Help! Cat suddenly has weak hind legs - X-Rays not showing Anything wrong

[Crazy Cat Mom]

You said your cat is walking like he's drunk & tipping over? I experienced this dame sudden onset with 2 different cats within a few years time. In both instances it was a stroke. No cause was ever determined as borh cats were relatively young (5 & 7) and very healthy & active & indoor only. It came on suddenly, one while sleeping the other while sitting on a chair gazing out the window. Sadly, for us, the only option was euthanasia because cats do not recover. I wish you well with your cat & pray for a curable cause for his problem.

[Kris35]

Hi CCM, thanks for your reply and so sorry to hear about your cats. But fortunately, my cat has had a miraculous recovery. I can only put it down to an alternative vet who gave her laser therapy, or if not that, well, I really ahve no idea. My girl is running around and being her usual demanding self again. Unbelievable as I really thought she wouldn't recover. So happy!!

[wbaccus]

We found this thread useful when researching the issues with our kitten.

After months and months of visits and several bouts of periodic near lameness in our 1 year-old Siberian, we finally got the right diagnosis, and it's something that I haven't yet seen mentioned in this thread.

Background
Mallow came to us at 10 weeks old, and was doing a lot of sneezing early on. He also had some eye discharge.

At around a month in, we noticed that his gait was a bit off, which progressed into him walking low to the ground and then to the point where he would just take 3 or 4 steps and then stop.

We took him to the vet, where he got some anti-biotics and pain medicine and an x-ray. Everything looked fine and they couldn't explain it. He got better gradually and was back to 100% after about 10 days.

About 4 weeks later, his 2nd eyelid got irritated and the whole process began again. He went downhill until he couldn't walk.

Other issues we've seen: he can't handle dry food well. He tries to swallow it whole, but ends up spitting it back up and then eating it when it's softer.

We took him to a surgical specialist and the had no diagnosis for us.

The vet also pointed out that he was dealing with stomatitis and was telling us to consider having his teeth pulled.

We were pretty much ready to do that when we figured out the real issue on our own.

We contacted the breeder and she asked her own vet and within 24 hours he had a possibility: FCV (calicivirus).

Our vet discounted the idea, but we asked him to test for it. The test involved putting him under while he scraped the back of his throat, and scraped under his eye, so it's not something that can be done with a simple blood test.

Mallow is up to date on vaccinations, so he HAS been vaccinated for FCV, but he still has it anyway, so if you have a cat with these symptoms, make sure to have them test for FCV.

[Kris35]

I had forgotten about this forum until I just got a notification for this thread. Glad your cat is ok now wbaccus. Its important we get this info out there isnt it - I find vets haven't a clue about some issues.

[Jascat]

Hello everyone,

I am so glad to have found this site as it has let me know that I am not alone when it come to this illness. Today I noticed that my otherwise healthy 7mth old kitten could not hardly walk on her hind legs. It's as if the right foot is hurting and she seemed to flintch whenever she tried to walk on it causing her to limp. I didn't think much of it at first, until I went to the store and when I returned home it seemed she was flinching on the left foot, and as I watched her walk more she started actling like she her front paw were hurting too. This is when I started wondering if she had been hurt when I went to bed the night before, but how and with what. After I fed her, she used her litter box and then she made her way to my bedroom and got up on the bed and went to sleep. She stayed in there well through dinner and I had to go get her out of the bed and take her to her food bowl. She did eat, dry food and then she went back to my room for more sleep. I pray that she is better tomorrow as I recently got her dry cat food today, that she had ran out of. I did not have anything for her to eat on yesterday, so I fed her ham. Now after reading this site and doing a little more google digging I've found that ham is bad for cats in large quanitities. I'm prayerful that getting her back on her regular diet she will snap out of the lethargy and her limbs will heal and she will be her usual playful self. Till the morning that's all I can do. Thank you for being here, I will monitor her progress over the next couple of days and report back.

Thank you all.

