Fluoxetine (Prozac) cause decreased coordination?

badmunkee

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Hi! has anybody who has a kitty on fluoxetine, who then started having mild coordination problems? My boy is pretty nervous, and ended up with diarrhea from my other cat being a bully... Lots of vet trips and behavior modification later, the vet and I decided to try a low dose of fluoxetine. It's been almost a month. He's unsteady on his feet and generally lethargic... Took him to the emergency vet when he fell getting out of the cat tree. He totally checked out as being normal and healthy, and vet suggested we take dosage down to half and check back in in 4-5 days. It has me worried tho. Anybody else experience something similar? Are there maybe some herbal supplements I could use instead to help his confidence/anxiety levels and my other cat's bully tendencies?
 

red top rescue

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Here is a thread that pertained to this question and has 45 posts on it.  You can see what other people said.

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/154762/cats-on-prozac

As with any medication, Prozac does have a long list of potential side effects from decreased appetite to seizures and many others. The likelihood of these side effects occurring is generally very low and will usually subside if the medication is stopped. Having said that, no drugs are 100% benign and cats on long-term medication do need to be monitored.

If the bullying is the source of the anxiety, I would suggest site swapping instead, i.e. they both live in your house but take turns sharing the living space.  From there you can get into gradual slow introductions again after they have broken off their negative dynamic. I have one cat who lives that way all the time.  He is so timid that ALL the other cats will eventually bully him and he became so stressed he stopped pooping in the litter box.  Once he was allowed to join the two quiet cats in the bedroom, he got over the litter box aversion and has become buddies with those two cats.  Every so  often he dashes out, only to see one of the cats who used to bully him somewhere else in the house.  His eyes get big, he crouches downh, and then he runs back to "his" bedroom where he feels safe and hapoy.
 
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badmunkee

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Thank you!
Unfortunately my apartment isn't a place where I can separate them easily... They've been together for two and a half years, but the one is much more energetic, and tends to bully when playing, and during feeding, I try to separate them for feeding. Hoping to buy my own place soon, so hopefully there will be a better set up for harmony then.
The vet doesn't seem too concerned that he's so wobbly, but ita really upsetting for me. He was on a low dose as it was, but I think he's sensitive to it. I'm tapering him down to nothing and taking him off of it. I wish I knew if this was something other people had gone through, and how it all came out in the end. It's really worrysome
 

red top rescue

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I agree with you.  If he were my cat, I would take him off that medication.  Wobbly is not a good way to live!  You could always set up a nice large dog crate and alternate who is in and who is out.  You can have food litter and a bed in the crate, drape it with a sheet to make it a cave, and leave one or the other in when you are not home to supervise, then swap out when you get home, or let them  be together but put the bully in for a time out whenever it gets too rough.
 
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