Epilepsy in Cats: Is My Cat Having a Seizure?

Epilepsy as a Kitten

This account is from what you might call a 'first-and-a-half-hand' experience in dealing with one of our cats who had epilepsy since she was a tiny kitten. Regardless of the species affected, the condition manifests in the same ways.

What Is Epilepsy, Anyway?

The simplest analogy to explain what causes epilepsy is that of a short circuit in the wiring of the brain. A signal starts from point 'A,' heading for point 'B,' and partway there, it hits an open gap or roadblock, but the signal keeps trying anyway to get through; it may then try to find another path, and it eventually spreads throughout the brain.

This results in a seizure, as the motor control functions are disrupted. In a generalized seizure, the animal will fall down and begin thrashing about uncontrollably. While this is happening, they are "not there"; they will not respond to you. Their eyes may be open, closed, or rolling around.

Afterward, they may be confused, dazed, and very certainly tired and sore. (I used to have a neighbor with the condition, and he described coming out of a seizure as feeling as if he'd been run over by a Mack truck; every muscle in his body ached.)

How Can I Tell if It's a Seizure?

First, you need to be familiar enough with your kitty to recognize unusual behavior or actions. Cats do dream, and they can twitch in their sleep as they dream of catching something.

A seizure looks different, however. A mild seizure is sometimes barely noticeable; it may be only rapid blinking of the eyes a few times and/or the twitching or shaking of a single paw. If you are not looking at the cat, you may not even notice it happening.

The video just below shows this type of seizure. That cat's problem was caused by diabetic shock, according to the owner. There are many other causes as well. Some of the causes may be:

• trauma (this is what happened to our cat; trauma from anesthesia overdose)
• tumors
• infections

In the absence of any of these conditions, it is quite rare in young cats.

Helping a Kitty Through the Seizure

Toss out most of what you may have learned in first aid classes for humans having a seizure. A cat is not a human, and different measures need to be taken.

• If you can safely move the cat, do so, preferably onto a bathroom or kitchen floor where there is no carpet. During the episode, the cat may drool profusely and/or lose bladder or bowel control or both. This is in addition to shaking or twitching, sometimes violently, as happened with our kitty.
• Use a towel to put over the kitty's head to block light from their eyes. In a full-blown whole-body seizure, you will notice their eyes may be fully dilated, even in bright light. While their eyes are usually wide open, they are actually unconscious. The towel will protect their eyes, as well as sometimes shorten the duration of the episode.
• Keeping your hands well away from the mouth, gently restrain the cat so it does not hurt itself on nearby objects. (See the video down the page of the white cat for an illustration of this method.) A cat thrashing its limbs about will manage to "crawl," even if lying on its side, which is common due to the claws pulling them along. If their claws get hold of the carpet, it can end badly.

In fact, this happened to our kitty once! We had gone out for an errand and on our return, found the evidence of a seizure, along with some bloody footprints. Upon examining her feet, we discovered that she'd caught her claws in the carpet, and 2 of them had been ripped out of her paws to the roots! Poor Patches!!

After the Seizure

Once the episode has passed, the kitty may exhibit any of several behaviors. She may act confused and disoriented; she may be very hungry, or very sleepy.

Our kitty would have very violent 'grand-mal' or 'generalized' seizures involving her entire body. Afterward, she would still be very out of it, and I would hold her, wrapped in a towel for comfort, until she came to enough to want to be put down.

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At that point, she would head right for her food bowl, eat a large portion, and then go to sleep for several hours. When you think about it, this is not surprising. What has just happened amounts to one heck of a cardio workout. I'd be tired and sleepy after that as well!

Stopping a Seizure Before It Happens

One thing we learned was that any kind of repetitive clicking or ticking noise was likely to trigger a seizure. We learned to be very careful about unconsciously making such noises, such as tapping pencils or drumming fingers while waiting for something or making clicking sounds with the tongue, or we would almost instantly see her start to twitch.

We found a few tricks, as well. If we caught her immediately prior to seizing, just starting with tiny little 'body quakes,' if we could get to her and pick her up suddenly, tap her gently on the head, or ruffle her fur quite vigorously, it seemed to interrupt the short-circuit in the brain, by giving it something else to process; but once the seizure was full-blown, these things did not work.

If the seizure was longer than normal, we would sometimes carry her to the sink and run some water over her head. This seemed to have the same effect as the tricks we used in the pre-seizure mode, except that it could bring her out of a full-on seizure.

The Onset of a Seizure Poses a Real Danger for Kitty

The dangerous part for kitty, however, was that she seemed to realize when one was about to hit and would attempt to run away from it. She would frantically run blindly about, trying to climb walls, furniture, anything she could, until the escape failed, and the seizure overtook her.

