On April 3, 2007, I took Milk to the vet. He had full blood work done, including the bile acids survey and testing for FIV, FELV, bartonella, and that other thing that you get from eating raw meat. Geez, my mind. All the results were either normal or negative. So.....
On April 4, 2007, I started giving him a quarter of a 60 mg phenobarbital pill. It wasn't a very accurate dosage, because the pill splitter didn't always get everything the same size. I put the pill in a Pill Pocket, which worked very well - he gobbled it right down. But from the beginning, he was pretty zombie-like at that dosage. He didn't come when I called him - he didn't even flick his ears as though he recognized his name. He wouldn't let you pet him - like to run your hand from head to tail - he'd scrooch down so you were actually not touching anything. He was very clumsy - he fell off the bathroom sink, the kitchen table, the end table he likes to sit on, and the cat tree - multiple times. Sometimes he couldn't seem to get it together with his back legs to jump up onto places, either. His coordination was very poor. And, surprisingly, his appetite almost completely disappeared, which was odd, since phenobarbital is supposed to be an appetite stimulant. He was simply not himself from the very first pill. But - and it was a BIG "But" - he didn't have a single seizure on 15 mg.
I continued to give him 15mg bid all through April and into the middle of May. I took him back after six weeks for bloodwork to check his phenobarb level. It came out 27.2. Which the vet said was right in the middle of the recommended 15-40 scale, but I had read in several veterinary books that that scale was more geared to dogs, and that cats should be between 20-30, and the closer to 20, the better. And then it worried me that he wasn't eating, and the falling, and the other non-Milkshake things that I was seeing, so I started chipping the corners off the pills before I gave them to him. No way of knowing how much that reduced the dosage - it was minimal, I'm sure. I didn't see much difference in the way he acted, and he didn't have any seizures. I had what clearly has turned out to be a false hope that he'd have "gotten over" the seizures. The vet agreed to give me a prescription for 10mg vet chews from BCP, to try to lower the dosage. Unfortunately (especially since they were REALLY expensive, plus shipping!) he was used to the Pill Pockets, and he wanted nothing to do with chicken flavored Vet Chews. So, I gave up on them.
The first week of June, 2007, the vet gave me a prescription for 15 mg pills that I could cut in half. And it was like magic! Suddenly, the regular Milk was back. He played, he ran and jumped without falling over, and he ATE. It was wonderful. He cuddled again, with me and with the other cats. He started napping beside Scruffy.
