Banana Update

I was pretty anxious about leaving Banana to go on that trip, as I'm sure you can imagine. We have a great pet sitter who has been taking care of them for years, though, and I trusted her to take good care of them. She did have some drama giving him his medicine a few times, but overall it went fine.

When we got back, we were surprised at how normal he was acting, much moreso than before we left. We had his phenobarbital levels checked and they were within the normal range, although on the low side of average. He was not having any symptoms at all so the plan was to recheck in 6 months to make sure everything was okay.

Then a few days later he started FREAKING OUT. The slightest out of the ordinary event will now send him into a tailspin of anxious overgrooming, biting at his feet, and scratching his right ear, causing it to swell up like so.

It sucks. Our vet consulted with the head of neurology at NC State and they thought he might be reacting to a different formulation of phenobarbital that was in the refill I picked up at Target pharmacy. So I went back to the vet school to get some of their version (which is made by the same manufacturer, so I had my suspicions this strategy would not work). It didn't work. He's been off the Target phenobarb since Saturday and last night he was worse than ever with the ear scratching. It's like a vicious cycle - he scratches because of anxiety to the point of irritating it, and then continues to scratch because it's irritated. ARGH.

Eventually he does get tired and fall asleep, which allows the ear to calm down and when he wakes up he is sometimes okay. Until the next stressful thing happens (this morning: having to take his medicine) and it starts all over again.

Fortunately, I have found an absolutely incredible online forum for owners of epileptic cats. I would be lost without those people - from them I have learned that this type of compulsive behavior goes hand in hand with feline epilepsy and that his urinary tract issues may very well be related, too. I can't believe that there is so little information out there about this disease that average cat owners are a better source of information than veterinarians - but it's true. My vet is fabulous but she clearly doesn't have a lot of experience with this because it's so rare.

Anyway, from the forum people I learned that this behavior is very typical and almost certainly means his phenobarb dose is too low. Given that my vet said his blood levels were below the median, I suspect this is the case and that we're going to have to increase his dose. I hope we can do that today because I am so tired of worrying about him. 

I miss my cat.