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Ok so about 2 or 3 years ago these two black cats adopted my parents. We believed they were father and son. They were pretty feral although the dad you could touch once in a while. The son you couldn't. Well last year the father got a blood clot in his back legs and dragged himself into my parents house screaming in pain. (it was the craziest saddest thing I've ever seen cat wise) We ended up putting him down with no other choice. So the son obviously missed his father and became more feral. Well just about two months ago he started having spasms in my parents house with some kind of itching on his back or something?? Literally has seizures with all claws out and then freezes after its over. I can't explain it. I tried catching him this weekend to no avail in my parents house. I put a trap in their garage and kept him locked in it but he hasn't eaten the food with the sedative I got from the vet. I'm afraid he's rabid or something else very serious. My parents are elderly and they have three other cats. I don't want him attacking any of them in his "fits". My next option is to call a raccoon critter capture person and see if I can get them to come in and hit him with a tranqualizer gun or something while he's locked in garage to take him to the vet.
Does anyone have any suggestions?? We are at our last wits end here. I really do not know what else to do. Your help is greatly appreciated!
Personally, I do not believe that there is much hope for this cat. Even if his affliction is not terminal (which it sounds serious enough to be a killer, whatever it is) if it is suspected that rabies might be a factor, I believe that the means to test an animal still go autopsy-style. I don't think they test them while alive. Can anyone confirm or correct this?
Based on the above, IF it is correct, your best bet is to try and get it trapped and transported somewhere that it can be safely and humanely euthanized. It is certainly a suffering animal.
If it has a treatable sickness, there is also the question of how much care and expense is practical, given that it is a feral cat.
Seizures are known to be caused by brain trauma, poison (including chemicals like antifreeze and even some spider bites), infection or sickness affecting the nervous system, or simply feline epilepsy which is usually treated with ongoing sedatives. In this case I would suspect some form of poison, not necessarily deliberate, it could easily be something bad in the environment they got into...in my opinion it could have been the same cause of death and illness for them both, at least I would suspect this. Are you absolutely certain that the other cat died because of a blood clot?
Regardless, I don't see a good outcome here, and I'm very sorry.
Does anyone have any suggestions?? We are at our last wits end here. I really do not know what else to do. Your help is greatly appreciated!
Can you call a Rescue and explain the problem to them? They may be able to help you. This cat needs to be checked by a vet. It may not be anything serious.
Hey guys I was able to catch the cat and took him to vet to get euthanized. Thanks for the replies though. He's with his dad now which is wear he wanted to be.
I am stunned by the tone of some of these follow-up posts by the OP. "Oh, I caught him and had him put down. Thanks for the replies." Then "I didn't even have him checked. Didn't want to bother. I just had him put down."
Maybe it wasn't serious. Maybe it was. PROBABLY it was. But you didn't even check.
I am stunned by the tone of some of these follow-up posts by the OP. "Oh, I caught him and had him put down. Thanks for the replies." Then "I didn't even have him checked. Didn't want to bother. I just had him put down."
Maybe it wasn't serious. Maybe it was. PROBABLY it was. But you didn't even check.
That poor kitty.
It wasn't so much "didn't want to bother" as it was "can't afford to drop another big chunk of change on vet bills." Which I....kind of...understand.
I could wish maybe the OP had called around to see if a rescue or shelter nearby might be willing to get involved and maybe do a little more, BUT, chances are when a feral shows up that can't be adopted out and is suffering from something as intense as grand mal seizures (which is what that sounded like)...euthanasia was the most likely outcome. There are people out there who would have just let it suffer and not even done this much though.
It wasn't so much "didn't want to bother" as it was "can't afford to drop another big chunk of change on vet bills." Which I....kind of...understand.
I could wish maybe the OP had called around to see if a rescue or shelter nearby might be willing to get involved and maybe do a little more, BUT, chances are when a feral shows up that can't be adopted out and is suffering from something as intense as grand mal seizures (which is what that sounded like)...euthanasia was the most likely outcome. There are people out there who would have just let it suffer and not even done this much though.
It is still really sad regardless.
I absolutely understand that not everyone can afford a $1,000 vet bill. The posts just sounded so, well, cavalier. From what he wrote, he didn't even CHECK to see what the vet might say. Yeah, that might have been the cost of an office visit and probably the kitty was doomed anyway, but still.
Wait a second here. DO NOT sit here and start bashing me nor my family. My family has spent more than several tens of thousands of dollars on ALL of our cats over 30 years. A one point, my parents had NINE rescue cats so do not sit here and even dare to imply that what I did was incorrect. ALL of our cats have been rescues. This is a feral cat that would sleep and eat in my parents house sometimes in the garage but could NEVER be touched. He would run away. The only thing that calmed/normalized him down was his dad who we had to put to sleep last year. You still couldn't even touch him when the dad was around. My parents never denied him shelter or food so I really don't appreciate the snide comments. They gave him a better life than what he would have had living on the street. At least at this point, he is no longer suffering. Who knows what type of life he would have had on the street including continue to have these seizures/episodes in the wild with no one to care for him. My parents were not wrong in not wanting to spend what could have been serious money on a cat that they couldn't get anywhere close to.
BTW-I'm a female.
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