Until Seizure #12, Monday afternoon, June 11, 2007. He had been downstairs, and out of the blue, he showed up beside my chair. He was meowing plaintively, and his face and neck were wet - a bad sign. And he was starving. He ate almost an entire 5 ounce can of food in one fell swoop. I had run the sweeper earlier, and he was scared from behind the couch by it, hiding in the bedroom, and then dashing from the bedroom when I got in there. I have never been able to identify any triggers, but I wonder if, since he was more aware because of the lower dosage of phenobarb, he was more terrified by the noise. He seems more sensitive to sounds after the seizures. I talked to the vet about maybe increasing the dosage again a little (difficult to do because of the size of the pills - would need vet chews or liquid, I suppose.) He was reluctant to do an increase, and said that very few cats are ever totally seizure-free on the medication - and that a cat that has only one or two seizures a month is considered "well-controlled." I guess I was spoiled by the two months with NO seizures. I don't want to have to choose between having him be a zombie with no personality and no appetite, or having seizures every time he turns around, though.
Seizure # 13, Friday, June 15, 2007, 4:15 AM. I woke to the sounds of Milk having a seizure. By the time I realized what was going on and located him, he was leaning against the back of the couch and jerking and snapping his jaw. The foam was gone from his face, but his fur and whiskers still had a few bubbles on them, and the kitty Pi he'd been sleeping in and the back of the couch were wet. (Thank goodness he isn't peeing during seizures, I guess.) His pupils were very dilated. He didn't pace or meow afterwards, but he was wobbly, and he ate most of a can of friskies and then started grooming himself. He wanted to rub against the other cats, who were all gathered around watching him. I guess this would be classified as a mild seizure, compared to some of the others. One thing I noticed - around 1:00AM, he was laying in his Pi with Scruffy and Burble in theirs, and all of a sudden, he jumped up and sank his teeth into Burble's neck. Burble indignantly hopped down right away, and Milkshake just sat upright on the couch and stared at him on the floor. It was odd behavior, and now I wonder if it was some sort of seizure-foreshadowing?
Seizure #14 - Friday, June 15, 2007, 8:00 AM. This one came as a real surprise, being only four hours after the last one. He had been sleeping on the end of my recliner, between my feet, and it was less violent-seeming than most. His pupils were very enlarged, and there was foaming and jaw-snapping. And a lot of jerking, although not very hard. He let me pick him up and hold him while he was still jerking, and sat in my arms for a while afterwards while I tried to dry off his face and neck with kleenex. He had a funny smell to him - almost chlorine-like - that I never noticed before. (But, I'd done a couple loads of towels yesterday with chlorine, so that's probably where the smell came from.) When he wanted down, he did a minimal amount of pacing - he was meowing for food. I opened three different kinds of canned food, none of which he wanted, and I finally gave him a little bit of dry, which he gobbled right up. He paced a while after he ate, and the meowing - piteously - continued for almost an hour. I'm not sure he was even aware that he was meowing - it seemed somehow more like a reflex than a communication. This is really depressing.