[carolm]

Hello, I am new here... like others, I came across this thread via Google and found it very helpful! My cat Frip started displaying hind-leg weakness about 3 months ago, at age 11 months. He didn't appear to be in pain but seemed lethargic. I took him to the vet who did an X-ray that came back normal. The vet said he might have fallen or injured himself. He prescribed an anti-inflammatory medication. After a few weeks, Frip seemed perkier, didn't seem in any discomfort, but the hind-leg weakness was still there. At the suggestion of friends I took him to see an osteopathic vet (we live in France, and that's fairly common here). This vet said he detected "blockage" on Frip's spinal column. He did a chiropractic-type manipulation, and said to expect improvement in a week or so. Instead the opposite happened: within 48 hours Frip was almost completely paralyzed, became incontinent, was so weak he could barely lift his head over the edge of his food dish. So, back to the first vet. This time he did a full battery of tests including blood workup and scans of heart and abdominal region. All came back normal, with two exceptions: elevated globulin in the blood, and a mass in the abdomen which turned out to be a very enlarged lymph node. Since Frip is partly Maine Coon, we also had his DNA tested for spinal muscular atrophy. That came back negative also. While waiting for the results the vet gave Frip an antibiotic injection; then when the results came back he gave an injection of cortisone. Frip is definitely much better, can walk around, go up & down stairs, eating normally and no more incontinence.... but the hind leg weakness is STILL there.
I've read over this thread pretty carefully ... it seems as if possible avenues to pursue might be:
1. Deficiency of potassium and/or Vitamin E or some other nutrient
2. Neurological damage perhaps related to chemical exposure (e.g flea treatment which we apply every 6 weeks or so, as he does go outdoors into our small, walled-in garden)
3. Neurological or other damage from some injury that we still haven't detected.
4. Lyme disease. We found a tick on Frip about a month after the hind-leg weakness first appeared, but it hadn't burrowed in and we promptly removed it. This seems like a longshot, as I don't think there's much Lyme disease in France.
I'm taking Frip back for a checkup next week and would be most grateful for any additions to this list or other suggestions of things to discuss with the vet. By the way, Frip's diet consists of dry food (Royal Canin brand, for sterilized cats) and a daily dollop of plain unflavored yogurt which he loves. Many, many thanks for any help you can offer!

[pats205]

Hello everyone,

I read through this thread as my cat was having the same problems that many of you listed. However, what ended up being wrong with my cat I did not see mentioned in this thread, so I wanted to share and help others.

My cat is 16, he was a beast when he was in his prime, muscular, energetic, he ruled the house even though he lived with three dogs!

Recently he has lost weight even though he eats. He, had lost a noticeable amount of weight and muscle. I chalked it up to old age as he was 16.

Then his back legs became real wobbly. He had trouble walking, he was wobbly, he'd almost fall over walking, when he jumped from the bed to the floor he literally fell on his face because his legs could not take the impact of his landing, he could not stand on three legs to lick his front paws or he'd fall over. His back legs were very wobbly.

I was very nervous that something was seriously wrong with him. I read all thru this thread the night before I brought him to the vets and my biggest fear was that we would do a ton of testing at the vets and still not know what was wrong with him.

So, the next day I brought him to the Vets, he had an exam and only weighed 7 pounds, he was frail. We did bloodwork, the results came back and he had a hyperactive Thyroid. My vet said this was good news considering what else it could have been (Cancer, diabetes etc.....) He said a hyperactive Thyroid will cause a cat's body to want to go go go all the time.... Meaning it will cause a cat even if eating a lot to burn thru all his food, then fat, then muscle quickly, causing weight loss and loss of muscle, and the loss of muscle was the cause of his wobbly legs.

The fix was simply changing his diet. The vet said not to give him anything, no snacks or anything other then the new Thyroid healthy food that he was going to suggest. I bought a bag, it wasn't anymore expensive then his normal food. It's a prescription diet food to restore Thyroid health.

My vet said it would take a few weeks to a month for him to look and be back to normal.

So I have been feeding him only the Thyroid health cat food, and just One week later my cat has put on some weight, I can see it in his body, he looks heavier and healthier already, and his legs seem much stronger. He is no longer wobbling, and has even put some muscle on, and it's only been a week. He has had a huge improvement.

My vet said his 16 year old cat had the same issue, and has been on the food successfully for 3 years.

So for my cat it was good news. Only one trip to the vets, one round of bloodwork, he didn't need any meds. All I had to do was change his food.

I wanted to share this as I know how emotional an issue like this can be.

[sugarcatmom]

Originally Posted by pats205

The fix was simply changing his diet.

