Stroke of Luck

What a difference a week and a half makes.  In our last Mister-focused blog, Mister was calm, relaxed, happy.  Since then, Mister has had some less happy moments.  It all started (or rather, we noticed it) over the weekend.  Mister kept tilting his head down and to the right, and would hold it like that for very long periods of time, staring at nothing on the floor.  He was more agitated than usual, picking fights with the other cats and seeming uncomfortable with extended periods of petting.  His gait was just a shade unsteady, and Sean said he saw him make some less-than-graceful jumps.  We called the vet on Monday and asked if we could bring him in.  The logical guess on this was that he was probably hypokalemic, which meant he'd end up with a potassium drip for the day--a common occurrence in cats who are in pre-kidney failure.  My worst fear was that he was farther along in the kidney failure than we thought.


I dropped him off at the vet yesterday morning and hoped for the best.  I got the call from the vet around lunch time.  Apparently, Wanda had been giving Mister tips on how to make like a Harpy and attack the vet, because suddenly Mister was extremely difficult to handle.  The assumption was that he was in a lot of pain, so they had to put him under mild anesthesia to get him calmed down enough to even examine him.  Much to our surprise and relief, his blood work all looked relatively normal!  He hadn't really budged from his previous levels, and he'd even gained weight a fraction. They found nothing--nothing on the blood work and nothing on the x-rays to explain what was going on with him.  Our vet suggested we make an appointment with a neurologist and sent us home.  As I was trying to get him in the car, we had a brief tussle with the car door which resulted in Mister's carrier getting knocked over on its side, but after much frantic checking, he seemed none the worse for wear.  Whew.  The car ride was uneventful.  Another whew.


When we got home, suddenly, Mister was fine.  He ran around the house checking everything out, as he usually does, and did a few sharp meows, but then he settled down and seemed perfectly normal.  No more head-tilting, no more ataxia.  He could jump again with no issues.  It was really, really weird.  We did some research and finally figured out what we think it was, and got tentative confirmation from the vet this morning:  we think he had a little mini-stroke.  Apparently cats can get over that a lot faster than humans can, and aside from a lot of fatigue this morning, and just the slightest bit of a head-tilt, he's doing well again today.  


If you'd told me a year ago that I would be relieved to find out my cat "just" had a stroke, I would have said you were crazy.  But that seems to be what has happened, and he seems to have come out the other side okay.  Obviously, we'll continue to watch him and know what we're looking for next time.  In the meantime, we're glad he seems to have given up the Harpy lessons.