Hello,
We have an approximately 9-10 year old female cat who within the past month has experienced a serious downturn in health.
In retrospect, we think her issue started months ago - she was running in fast counterclockwise circles. At the time we just didn't realize this was a sign of anything.
Recently (past 4-5 weeks), she started dropping food when eating, and in the past 3 weeks we noticed her left pupil was dilated and also she fell off her favorite ottomoan seat 1-2 times she was sleeping on because she would try to groggily lick her right side and would just roll off (we started padding everything around the seat). She was also generally acting lethargic, we noticed drool when she was sleeping, and also had stopped jumping up on the couch to sit with us.
We took her to a vet who ran a blood panel, all checked out okay - maybe just slightly dehydrated he said. He also did a thyroid test and was fine. She got 1 week of antibiotics which we completed, but no changes, except the week after she saw the vet her jaw/teeth started making weird loud cracking noises. Next step we were told is take her to a neurologist.
The neurologist did some physical tests and couldn't determine anything from her symptoms, except maybe weakness in the right front leg - this was last weekend. They suggested several body scans to rule out things. We were making decisions about whether to get a second opinion or just do all the scans, but then additional symptoms emerged over the past few days.
List of symptoms:
- drooling, dropping dry food (~4-5 weeks)
- dilated left pupil (~3 weeks)
- jaw has started making cracking noises (~2 weeks). she will wake up and move her jaw around and it makes a terrible noise. Sometimes, she also makes this movement and noise when she eating, but more frequently is when waking up
- day before yesterday, she lost a little patch of fur below her eye (skin colored) and by yesterday it was reddish in color. She has also started scratching the left side near her ear to the point it is scabbed in the past two days
- generally, she walks around fine, but can't manage to jump well up and down anything higher than maybe a foot. The neurologist mentioned her front right leg didn't quite pass a "knuckling" test and was less responsive than the others.
- her appetite and bodily functions all running okay. In fact, we think she eats more than previous -- we are giving her wet food more now because of the food dropping and jaw issues and bloodwork slight dehydration indication
Has anyone run into these types of symptoms or any ideas please what this could be?
We are very likely to take her back to the specialist center for diagnostics, but at the rate symptoms are progressing, we are not sure if the $6000+ of MRI and Xray and ultrasound and spinal tap will tell us anything with specificity that can be cured, or prolong her life materially. Even the neurologist was very iffy about diagnosing given the variety of her symptoms - he said it was more about "ruling things out".
Appreciate any help or insights if anyone has encountered anything like this before!!!!
We have an approximately 9-10 year old female cat who within the past month has experienced a serious downturn in health.
In retrospect, we think her issue started months ago - she was running in fast counterclockwise circles. At the time we just didn't realize this was a sign of anything.
Recently (past 4-5 weeks), she started dropping food when eating, and in the past 3 weeks we noticed her left pupil was dilated and also she fell off her favorite ottomoan seat 1-2 times she was sleeping on because she would try to groggily lick her right side and would just roll off (we started padding everything around the seat). She was also generally acting lethargic, we noticed drool when she was sleeping, and also had stopped jumping up on the couch to sit with us.
We took her to a vet who ran a blood panel, all checked out okay - maybe just slightly dehydrated he said. He also did a thyroid test and was fine. She got 1 week of antibiotics which we completed, but no changes, except the week after she saw the vet her jaw/teeth started making weird loud cracking noises. Next step we were told is take her to a neurologist.
The neurologist did some physical tests and couldn't determine anything from her symptoms, except maybe weakness in the right front leg - this was last weekend. They suggested several body scans to rule out things. We were making decisions about whether to get a second opinion or just do all the scans, but then additional symptoms emerged over the past few days.
List of symptoms:
- drooling, dropping dry food (~4-5 weeks)
- dilated left pupil (~3 weeks)
- jaw has started making cracking noises (~2 weeks). she will wake up and move her jaw around and it makes a terrible noise. Sometimes, she also makes this movement and noise when she eating, but more frequently is when waking up
- day before yesterday, she lost a little patch of fur below her eye (skin colored) and by yesterday it was reddish in color. She has also started scratching the left side near her ear to the point it is scabbed in the past two days
- generally, she walks around fine, but can't manage to jump well up and down anything higher than maybe a foot. The neurologist mentioned her front right leg didn't quite pass a "knuckling" test and was less responsive than the others.
- her appetite and bodily functions all running okay. In fact, we think she eats more than previous -- we are giving her wet food more now because of the food dropping and jaw issues and bloodwork slight dehydration indication
Has anyone run into these types of symptoms or any ideas please what this could be?
We are very likely to take her back to the specialist center for diagnostics, but at the rate symptoms are progressing, we are not sure if the $6000+ of MRI and Xray and ultrasound and spinal tap will tell us anything with specificity that can be cured, or prolong her life materially. Even the neurologist was very iffy about diagnosing given the variety of her symptoms - he said it was more about "ruling things out".
Appreciate any help or insights if anyone has encountered anything like this before!!!!
