32 Flavours...and then Some!

Do note the Harlow Icon. It's not the greatest picture of all time, but it's about the best I've got that works size wise for icons and Harlow's been around long enough to deserve his own Icon.

It's been around a month or so since he went on the Phenobarbitol to control the seizures, so it was time for Harlow to go in for a serum levels check to be sure he's at therapeutic levels.

The good news is he's not had any seizure activity since going on the med, at least not that we've been privy to, and there's usually one of us around to see anything happening. So, unless they're happening in the dead of night and he's leaving no evidence of same (which is entirely possible, to be perfectly honest...), he's likely not had a seizure.

We also wanted to get his snotty nose looked at. Harlow's always been a bit congested sounding since we brought him home, but in the last week or so he's gotten REALLY congested sounding with yellow crusty discharge around his nostrils. He can still breathe relatively okay and his eating habits haven't been affected, nor have his daily habits, so we figured we'd wait til he got his blood checked to get the snozz checked out. He's got a new nickname--in addition to Cheeto and Cheeto Burrito, he's also sometimes affectionately known as Darth because of his occasional heavy breathing...

Turns out the Dr. Lyn thinks the stress of everything going on in the house with Ra's final illness caused Harlow's chronic herpes infection to act up and to turn into a sort of sinusy infection/cold. He's on Clindadrops antibiotic to clear that yuckiness up. Should be finished up with that in about two weeks. Should find out tomorrow if the serum levels of Phenobarbitol are good to go, too.

In the good news department, Harlow's diet has been successful--he's lost about a half pound since his last visit! He's at around 12 1/2 pounds, down from around 13. He's on the right track to slimming down a bit. :) This will help his Darth Vader breathing a bit, too, I think.

In the other good news department, the other two idiots seem to be immune to Harlow's particular brand of herpes as neither of them are showing any sort of symptoms and they've been in sometimes close contact with him, so...so far so good! :)

Before he came to us, Harlow had a bad seizure when he was at the PetSmart, lasting about five minutes. He was taken to the vet, given a looksee, and it was determined he should be taken out of the hectic PetSmart environment and placed back in the slightly less hectic environments of the cattery back at the shelter where he could be watched perhaps a bit closer for any more seizure activity. As far as anybody knows, he didn't have any more seizures after returning to the cattery.

Recall he came to us on 10 September. We didn't worry about any seizure activity because he was in such a quiet environment, and he gave us no indications he was having any seizure activity...

He did fine, as far as we know, until 10 November when I witnessed him have a 2-3 minute seizure in the safe room after he'd eaten his breakfast. Because it had been longer than a month since his last seizure that we knew of, no visit was necessary, just was recorded on their end for future reference and we were to watch Harlow closely for any signs of seizure activity. If there was any more seizure activity within the next month, another trip into the vet for medication to control the seizures would be necessary.

Monitoring him for seizures was why we moved Harlow out of the Safe Room; if he's locked in there and we don't go in there all the time, how can we know if he's having any seizures? So yeah, that's mainly why we moved him out of there. Besides, he was agitating to get out of there and be with "his people" and be a part of the household he knew was on the other side of that door.

Fast forward to Friday around 1300. I'm in the den watching TeeVee, Harlow's resting on J's recliner. All of a sudden he starts acting a bit odd and starts drooling profusely. He hops off the chair, still drooling, and starts scooting around fast in a circle--yep, the start of another seizure. J was working at home and I called out to him for help--he came out with a blanket to gently cover Harlow with a blanket(that's what experts suggest you do, evidently)--and shortly after that Harlow flopped on his side and started convulsing violently. I recorded everything in his book while J tended to Harlow so I knew what to tell the vet when I called after the event was done. From start to final twitchiness, it lasted about 6-8 minutes.

Called the vet and we got an appointment in short order. We brought him in and basically all Dr. Lyn wanted to do was weigh him to determine how much Phenobarbitol to give him to control the seizures. Harlow was still a bit out of it when we brought him into the vet at around 1420, which was also noted by Dr. Lyn. He goes back in for a serum levels check/follow-up for the Phenobarbitol in a month. Dr. Lyn told us that it would be ill-advised for Harlow to be in either the PetSmart environment or the cattery environment, that he's best off in as quiet a home as possible to limit the amount of stress he's exposed to. Which we can provide, I think, for awhile at least.

We didn't ask the crucial question of whether this is, indeed, a permanent condition, but by the way Dr. Lyn talked it seems as though Harlow will be on some sort of med for this for the long-term. This will make adopting out a 5 1/2 year old overweight somewhat so homely he's cute cat more than a bit harder to adopt out to a forever home. This makes both of us very sad--Harlow's a Great Kitty and would make a great companion to someone...

Talked to Carol the cats' coordinator for the shelter, gave her the low-down and told her that we'd agreed that we'd keep Harlow until he finds a Forever Home, at least as far as we can foresee the future for so he's not put back into a stressful environment. She thanked us profusely. We also told her we covered the pittance of a vet bill for Harlow for the shelter and she was incredibly grateful for that, too.

Will we be a "foster fail"? We've not decided that yet. I will keep you posted, of course, on how Harlow is doing. Poor Cheeto kitty... :/