1. Gio, between 1.5-2 years, male. Has epilepsy.
2. Neutered
3. Black cat
4. 7.7 lbs- we were told he would stay small because of his epilepsy.
5. Spastic, high energy, good appetite, he is generally happy and playful, and also would like more exploration of the outdoors, which we do not give him, and he sometimes complains about! He also loves snuggling with us.
6. Diet: the Honest Kitchen câté grain free salmon & cod recipe, Wellness Complete Health grain free kibble, and homemade food for dinner consisting of: mostly canned human grade sardines or salmon, 1 tsp pureed organic pumpkin and/or thawed frozen whole fresh peas, along with ground raw pumpkin seeds, Bixbi immunity supplement, Life Line organic Ocean Kelp supplement, along with a few drops of cat’s claw, lemon balm, valerian root, b12, zinc, atlantic dulse, pau d’arco, olive leaf, goldenseal, propolis, and a tiny sprinkle each of spirulina & barley grass juice powder.
7. We just adopted him 2 months ago and he is up to date with his vaccines. We were told he took gabapentin, 100 mg, right after each seizure, which apparently would happen every 2 months while he was living at the adoption agency.
8. My primary problem is I have not been giving him his medication after his seizures. Since his first one, he has had 3 other seizures, and they are getting closer together. These last 2 seizures were 3 days apart. They only lasted about 2 minutes each. Before these 2, one happened 2 weeks prior, for almost 10 minutes. And before that one, his first seizure was 1 month prior to that (length of seizure unavailable).
Now I realize, this could be medication withdrawal seizures. At the time I thought it would be fine since it seemed he did not take enough to make a difference. He also was not prescribed this medication consistently- it’s only supposed to be taken once before each seizure. However I now realize stopping it cold turkey was probably a mistake, and now I’m wondering if it will be safe to give it to him once again?
His first seizure happened 20 days after adoption. His second seizure happened 29 days after that, right after my husband’s parents came to visit for the weekend (we know from the adoption place that he would get seizures during “big events” when a lot of people were around him). His third seizure happened 16 days later, a couple days after he had cut his face, and finally, another one happened 3 days after that. His face keeps trying to heal, but he keeps scratching off the scabs & more skin, and we think this also might be a cause to his most recent 2 seizures. We bought a cone for him to try but delivery of it has been delayed. We have clipped some of his claws in hopes to prevent him from reopening the wounds. We are putting sovereign silver drops onto the wounds and they do not look infected.
After this last seizure, we gave him maybe 1/4th or 1/5th of a gabapentin pill in a little wet food and he ate it all. We also gave him 1 dropperful of lemon balm, extra valerian root, and b12 and some wild blueberry juice splashed in his water as well. What scared me about this last time is that instead of acting fatigued and “out there,” or mindless after his seizure (which is usually what happens), he was spastic and running around again. This worried me that another seizure might start. But instead he pooped, and then seemed to calm down considerably. Maybe the gabapentin took a little bit to go through his system.
9. His seizures tend to be triggered by too much picking up and holding, or if something scares him. Our home is filled with windows that reflect back at him at night, so we have been covering up the windows at night so he isn’t nervous about the reflections, which he seems to be. His first seizure was in the morning, but every other seizure he’s had has been in the evenings with us- and we do stay up late at night so we have been present almost every time for each of his seizures.
10. No diagnostic work done from us, we were told he has epilepsy by the adoption agency.
11. His previous treatment for seizures was gabapentin, 1 capsule after each seizure (as told to us by the cat adoption place). Now, we are wanting to manage his seizures naturally with herbs, but fear we might need to go back to using gabapentin. This is new territory for both of us.
12. Other health concerns have only been that he had tapeworms when he first moved in with us, and we have been taking care of the problem with the raw pumpkin seeds. He used to poop outside his box, and has since stopped. We think he didn’t poop in the box because of the tapeworms. His poops have also gotten smaller and less stinky, thankfully, but he poops only once about every 18 hours, give or take.
Thank you for any insights
this is a big scare for us and I don’t want to injure this precious baby.
