Jerking Episodes

My cat was diagnosed with kidney failure over a year ago. She's been doing fine except for the weight loss and anemia. The vet gave me vitamins for her anemia which proved to help as we did more blood work. I have also been giving her a natural med that I ordered on-line. It's supposed to help with the kidney failure. I haven't had any blood work done on her since I've been giving her that so I don't know if it's helping or not. Anyway, every once in a while she gets these jerking episodes. They don't last very long but it scares me. I was wondering if this might be a sign of the kidney failure. She doesn't seem in pain when it happens. It just happened a few minutes ago. She is on my lap and I was petting her while it happened. She was purring while it was happening. It's not from the meds because she was having the jerking episodes before I started with it.

After reading some related posts, I visited the website recommended..www.felinecrf.org and found my answer. Well, it could be a number of things which I would have to find out through blood work but the jerking is a symptom of kidney failure. I'll have to keep an eye on it until her next visit. It doesn't happen a lot but I'm still concerned.

When was the round of blood work done? When is your next vet visit? It's time for a new round of blood tests. While you can't fix kidney failure, most of the problems listed below can be addressed and may make your cat feel more comfortable, esp. sub-q fluids to help remove toxins from the kidneys. From the same website:

 Twitching may be caused by high blood pressure. Other causes of twitching include  high or low potassium levels, high blood pressure, high phosphorus levels, calcium imbalances  (especially head twitching),hyperthyroidism  or Vitamin B deficiency. Twitching may also be caused by  high toxin levels. If your cat only twitches while you are giving fluids, it is probably caused by either the type of fluid  used or by giving cold (room temperature) fluids.

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I wish I had a better idea since jerking and twitching are different things to me.   Twitching is like what you see when a cat is sleeping and is going through REM stage.   Very rapid movements of the lips, wiskers.   Jerking is more like something I would equate to an epileptic seizure.  

My cat had a couple of episodes where it seemed like she was in seizure but very stiff as if her muscles were jerking in small movements.   She was lying on her side.   To me it was very scary - all I could imagine was she was having a stroke or heart attack.   I just pet her as she was going thru it and tried to comfort her.   The episodes lasted probably about 20 seconds but felt like much longer than that.   Afterwards, she was able to get up but seemed disoriented and it took a while for her to get her bearings.

I attributed it to severe dehydration and thus low electrolytes so I gave her heavy doses of pedialyte afterward.