And, in case anyone reads this post and thinks a diet change is the best way to treat hyperT in cats (hint: it's not), here is an article by an endocrine specialist explaining better options: http://animalendocrine.blogspot.ca/2...edium=facebook

I'm glad your cat is doing better, but I hope your vet explained the pros and cons of going the prescription diet route and didn't just tout it as the holy grail of treatment. The ingredients are so totally wrong for an obligate carnivore. While it may indeed help lower T4 levels, at what cost to the rest of the cat?

[gratefulcatlady]

Originally Posted by ryebread

I wanted to provide a follow up on my previous post regarding my cat as there may be some hope and direction for other pet owners out there. Since my original post, we spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what was wrong with our cat.

Our pet would cycle up and down. He'd seem to be improving for about a week or two and then he'd crash hard and revert back to some of his bad symptoms. Specifically he was extremely weak, had tremors, stiff limbs, and weird body twitching, was defecating on the mat in front of the litter box, refused to roll onto his back either for play or attention (which had previously been his favorite), was very withdrawn and often could not climb the stairs without stopping to rest. His weirdest symptom was that he felt like he didn't really have muscle in his limbs, but instead just had floating bones. He could be maneuvered into weird body positions without any sort of natural resistance. He cycled up and down several times over the course of two months and we'd exhausted the resources of the vet we use for primary care.

After a particularly bad cycle, we decided to "call in the big guns" and take him to the local veterinary teaching hospital in the last week of October. We're lucky enough to live next to one of the top 2-3 in the US so we felt like we'd at least isolate something. We went in with the full expectation that they'd want to do a MRI to look into the neurological symptoms. Both our primary vet and another vet whom we're friends with both suggested a neurological issue that would probably require a MRI to isolate.

We brought him in and spent about 5 hours with their neurology department. I believe that every vet in the neurology department who was present that day looked at him. They spent the majority of the examination (that we saw) testing his physical abilities.

They decided that no MRI was needed due to his specific combination of symptoms (saving us serious $$$). They felt that he either had a disease of the nerves or a disease related to where the nerves interacted with the muscles. They could definitively state there was no spinal cord injury, brain injury, neck or back injury, breaks, etc.. They could isolate which one by doing a biopsy of his nerves and muscle tissue if we wanted to.

Isolating the exact one would have been great, but would have cost considerable money and would have required anesthesia. We instead opted to try the long term treatments which would have been prescribed for many of them. Should they not work, we were going to take him in for the biopsy, another bloodwork analysis, etc..

Our cat's bloodwork that our original vet took did not show low levels of potassium, but did show elevated white blood cell counts. All the symptoms that our pet had seemed to point to hypokalemic myopathy, except for the one blood test which should have correlated with a the low potassium level. Our cat is a young Burmese (currently 1 year old) and this is a disease that rarely shows in young Burmese.

To make a long story short, the vet prescribed Vitamin E supplements as a treatment any nerve issues and potassium supplements in case he had hypokalemic myopathy. We give him a small scoop of potassium (your vet will typically prescribe it for liver failure so most vets should have it) in the morning and evening paired with a tiny dab of baby food (make sure that it's one that does not contain a toxin to cats). We have small 100u gel caps (orderable through CVS) that we cut open and take the contents out of. We do that in the evening and mix it with the potassium supplement and baby food.

It's since been six weeks and I'm cautiously, optimistically, able to say that this seems to have cured him. His personality has returned to his kitten levels. He's getting stronger each day. Today he completed a jump up to a bar stool that he'd never even completed before his first incident. He no longer twitches, has no tremors or stiff legs, sprints up the stairs like a track star and no longer feels "weird" to the touch. He's in the process of re-estabilishing himself as the "Alpha" cat in our house.

We're happy to have our cat back and are tickled about the low cost options (vitamin E pills are around $3 US for a 2 month supply and the potassium is $16 us for a month's supply). This seems like a very manageable, low cost solution long term.

One last thing to note -- I'd be very cautious if you're feeding your cat Wellness Brand Seafood dried cat food. Before the first incident started, we'd switched from Science Diet Kitten to Wellness Brand Seafood. We'd picked up one bag of the seafood and one bag of the chicken and were feeding our cats the seafood. Naturally when the first incident happened, we'd felt that it was probably linked to the food change. We tried reverting back to the old food, but could never stabilize him with the diet alone. We've since switched to a mix of the Science Diet Light and the Wellness brand Chicken to go along with the supplements mentioned above. One day we tried mixing in the Seafood again and he had his worst day on his recovery. We noticed a slight stiffening of his back left leg (which was his initial symptom). We pulled all the seafood pellets back out of the mix and he's not shown this again.

