brianwood

Had a scare last night with one of our cats, Spottie, where I look up from reading on the sofa to see him staggering around like a drunk person. Which, as any pet owner will attest to, is one of the scariest things you can see your pet doing. He never actually fell over, but he kept staggering in circles, always in one direction, which immediately put the idea of a stroke into my head. By the time we hauled the pet carrier out and I had my shoes on, he was walking in a straight line, but we hustled him to the emergency vet anyway.

Everything seemed fine when we got there. He's kind of old, 12, and the vet gave him a pretty decent checkup and we opted for a blood test to rule out any kind of contagious infections (we have 3 other cats). The number of things that could cause behavior like that is many, and since he seemed fine, and since this happened about 30 seconds after he ate his dinner, we're hoping he had just lodged some food in his throat for a minute or so, and was silently suffering from oxygen deprivation. All the other possibilities are way, way worse (brain tumor, heart arrhythmia, nerve damage, stroke, etc).

So we'll see. He's been fine today so far.

Pretty miserable way to spend $300 and an otherwise great evening, though.

-bri