No, unfortunately it wasn’t just a vivid dream. It’s said that fits can occur most often during sleep, excitement or feeding. The first time, she was lying on the floor twitching and making little noises for quite a few minutes. Also she was drooling. When she came out of it, she was very disorientated and cried out. She may even have temporarily lost her sight and was quite frightened. For about 10 mins. she was unable to walk, her back end was flailing around as if it could get up but her front legs couldn’t. Her face looked odd in that her one eye looked less open than the other and her mouth was pulled down on either side. It wasn’t too long before she started to walk and managed to go to the toilet in her litter tray. That out of the way, she lay down as if to rest, but couldn’t seem to get comfortable and shifted position every 5 or 10 mins. By next morning she was improving but seemed understandably subdued.

A week after this, she was asleep on a desk behind me. I heard a plop and found she’d fallen off the desk. I assumed she’d just rolled over and misjudged the distance but she just lay there as if nothing had happened. I found a little pool of saliva on the desk, which looked like she’d been drooling again. That night she was sleeping on the pillow between hubster and myself when I felt her ‘jump’ as if startled. She then came off the pillow and started chasing her tail, as if there was something on it. That’s when I tried calling her name repeatedly and she quietened down (but that may just have been coincidence). Tail chasing is a well known cat play thing, but is also a symptom of partial seizure when the cat imagines it can see things that aren’t there. I’d kept an open mind on those two events, hoping they were just coincidence, as she’d seemed quite normal immediately afterwards. But, when she had another proper fit I wasn’t too optimistic. The last time, she was sleeping on the cupboard next to the bed and we were woken by her banging around, possibly tail-chasing again. She then fell off the cupboard and we could see she was ‘paddling’ with her feet again like with the first fit. I called her name and she came out of the fit much quicker than the first time. She was a bit unsteady on her feet for a few seconds, but that soon rectified itself and she went to the toilet again. After settling down she, again, couldn’t seem to get comfortable and kept altering her position every 10 mins. or so. Other than that, I’ve noticed she seems to be yawing a lot – not proper yawns where you can hear the air being sucked in and let out again. It’s just a silent opening of the mouth wide and then closing it again.

As I’m not too happy with the way the locum vet dealt with Purdey, I’m hoping to wait for Elke to return and speak to her about it. By that time I will have quite a dossier of information gathered, which might help her to suss out what might be causing the fits. I just hope nothing untoward happens in the meantime.

James, the video camera is a great idea. Might just dig it out ready for the next time. At least it’s one way that the vet could see what’s happening.