I was going to wait until the end of January to post this as I did not want to lead other pet owners astray. At the same time, I saw recent activity on this thread and feel like this might help people out. I'll check back on this thread in late January and provide a 3 month update.

I registered just to thank ryebread for this post, because it saved my cat!

He was five months old when he started to show the symptoms described above. Our vet couldn't find anything wrong with him (nothing on X-rays, etc.), so I was getting pretty desperate and started to look for similar cases online.
After reading this post, I decided to add more meat to my cat's diet and he actually started to get better! It makes sense, since he was growing rapidly at that time. So, in my case, the solution was very simple, I just regret not figuring it out sooner and wonder why my vet didn't ask me about my cat's diet...

Anyway, even though I know you won't read this, I just want to say I can't thank you enough, ryebread. You saved my slightly-overgrown-but-now-very-content cat's life.
Love you :-*

[hazelrunpack]

I'm so happy you got such great results for your cat, gratefulcatlady!

[Erosis]

I'd like to thank everyone on here for the support. You guys helped me keep my cat very comfortable and I thought I would create an account to add my story. On January 1st, 2016 my 7 month old kitten/cat named Tony started acting very strange. Normally he was very extroverted and loved meeting new people but at our New Years party he went into the bedroom and hid in a corner most of the night. The followed days he was quite lethargic, anti-social, and developed a problem where his 3rd eyelid was pronounced/showing inappropriately. We took him to the vet and were given antibiotics.

A week passed and his eye had improved, but he had a brand new symptom. He was crouching while walking and seemed a bit off-balance. We took him back to the vet and a blood panel was taken (with a test for bacterial and viral infections). All of his nutritional results came back normal (along with potassium like many users mentioned in this post), however coronavirus was detected in his titer at a 1:12,000 dilution and he had a very mild fever.

At this concentration combined with the weird walking/balance issues, the vet diagnosed Tony with Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP). I did quite a bit of research on the subject and wasn't completely convinced with the diagnosis, but it appears that cats with neural symptoms and a titer greater than ~1:4100 have a 75% chance of correctly being afflicted with FIP. You can read more in-depth if your cat is suffering from CNS issues and are suspected to have FIP here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2748294/ .

In the event that this could be toxoplasmosis causing the neural issues, I convinced the vet to prescribe Clyndamycin. Additionally, prednisone was prescribed to hopefully help out with any inflammation. Tony seemed to get a little bit better, but after a few weeks he became more unbalanced.

Over the following months, Tony's balance got better and worse and better and worse, but overall it was going downward. If I could describe the balance issues more succinctly, it was as if his hind legs had lost it's ability to withstand moderate weight. Around mid-March, I swapped his food to wet cat-food from high quality dry in hopes of increasing liquid intake and improving nutrition. I also purchased "Tomlyn High Calorie Nutritional Supplement, Nutri-Cal for Kittens" paste and "Nu Cat-Chewable Supplement" to help supplement when he would not eat very well. He all-of-a-sudden started walking much more than he usually was and his balance almost returned to normal. I thought perhaps this was a nutritional issue all along. I also purchased Potassium Gluconate in the event he would need potassium supplementation (however things never got to that point).

From mid-April to early-May, I thought that Tony was going to get back to normal. The vet was astounded and thought that maybe FIP was the incorrect diagnosis. I was really fighting to get him back into tip-top shape, but then some odd behavior arose. On Thursday May 12th, I came home from work to find two randomly placed urine stains, diarrhea outside of the litter box, and some vomit on a blanket. I cleaned everything up and took extra care for Tony. He was still walking decently and seemed like he could go to the litter box on his own later that night, so I went to bed hoping for the best. The next day I noticed his head ever-so-slightly bobbing in circles. I thought it was odd, but had to leave for work.

I came back home to some bad news. He had peed outside of the litter box and on a blanket he was still laying on. I cleaned him up and immediately tried to hydrate him. His head was bobbing back-and-forth much more frequently and his balance was terrible. I took him to the vet and found out he had lost about a pound since the last visit a month before. He was surprisingly not dehydrated, however the worst news was when the vet looked at his eyes. The were sort of flickering back-and-forth like when you spin a lot and stop suddenly. The nail-in-the-coffin was the detected anisocoria, also known as unequal pupils. Those two problems were clearly some severe neural issues. The vet said it was probably some FIP development and nothing could be done other than keeping him comfy.