Ironically, a seizure would often come upon her and wake her when she was sound asleep! This would begin her panicked flight about the house.

This is where and why we had to try to intercede and stop the process from continuing, as she had gotten into some real predicaments from time to time that could have turned out very badly.

The photo below shows where we found her one morning after searching the whole house. This must have happened while we were asleep and did not hear her running. Who knows how many minutes or hours poor Patches was stuck in there?!

Beware of the Bite!

During the seizure, while we were holding her and watching that her claws did not become ensnared, it was also important that we kept our hands well away from her mouth, as the jaw muscles were also involved, and she would be involuntarily snapping her mouth open and closed.

That was a lesson learned the hard way! During one of her early seizures, my husband was trying to help her out of the seizure and got his hand in the way of her mouth. Her teeth pierced clean through the web between his thumb and index finger and locked! He is a six-foot, two-hundred-pound man with a lot of muscle, and it was hard for him to get her mouth opened to free his hand! Where was I? Outside, cleaning up after the dog we had at the time, so I did not hear him calling for assistance!

Be advised that your little pet kitty's jaw can produce enough force to break finger bones! In fact, their bite force amounts to about thirteen pounds of pressure per square inch (PSI). Bolstered with sharp teeth, that's plenty to do some real damage! (In fact, adjusted out on a relative pound of force to size ratio, a cat bites with more force than the long-extinct megalodon super shark!)

How Did She Come to Have Epilepsy?

The history of our poor kitty was this:

We adopted her from a rescue organization back in 1998. She was a tiny thing, barely six weeks old and under a pound. She fit in the palm of my husband's hand. She and her siblings had been found, just days old, inside a paper sack tossed into a paint locker at a local school.

The kittens were placed with a foster family to bottle-feed and raise until they were old enough to adopt. One of the litter didn't make it. The others were placed for adoption. Up until that point, the kitten we picked out did not have epilepsy.

I now volunteer with a rescue organization myself, and I know how the system works. If the family fostering the kittens had seen any such evidence, the cat would have been put down and not put up for adoption.

Is Early Spaying a Standard Practice?

Most rescue groups enforce an early spay/neuter policy—but not with kittens that young. The current standard for early spay/neuter is a minimum of 2 months and 2 pounds for males, closer to 2.5 pounds for females.

The group I'm with will not display the kittens for adoption until they have reached that point and are already spayed or neutered, or, in special circumstances, they will allow the adoption, but the kitten stays with the foster family until the procedure is done.

Unfortunately, that was not true of this other group, and they insisted she had to be spayed at such a tiny and delicate stage.

The Wrong Anesthesia, or an Overdose ...

According to my current veterinarian, a commonly used anesthetic for cats is isoflurane. In looking this up on the Internet, I found that it can cause a marked increase in intracranial or cerebrospinal pressure.

Pressure on the brain often causes brain injury of some kind--it is the reason shunts are installed for conditions such as hydrocephalus or to relieve pressure from accidental traumas.

Because she was so tiny, the anesthesia had a more pronounced effect, and the end result was some brain damage, which caused her to have epilepsy. We noticed her first seizure after we'd had her home only 2 days.

It was what is called a "petit mal" or "absence" seizure--she simply stiffened up and zoned out, and was "not there" for about half a minute.

It Soon Got Worse

Within a couple of weeks, we saw the onset of grand-mal, or what is now called 'tonic-clonic' or 'generalized' seizures, involving full-body involuntary muscle spasms. These would last anywhere from a few seconds to almost a full minute. Whether you are watching this happen to a tiny kitten or to a child, the feeling of sadness and helplessness is overwhelming.

The poor cat was having these episodes several times a week. It was heartbreaking to see, but at the same time, when she was not in the throes of a seizure, she was a normal, sweet kitty, and nothing else was wrong with her. She had already stolen our hearts, and we could not bear to think of putting her down, as she was not suffering 24/7.

Challenging the Veterinary Medical Profession

The worst part, actually, was getting a veterinarian to listen to reason and convince them of the problem. The vet we had at the time wanted to 'pooh-pooh' the idea that a cat could have epilepsy, especially that young. He claimed that dogs sometimes start having seizures as they get old and cats less often.

The vet responsible for the surgery further wanted to lay the blame on some obscure birth defect, called a 'liver shunt,' and send her to a university veterinary teaching hospital at great expense for surgery. We declined. You see, my husband had an uncle who suffered from epilepsy, and he knew very well what an epileptic seizure looked like in all of its forms.

It took an entire year of helplessly watching kitty have these episodes before we finally found a vet who listened and put the cat on appropriate medication.

If this happens to your pet, stick to your guns, and keep searching until you find a vet who has their head on straight.