Feline vestibular syndrome

Feline vestibular disorder: Never heard of it? Neither had we, until our youngest cat, Pearl (that's her in the photo at right), suddenly began showing strange symptoms: She was listing to the left and was kind of trembly, and her eyes were darting like a metronome from left to right, left to right. She would fall over if she tried to walk and generally seemed dizzy and disoriented in the extreme.

I first noticed the head tilt last night but didn't think much of it. This morning we couldn't find her for hours; she didn't show up for breakfast. We scoured the house and finally, at 1 in the afternoon, discovered her curled up in a dark corner in the family room. The symptoms seemed far worse than the night before; I thought she might be having a seizure. It was Sunday. We called our vet's service, but when the doctor hadn't gotten back to us after about an hour, we packed Pearl into the car and headed to an animal emergency center about 20 miles away.

That, as it turned out, was a mistake. Not only did they charge us $500 to run a few tests on Pearl (bloodwork, an X-ray of the stomach to see if she had eaten something poisonous) and then hooked her to an IV, they missed what turned out to be the obvious diagnosis. But we only found that out when we got back home, having left Pearl behind at the emergency vet's. Our vet finally returned our call. "Go back, tell them you want your cat. And when you get her home, call me," he said. God bless Dr. D.

We did as instructed, and got Pearl in to see our vet at 9:15 p.m. Dr. D. advised us that emergency veterinary centers are generally not a wise choice except in the most extreme situations; other than centers in major metropolitan areas (like the Animal Medical Center in New York), the care at these places can be subpar. Then he did what the emergency vet had failed to do: He examined the cat. He had me put her down on the floor so he could see her walk (or attempt to) and he literally got down on his hands and knees to watch her at Pearl-level. When she was back up on the examining table, he looked into her ears and eyes.

She presented, he said, with virtually a textbook case of feline vestibular syndrome, which is a neurological disorder of unknown origin that is something like Meniere's disease in humans. For some reason (also unknown), it strikes most frequently during the summer. Generally, a cat will improve after 72 hours and be completely back to normal in 7 to 14 days, and that of course is what we are hoping for Pearl.

In the meantime, the doctor gave her a valium (sufferers are nauseous and disoriented because the disease affects the nerves of the inner ear, so the sedative will help those symptoms) and tucked her into a cage for overnight observation. If she shows no further or no worse symptoms, it's likely we'll be able to take her home tomorrow.

I miss her already (she's my major cuddle bunny), but am so very relieved that she is in such good hands. We are so lucky to have found the world's smartest, most caring vet--one who will see you at 9:15 on the Sunday night of a holiday weekend.

There was a crooked cat...

Did the crooked man who had a crooked house also have a crooked cat? We do. It's two weeks to the day since our Pearl came down with feline vestibular syndrome (see the post under that name, below) and, while she's far better than she was, she's still--well, crooked.

This is a disorder of unknown origin (it can strike dogs, too) that affects the nerves of the inner ear. Thus, it's classified as a neurological disease--a scary thought. Inner ear means balance, and Pearl's main symptom, now that the weird back-and-forth flicking of the eyes has (mercifully) passed, is balance problems. Her tilted head means she's still seeing the world at an angle. She can stand and walk without falling over, thank God, and can even jump on and off the bed and land on her feet. But she veers off-course when walking, flops onto her side if she has to, for example, scratch herself, and lists to the side when she tries to walk up the stairs.

She's getting restless in confinement (I've been keeping her with me in whatever room I'm occupying at the moment), but when given the run of the house she soon gets tired and disoriented and asks to go back to the bedroom to sleep in her basket. Too much activity makes her dizzy, and afterwards she craves rest.

Another telltale sign: her twitching tail. We first noticed that the tail was wagging in a jerky and erratic manner two weeks ago today, when all this started. Now it's better, as she slowly improves, but will still twitch in funny ways from time to time, as if it had a mind of its own. George reminds me that the tail is an integral part of the feline system of balance, so I guess it's no surprise that Pearl's poor tail is out of sync with the rest of her.

Supposedly it can take three weeks for a cat to recover from feline vestibular disorder, but some cats can have lingering problems, according to what I've read. I'm hoping little Pearl won't be one of them.

What's right with this picture?

The other day Pearl was sitting in the big greenhouse window in the kitchen as I was preparing a meal. I looked up to see her staring intently at me with big round eyes, and it took a moment to register what was different: her head was straight. It's been tilted since early July, when she came down with feline vestibular syndrome, a disorder of the nerves of the inner ear.

Again last night, we were in bed and she was sitting on a pile of freshly laundered clothes on top of George's bureau, staring at us. "Look!" I exclaimed. "She's straight!"

I do believe Pearl is getting back to normal. Perhaps the advent of fall, which you can feel in the air, is helping, since for reasons unknown, feline vestibular syndrome is associated with summer. I keep thinking of Paul Simon's song "Something So Right"—"when something goes wrong, I'm the first to admit it ... when something goes right, it's apt to confuse me, because it's such an unusual sight. I can't get used to something so right."

Sideways kitty

I had absolutely no idea, when I began posting in July 2005 about my cat Pearl's attack of feline vestibular syndrome, that my little blog would turn into a (highly unofficial) FVS site. But somehow, through the magic of Google, people looking up the disorder on the Internet -- or even plugging in the symptoms list, apparently -- wind up here. I'm thankful, of course, for any good this has done for cat owners confronted with a tilty-headed, disoriented puss with eyes darting alarmingly back and forth. I know from experience how frightening it is to see one's cat in this condition.

The update on Pearl is that alas, her head is still tilted some of the time, which means she is still in the grip of the disorder to some extent. From what our vet told us and from what I've read, that puts her in the minority. Apparently, most cats go through an "acute" phase of two or three days, then slowly get back to normal after two or three weeks. Happily, the problem hasn't slowed Pearl down much. She's back to jumping to the top of the seven-foot pine cupboard in the dining room (using a side table nearby as a springboard) in order to nap in one of the big baskets on top of it. Our vet told us that cats are very adaptable and learn to cope. Well, I guess!

More interesting is the question of why so many cats seem to have been struck with FVS during a period that's been marked by violent weather of every sort. Many of the cat owners who left comments on the blog have said that their animals came down with FVS after a severe thunderstorm, a hurricane, a tornado watch and so on. Of course, it's impossible to say whether there are more FVS attacks now, or if I'm just more aware of it because of the activity on the blog. But I can't help but wonder if our cats are like the canaries in the coal mine, reacting like an advance warning to some kind of seismic change in the global weather patterns.