The following day (today/Saturday) I woke up to find that he had urinated on himself and could not even make an effort to get up. He seemed a bit disoriented, but was fine when he remained laying down. I had to pretty much force feed him liquids/food because his head bobbing was very severe. It was at this point that I knew that FIP had developed too far and he needed to get some rest. I had little 11 month old Tony euthanized around 3 PM today after his incredible 5 month battle with FIP. He was the best cat (of the 8 I've had) and no one will ever replace him.

My goal with this post is to hopefully give some info to those going through a similar ordeal. I was really hoping the nutrition/potential potassium changes would save him like it did many others in this thread, but it turns out that the FIP diagnosis was right on the money with Tony. If you have any questions, I will try to keep track of this thread in the upcoming weeks. Thank you all for your advice and may your cats stay healthy!

[hazelrunpack]

I'm so sorry about Tony, Erosis

Tony

[Rickm77]

Our 4yr old 10lbs female domestic long hair cat was first noticed with wobbly legs and a bit lethargic on 27 Oct 2016. We took her to the Vet in Central PA and she was diagnosed with a high fever of 104.1 and a bit dehydrated. Our cat has never shown any signs of loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting.
(A few weeks prior she had an abscess on her back, down near her tail area near her spine. We squeezed puss out of the wound, used Hydrogen Peroxide and Neosporin and kept an eye on it over the next several days. To us it went away, and it was a visible cat poke in her skin once the swelling subsided.)
She was kept at the Vet hospital overnight given an IV to rehydrate her along with Enrofloxacin to knockout the fever. She was given Pepcid to keep her from being nauseous, and picked her up the next afternoon on 28 Oct. While home for the weekend we continued to monitor her, but her walk was still a bit wobbly; we attributed it to her stay at the hospital and being in a small cage for a day and that she was given Enrofloxacin Antibiotic. We were given a 2-week supply of this and continued to give it to her for the next 4 days. During that time her gait became noticeably worse and her back legs were not functioning normally. During this time her mental alertness; appetite and litter box use has been normal. (Minus carrying her to the litter box because of weak rear legs.)
We called our Vet back on 1 Nov 2016 and discussed the symptoms and were told that we could stop using the Enrofloxacin because it seems to be making her worse, the Vet said OK, she should have had enough to get rid of the infection.
On 4 Nov 2016 she was not getting any better, she seemed to be walking worse, back legs were very weak, needing help to stay upright to go to the bathroom and overall body soreness. When we took her in to the Vet office, we asked for every test possible, urinalysis, X-Ray, Fecal and the Idexx Fever of Unknown Origin Real PCR Panel (Comprehensive) – Feline. The X-Ray came back immediately normal and the urinalysis came back on 7 Nov 2016 normal, the Fecal back on 8 Nov 2016 normal. The Idexx Real PCR Panel came back on 9 Nov 2016 and was positive for Bartonella spp. Finally the answer was here, we discussed with the Vet a treatment program of 2 times a day 12 hours apart Doxycycline 5mg/kg and the Enrofloxacin 1 time a day 5mg/kg. We are on day one as of writing this, I will make more updates as things evolve and progress. We are to call the Vet back on 11 Nov 2016 to see if she will be changing the treatment regimen of Antibiotics.

[hazelrunpack]

Does the treatment seem to be working, Rickm77? I hope she's better soon!

[Rickm77]

As of writing this evening, 15 Nov 2016, yes it does seem to be working but we are only 6 days into the 4 week med regimen. Have you heard of any other forums that have talked about a cat with Bartonella and or the treatment for it, from real people and not medical write-ups? She is walking better but still complains/whines when we pick her up, again we are just 6 days into pills.

[hazelrunpack]

Unfortunately, no I don't know of any other forums where they might have info about Bartonella in cats. I'm more of a dog person...

I'm glad she's getting better, though. What did her bloodwork look like? Anything anomalous in the platelets and WBC?