2. Neutered
3. Black cat
4. 7.7 lbs- we were told he would stay small because of his epilepsy.
5. Spastic, high energy, good appetite, he is generally happy and playful, and also would like more exploration of the outdoors, which we do not give him, and he sometimes complains about! He also loves snuggling with us.
6. Diet: the Honest Kitchen câté grain free salmon & cod recipe, Wellness Complete Health grain free kibble, and homemade food for dinner consisting of: mostly canned human grade sardines or salmon, 1 tsp pureed organic pumpkin and/or thawed frozen whole fresh peas, along with ground raw pumpkin seeds, Bixbi immunity supplement, Life Line organic Ocean Kelp supplement, along with a few drops of cat’s claw, lemon balm, valerian root, b12, zinc, atlantic dulse, pau d’arco, olive leaf, goldenseal, propolis, and a tiny sprinkle each of spirulina & barley grass juice powder.
7. We just adopted him 2 months ago and he is up to date with his vaccines. We were told he took gabapentin, 100 mg, right after each seizure, which apparently would happen every 2 months while he was living at the adoption agency.
8. My primary problem is I have not been giving him his medication after his seizures. Since his first one, he has had 3 other seizures, and they are getting closer together. These last 2 seizures were 3 days apart. They only lasted about 2 minutes each. Before these 2, one happened 2 weeks prior, for almost 10 minutes. And before that one, his first seizure was 1 month prior to that (length of seizure unavailable).
Now I realize, this could be medication withdrawal seizures. At the time I thought it would be fine since it seemed he did not take enough to make a difference. He also was not prescribed this medication consistently- it’s only supposed to be taken once before each seizure. However I now realize stopping it cold turkey was probably a mistake, and now I’m wondering if it will be safe to give it to him once again?
His first seizure happened 20 days after adoption. His second seizure happened 29 days after that, right after my husband’s parents came to visit for the weekend (we know from the adoption place that he would get seizures during “big events” when a lot of people were around him). His third seizure happened 16 days later, a couple days after he had cut his face, and finally, another one happened 3 days after that. His face keeps trying to heal, but he keeps scratching off the scabs & more skin, and we think this also might be a cause to his most recent 2 seizures. We bought a cone for him to try but delivery of it has been delayed. We have clipped some of his claws in hopes to prevent him from reopening the wounds. We are putting sovereign silver drops onto the wounds and they do not look infected.
After this last seizure, we gave him maybe 1/4th or 1/5th of a gabapentin pill in a little wet food and he ate it all. We also gave him 1 dropperful of lemon balm, extra valerian root, and b12 and some wild blueberry juice splashed in his water as well. What scared me about this last time is that instead of acting fatigued and “out there,” or mindless after his seizure (which is usually what happens), he was spastic and running around again. This worried me that another seizure might start. But instead he pooped, and then seemed to calm down considerably. Maybe the gabapentin took a little bit to go through his system.
9. His seizures tend to be triggered by too much picking up and holding, or if something scares him. Our home is filled with windows that reflect back at him at night, so we have been covering up the windows at night so he isn’t nervous about the reflections, which he seems to be. His first seizure was in the morning, but every other seizure he’s had has been in the evenings with us- and we do stay up late at night so we have been present almost every time for each of his seizures.
10. No diagnostic work done from us, we were told he has epilepsy by the adoption agency.
11. His previous treatment for seizures was gabapentin, 1 capsule after each seizure (as told to us by the cat adoption place). Now, we are wanting to manage his seizures naturally with herbs, but fear we might need to go back to using gabapentin. This is new territory for both of us.
12. Other health concerns have only been that he had tapeworms when he first moved in with us, and we have been taking care of the problem with the raw pumpkin seeds. He used to poop outside his box, and has since stopped. We think he didn’t poop in the box because of the tapeworms. His poops have also gotten smaller and less stinky, thankfully, but he poops only once about every 18 hours, give or take.
Thank you for any insights
this is a big scare for us and I don’t want to injure this precious baby.
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