a year old and I know that she would not want to die.

I really do not want to have to stress her out by taking her to the vet again, she is not good with being put in kennels or going to strange places with strange people, so I am thinking of just asking him for another bottle of the medication that helped the last two times.

I apologize for the length and that it might not be in a totally understandable order, thank you for taking the time to read if you did. Any suggestions or ideas that I could do at home would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much,
Jenn and Thomasina
 

debskats

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Thomasina really needs to go back to the vet, Jenn. Did they do x-rays of her back and hips when she was there last time? A few months ago, Katy started having trouble jumping though never to the extent that Thomasina has, and she was diagnosed with arthritis in her back. The vet put her on Cosequin (glucosamine) which has helped a lot. She'll never be 100%, but at least she can get up and down from things OK now.

Another thing that came to mind was a blood clot, but I'm not sure what you described sounds like that.

Either way though, she really needs to see a vet.
 

beandip

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Hello and welcome Jenn
I'm sorry to hear that Thomasina is having some trouble.

There are a lot of different causes for paralysis of the hind legs, some more common than others. A common one would be blood clot(s) but in her case, that's not what it sounds like to me. With the stiffness earlier on and the way she benefited from the anti-inflammatory drugs - I would suspect some sort of issue with her spine...maybe from an injury or maybe not.

I would talk to the vet, definitely. If the meds helped before, I think there's a good chance they will help this time. The vet will probably want to see her but please don't let that stop you. Cats are very good at hiding pain...unfortunately purring doesn't always equal a content kitty. So the sooner the better. I will think positive thoughts for the 2 of you.
 
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xcamisadox

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Thank you all for the quick replies!

Last time we took her they ran a blood panel, ruling out a lot of problems. They also took x-rays though, and apparently she has deterioration going on in her spine. They said it was very common and that the anti-inflammatory was all they could do.

I would have included this in my first post, but my mother didn't tell me about the x-ray part for some reason until just now.


I am unsure why this "paralysis" seemed to happen so suddenly though. Another thing that has come up could be a ruptured disc or such.

So we are calling the vet and seeing if he can give us another bottle of the anti-inflammatory medicine without seeing her, but otherwise we can go ahead and take her for another appointment.

DebsKats, do you think the glucosamine shots would help for deterioration or was it just an arthritis thing?

Thank you all again!
 

debskats

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Originally Posted by xCamisadox

Thank you all for the quick replies!

Last time we took her they ran a blood panel, ruling out a lot of problems. They also took x-rays though, and apparently she has deterioration going on in her spine. They said it was very common and that the anti-inflammatory was all they could do.

I would have included this in my first post, but my mother didn't tell me about the x-ray part for some reason until just now.


I am unsure why this "paralysis" seemed to happen so suddenly though. Another thing that has come up could be a ruptured disc or such.

So we are calling the vet and seeing if he can give us another bottle of the anti-inflammatory medicine without seeing her, but otherwise we can go ahead and take her for another appointment.

DebsKats, do you think the glucosamine shots would help for deterioration or was it just an arthritis thing?

Thank you all again!
Cosequin comes in capsules that you can open up and sprinkle on their canned food. Katy only eats dry food though, so I just give her the capsule like I would any pill. My vet told me that the Cosequin wouldn't reverse the damage that's already been done, but it will slow down the progression of the arthritis or deterioration in the spine. Katy has spondylosis which, I believe, is a narrowing of the spinal canal that can cause compression on the spinal cord which would cause "paralysis".

I was afraid Katy was going to end up not being able to walk, but the Cosequin has worked wonders! It can take from 4 to 6 weeks though before you see a difference. Katy had been on a baby aspirin a couple of times a week for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and prednisone for inflammatory bowel disease for a couple of years, but because she had chronic pancreatitis, we had to take her off aspirin and lower her prednisone. That's when her back problems started to show up, probably because she wasn't on anything to reduce the inflammation in her back.

Cosequin can be kind of expensive if you buy it at the vet, but if you get it online it will cost about half.
 

gothicangel69

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I had something similar happen to my cat not too long ago. All of a sudden he couldn't walk anymore and was dragging him back legs along the floor. I took him into one vet and she said he might have just pulled something, and put him on metacam. A week la'vter when things didn't get better, I took him to another vet(his regular vet) who ran a dopler test and did ex-rays. He said it was either a sadle thrombosis or something spinal. The ex-rays came back saying that he had collapsed a disk in his back.
The vet put him on prednisone for a month, and it worked great! His prognosis was poor, but he's made almost a full recovery. I would maybe ask about getting a different anti-inflammatory, or maybe a steroid. If they've ruled out clots, and the ex-rays said its something spinal, anti-inflamatories and steroids are probably all they can do. (Glucosamine and condroitin are good as well)
 
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xcamisadox

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Okay, so the vet gave us Prednisone. She's supposed to get .8 mL a day for a week, and then the same thing every other day until it runs out, same as before. She got her first dose last night, and ate her dry cat food with it.

She has also decided to crawl out of her safe room and sit under a shelf instead.

I'm hoping this is a good sign, whether or not the medicine has started to kick in yet.
 

momofmany

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Another possibility is that she has had a stroke, although when I've experienced that in the past, there is usually loss of bladder control that goes with it. How is she doing with the litter box?
 
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xcamisadox

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Originally Posted by Momofmany

Another possibility is that she has had a stroke, although when I've experienced that in the past, there is usually loss of bladder control that goes with it. How is she doing with the litter box?
She has not been using it that I can see, but this is probably because she's having a hard time moving around, much less stepping up into her litter box. Before this happened, she had wet on a bed a few times, but those incidents were about a month apart each, and she was still using her litterbox.

I'm not thinking it was a stroke though, because she has injured her hind legs a couple times before and there were no accompanying symptoms then. Also, when anyone touches her back above her hips she bristles and gets sensitive, so that's what makes me think she fell off something and twisted her back the wrong way. If that's the case, the Prednisone should hopefully do some good.

She has started somewhat using one leg, using the hip to push herself around a little more, and yesterday came out of her room all the way to the hallway and laid there for a while before heading back under the bed. Good signs hopefully.
 

gothicangel69

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Thats great news that she's doing better. I found that the prednisone worked wonders on my little man. I started noticing a difference in about 3 days.
For a week or so, I had to help my cat use the litterpan. I would pick him up, and support his back legs in the litterpan while he went to the bathroom. Once he started getting a little better, I used one of those shallow kitten litterpans and he would manage to drag himself into that (although he always managed to pee all over himself, so I always had to clean him off afterwards)
I was told to crate Zorro for a week so that he couldn't move around and so that the drugs would work faster(then to confine him to a bedroom for a month). I think it made a huge difference.
 
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