Can an ear infection cause death in a cat?

Hi

 I need to find the answer to a very important question. My vet told me that my cat was suffering from an inner ear infection, like vertigo, and that he would be given antibiotics and that is all they gave him.

Over a 6 day period he deteriorated despite being in the vet hospital for 3 days.  I took him home as advised by them and he could not eat or stand properly and wobbled about  but I did help him to walk a little better.

Yesterday I watched him die in my arms back at the surgery fighting for breath, he was suffering shortness of breath and could not recover, he died.

what I saw does not fit in with an inner ear infection, can anyone help by advising what this may have been or why a vertigo like infection would kill an animal due to him being unable to breath because I don't buy it.

I am now devastated at the loss of the most wonderfull furry friend, he was one in a million.

Thank you

Paul London

Wow, this was from a long time ago. Did you ever figure out what happened?

To me it almost sounds like anti freeze poisoning. I know because I had some cats die from that. They act like they are drunk, and then they die. Alcohol is very similar to glycol (I spelled that wrong) except the liver can break down alcohol but can't break down the other. So it can't get cleaned out and just builds up until its fatal. The treatment for antifreeze poisoning, or at least one that I know of, is to give the victim measured amounts of drinking alcohol. It breaks the chemical bond of the antifreeze and replaces it in the tissues which then gets flushed out of the system. The liver then breaks down the alcohol and it also gets flushed out. However it is very easy to poison a small cat with alcohol also so its pretty iffy from what I have read. I never tried it but looked it all up after the fact. I had to change the radiator hoses on my car and drained the radiator into a catch pan. It was getting dark so I had to continue the project the next day. I covered the pan with plywood and then put some bricks on it but apparently it wasn't enough. One of the cats pushed the cover off and her and her 3 kittens drank the cool-aid. They died purring, it was very disturbing and turned out to be a hard learning session for me. Now I am super careful with that stuff because it really is poison. The manufacturers have actually helped a lot with this in the meantime. They now put an embitterment agent into it. Man does that taste bad. I have had a little bit of it get into my mouth while working on cars. It is so bad it will make you throw up. SO no more poisoned animals.

A previous boss had a cat that ended up with vertigo. She said the vet mentioned a few different possibilities, the only treatable one was an inner ear infection. Other possibilities was stroke, brain tumor, and other very serious things that affect the brain.