[Rickm77]

Last Update on our cat. We took our cat in yesterday 23 Nov 2016 to an internal medicine specialist because as her wobbliness seemed to be getting better she began to vomit more often which was a new symptom. She had begun to not eat and drink over the past weekend so on Monday 21 Nov 2016 we took her back to her vet and she prescribed Mitrazapine to stimulate her appetite. She was able to hold down food and began eating and drinking within 45 min of taking the pill, a 1.88mg dose, we were so happy that night. So on 22 Nov we called a Emergency Pet Hospital and made an appt. with their Internal Medicine Specialist for the next day. When we arrived and he saw her, she got the full exam and it was determined it was not a Bartonella diagnosis, but something else. He diagnosed her with critical heart failure, fluid in her lungs, and a neurological spine issue, and would not yet focus on the vomiting, too far down the line from her other ailments. Money would not be an issue for us luckily, but putting her through the pain, loneliness of being in a hospital alone for the foreseeable future we could not do it. With a heavy heart but for her good we let her pass on. I will not be back on this forum to check back so there is no need to reply or write, I want to thank everyone who wrote symptoms but wish there were more of the outcomes and final diagnosis, I know it is hard but that is how we all learn to look for these symptoms sooner rather than later, goodbye.

[hazelrunpack]

So sorry to hear about your cat, Rickm77. She was very lucky to have had such a loving family.

[Longblades]

I'm very sorry. You say you will not be back but I am sure we all with cats appreciate you updating and letting us know what you and your cat went through in case we ever have need to investigate this ourselves.

[Meowser]

My 10mo old Toyger (Bengal/Tabby mix) hasn't been running around anymore, not jumping at all and when he walks, his hind legs point outward and he lays down every 2 steps. Of course nothing came of the vet visit. this is heart wrenching to watch and i dont know what to do. he used to be so energetic, but he cant do anything anymore. Back legs basically look like a V when he walks. Please help.

[Rickm77]

Meowser,
Please see my above posts, and look into Toxoplasmosis and neurological issues or heart failure. You can go for a full blood panel to check things, we did an in-house vet blood work up but found nothing but then sent out for a full PCR Panel from a lab named IDEXX. Get time on your side and get him checked out to the fullest extent soonest.

[CPL56]

I have a 12-year-old indoor male tabby whose hind legs suddenly became weak this past November. He can walk okay and jump a little, but he is unsteady on his feet on softer surfaces such as a couch or bed. He was quite the jumper and very agile and graceful before. For good reason, I was and am very disturbed by this turn of events.

I took him to my regular vet, who did a physical, a complete blood workup, a toxoplasmosis test, complete X-rays, and a heart sonogram (he has a tiny heart murmur that would not cause his hind leg weakness). Nothing showed up, to my total dismay. I then took him to a feline neurologist, who examined and gave him all sorts of reflex tests (the same as you would a human). Again, nothing. He said he could do an MRI but wasn't sure that he would find anything. Those are pretty expensive tests (approximately $2,000 in the Northern Virginia area), so I am still pondering about whether to have one done.

Another poster indicated that his kitten was eating litter; I know for a fact that mine is not and I don't think he has fallen or hurt himself in any way because he has never cried in pain or indicated that he is hurting, nor is he tender to the touch.

My Boy is holding his own and is happy, eating normally, loving, engaged and engaging, and doing very well--except that he is now somewhat lame. I am terribly worried that whatever is wrong with him will become full blown and either paralyze him completely or kill him out of the blue. I have been doing lots of research online and can't find anything.

Please, if anyone has any idea of what might be wrong with him or where I can turn to get information, please post something. I love this cat so much and my heart is breaking. Thank you.

[Cotterpin]

Hi Everyone, I just joined after following one of your tips. I was trying to find where I read it at but unfortunately I couldn't. I'll be real quick with my story. About 5 days ago my 2 and a half year old male sphynx woke up with a severely swollen eye. Took him to emergency room where he was misdiagnosed with a scratch eye and given a steroid gel to treat eye scratch. After a couple days the swelling did go down but our regular vet treated him for clamidia. Completely healed in 2 days. This is where everything started........ we brought him back for his check up in two days and he couldn't fully extend his hind legs..... vet was stumped. Gave him another antibiotic and had no answers what-so-ever. This is when I found this blog and started reading and reading and reading. His legs were getting worse. He went from the most active, jumping, cartwheel kinda cat to almost being paralyzed over night. I soon realized that after reading this blog all the testing in the world was going to show nothing..... I flew to Walmart, picked up vitamin E and potassium. Crushed up potassium and mixed it in some nutrical and emptied a soft gel capsule of Vitamin E and mixed the powered potassium with the whole contraption and started treatment. By the next day he was stretching, the following day he was attempting to jump. I have no idea whats working but we will continue this for some time. If anyone has a day info please inform us what happened and whats working. We love our cats and nondescript this was a miracle. Hope it helped.

