Meet Sophie

Sophie is just not a very photogenic cat. Almost every picture I have taken of her results in some weird deranged expression. Some people are that way as well. Something just makes their face go all cockeyed and cooky when you point a camera toward them.

Sophie is Babes’ cat. Recently she started to have seizures. She has had two that I know of. The last one was pretty quiet, in fact she may have just been trembling in her sleep. She woke me up shaking around at my feet. It was too dark to see really what was going on and I was half asleep. She shook or trembled for about thirty seconds that I am aware of and then ran off.

The first seizure was a full blown epileptic fit that started, unfortunately, at the top of the staircase. She rolled, flopped down the stairs and flopped and rolled halfway down the hallway. Of course I didn’t know what the heck was going on. Foaming slobber was coming from her mouth and going everywhere. Her eyes were wide and twitching back and forth. I ran in place screaming her name and frantically dialing the crazy brit on my cell phone.

Elwood, my cat, stayed glued to the side of my leg just watching Sophie but afraid to go near her. I nearly gave the brit a heart attack when he answered and I started screaming through the phone at him. He didn’t understand a word I was saying and thought one of the kids was hurt. Meanwhile, I grabbed a blanket and wrapped Sophie in it completely, thinking if I couldn’t see what was happening it would make it better. After the brit realised the kids were ok and informed me there was nothing he could do through the phone he hung up. By this time the squirming blanket had stopped moving. There was only a gasping gagging sound coming from it.

Suddenly the thought entered my mind that she could be choking on something. I ripped her from the blanket and pried her jaws open and saw nothing in her throat. Her body was slack with just a minor twitch every couple of seconds but her eyes were still crazy and twitchy. I turned her back to me and attempted some sort of feline Heimlich maneuver and then gave her three or four good thumps on the back. None of that made any difference.

I layed her back down on the blanket and watched her for another minute thinking she was dying right before my eyes and coming to terms with the fact that there is no way she would survive the drive to the vet. OK I’ll admit I was thinking about how much it cost me the last time I took a dying cat to the vet as well. Oh my god. What will I tell Erica when I pick her up from school.

Then Sophie began to blink slowly and stop gasping. Elwood took a few cautious steps toward her and I reached my hand out and called her name. She shook her head, focused her eyes on us and then jumped up into a witches cat stance, puffed up, hissed and spat at us. Elwood assumed his position at my leg and I backed slowly away with one word going through my head. Rabies.

And she was even foaming at the mouth! Well now I know it wasn’t rabies and I know to stay calm in the future. I’ve since learned that feline epilepsy is pretty much harmless as long as the seizures don’t become too frequent or last longer than five minutes. Poor kitty.