[Tazafraz]

Hi everyone.

Like many people, I joined this thread because we are having a (kind of) similar situation that I feel I need to share (to make myself less worried).

So our little 10 month old Calico named Stella started acting weird one day. She's a super healthy kitten (along with her brother Taz, both from the same litter). At first she was acting super tired, and we just thought this was a phase she was going through because we've seen both the cats grow up from day one (and usually when they are tired they are going through a growth spurt). But then we realized that she wasn't getting up to do anything.

So basically she stopped eating and drinking on her own (but still able to use the cat pan). We thought that she looked like she was sort of limping and favoring her left leg, but really it looks like she was having issues with her hips. As soon as we realized that she was not eating, we immediately started her on a syringe of water to keep her hydrated and tried every food imaginable. We had to resort to that gel stuff that gives animals the calories they need. So we take her to the vet Monday (she showed the first symptoms on Thursday and we decided to wait it out just in case... my partners mom used to be a vet tech and she cares for large animals such as horses and alpacas... she came over and took her temperature and checked her gums and eyes and she was fine in all of those departments). So Stella was not vomiting or defecating on herself or anything. In fact, she would hold her pee in and wait until we placed her in her litter pan in case she couldn't get herself there.

We took her to the vet Monday (2/6/17). The vet thought it might be a left knee problem, so they gave us a low dose (1.5MG) of Meloxicam to distribute orally to her for four days. We did this, and no change. In fact she seemed to get into a depression. So exactly a week and a day later from Thursday, we took her to the vet again immediately (2/10/17) and had another vet at the same place check her out (and re-do the XRAYS and blood tests). One again, all came back looking great. The one thing this vet said is that she thinks it might be swelling in her spine, there were a few tender spots that she would get upset when she touched them consistently. I'm a bit hesitant to believe this because you could tell Stella was just in pain and uncomfortable. But, then again, Stella is a clumsy cat and I wouldn't be surprised if her and her brother were playing around and she fell off of something. We live in an apartment, but we do have a fridge and an array of tall bookshelves.

So, the vet basically gave us an ultimatum. End up paying $5k plus for an MRI and appointment at the nearest vet hospital and possibly end up with no answer, or give her a steroid shot, put her on Prednisolone Tabs (5 MG) for a few days and keep her confined in a smallish cage, and then call her back the Monday after the weekend (this was all given to her Friday, so the vet was giving us this weekend to see whether we are going to have to euthanize her or if we can heal her).

Friday night we saw a HUGE difference with the steroid shot they gave her. She took a nap once we got home, and when she woke up I tried to feed her some canned cat food and she GOBBLED it up. I didn't want to feed her too much because she hasn't really eaten anything of substance in the past week, so we kept the doses of food small and then kept some dry food in her cage for a snack. She was eating, drinking, AND using the litter pan that was inside of her cage by herself. She turned into our Stella-bug again overnight.

So far the Prednisolone seems to be working. She has not meowed in pain, even when we pick her up. She is eating normally now (not excessively, I think she regained her calories that she lost, haha) and she even had a bowel movement last night that was perfectly normal (we were literally clapping and jumping for joy.. the pleasure of being in love with your cats). She's back to normal, though we are still confining her to her cage so that if it is something that has been damaged, she can heal without a swollen spine -- steroids, do your work, please!

We are still a little worried, however. She has strength in her hind legs to stand on all fours. No more shaking. BUT she is still swaying and staggering like she's drunk (but only on her hinds, not her front). She has full neck range and everything, she can squat to pee and do a BM, but her hind legs are still a little lazy. We let her walk a little today (basically almost two full days since the steroid shot from the vet) just to let her stretch out. She can walk a good distance, just super wobbly. She also has a lot more control when she goes to sit down (when before she literally just plopped herself down anywhere). She is also now laying and sitting like a normal cat (curled up) as opposed to what she was doing before which was laying on her side with all her feet out.

I have to call the vet tomorrow with our update and we have to take her in one more time this week so that the vet can make the call: euthanasia or keep on with the steroids but at a lower dose and then ween her off of them and gradually allow her to start roaming the apartment again. (FYI:I don't like the idea of steroids, I realize the consequences of them for cats, but that was literally our only option).

Like I said, she seems to be fully back to normal, except for the hind leg thing. It almost looks like they are asleep (don't worry, vet checked for blood clots). It's so confusing because we know she has strength in them, she's just walking strangely. And she is not acting like she is in pain when walking, in fact she is acting like everything is normal (albeit the sitting every once in a while because of loss of balance).

I will keep everyone updated on what the vet will say to me tomorrow with this news, and I will keep you all updated when we bring her into the vet again this week (probably Thursday, 2/16/17).

I really hope this is enough progress to keep her alive. Not only are we incredibly attached to her, but her brother is SO in love with her. He keeps sleeping by her cage and patting her head through the bars, and when we let her out to stretch he will come up and groom her face. Today, when we let her out for a stretch, she went straight to the food bowl (even though she has the exact same food in her cage that she's been eating... cat) and HE took some food out and ate right next to her... even though it was the complete opposite when she was healthy (he would eat from the bowl and she would take some out and eat next to him... they're very attached, usually eat at the same time and go to the bathroom after each other). He misses his sister!

[Tazafraz]

I know no one is reading this at the moment but here is my update (2/13/17):

I called the vet today to let her know that she is thriving under steroids besides the weird walking. The vet seemed relieved and said that this furthers her conclusion that Stella probably has a back injury.

We go down to one dose of steroids tomorrow, so we need to watch her closely and if we notice a huge downgrade of behavior, then go back to two doses and to call them to set up an appointment.

If not, we are to continue to crate her for three weeks. We can let her out under our supervision, but 100% NO jumping. Which, you know... cats love.

But I'm happy that we got the go-ahead to let her walk around. It'll be like having a toddler for a month, but she's our furbaby so I'm 100% okay with it.

I will keep everyone updated by the end of this week to let you know how she is responding to the one dose a day, and if the back injury was actually the cause (although I guess we won't know for sure since we are opting not to get her an MRI and for her to heal on her own account... and the steroids account).

[hazelrunpack]

Glad you're seeing some improvement! Yes, please keep us posted on how the reduced dose trial goes. I hope she's on the road to recovery and the confinement goes easily for you ....but, yeah, cats love that stuff...

When things settle down there and Stella is out of the woods, would love to see some pics of her and Taz if you have some to share!

[catlover11]

Originally Posted by CPL56

I have a 12-year-old indoor male tabby whose hind legs suddenly became weak this past November. He can walk okay and jump a little, but he is unsteady on his feet on softer surfaces such as a couch or bed. He was quite the jumper and very agile and graceful before. For good reason, I was and am very disturbed by this turn of events.

I took him to my regular vet, who did a physical, a complete blood workup, a toxoplasmosis test, complete X-rays, and a heart sonogram (he has a tiny heart murmur that would not cause his hind leg weakness). Nothing showed up, to my total dismay. I then took him to a feline neurologist, who examined and gave him all sorts of reflex tests (the same as you would a human). Again, nothing. He said he could do an MRI but wasn't sure that he would find anything. Those are pretty expensive tests (approximately $2,000 in the Northern Virginia area), so I am still pondering about whether to have one done.

Another poster indicated that his kitten was eating litter; I know for a fact that mine is not and I don't think he has fallen or hurt himself in any way because he has never cried in pain or indicated that he is hurting, nor is he tender to the touch.

My Boy is holding his own and is happy, eating normally, loving, engaged and engaging, and doing very well--except that he is now somewhat lame. I am terribly worried that whatever is wrong with him will become full blown and either paralyze him completely or kill him out of the blue. I have been doing lots of research online and can't find anything.

Please, if anyone has any idea of what might be wrong with him or where I can turn to get information, please post something. I love this cat so much and my heart is breaking. Thank you.

Can you tell me what you found or what happened to your cat? Mine is experiencing the same symptoms and has a slight heart murmur....she is about 15 years old.

[catlover11]

Hi there, are you able to give an update on what happened with your kitty? Mine sounds similar to yours with age and heart murmur etc. Thanks.

[catlover11]

how did you know the amounts of potassium and vitamin E to give your cat to fix this problem of weak legs? Also, is this potassium and vitamin E the same as adult supplements? My cat is older so I'm taking her to the vet but in the meantime, I'm interested to try this as well as it can't hurt. Thank you.

[catlover11]

maybe the potassium and vitamin E will help the swaying?