Nina is doing wonderfully, no more incidents since Tuesday.
However, we think we may know what caused her “seizure”…
Nina’s been shedding like crazy, huge clumps of her undercoat just falling out all over the house. This had been going on for about 2 weeks, then last Saturday, Fred and I had the great idea to give her a bath . Fred wanted to give her a bath because she had an accident in her cage before we got up in the morning, and I figured it’d be a good idea (this is all thanks to Dan, who talked me into giving my poor cat, Casper, a bath when he was shedding like crazy last summer in Maryland to get all the fur out).
We could not have been more wrong. While she was clean and smelled good, Nina ended up with huge mats all over her. So Fred called a groomer to ask for advice, after telling us it’s normal for dogs with heavy coats to shed this time of year she said “Whatever you do, do not give her a bath.” Of course, Fred said “Opps.” So we made an appointment for Thursday to have the groomer fix our mistakes.
The groomer did a wonderful job, and Nina looks so pretty now! However, the groomer told us that Nina had big mats behind her ears (which we knew, they’d been there a while, we had tried to comb them out, with no luck). The groomer said that these mats can often be so tight, like Nina’s were, that they could throw off her equilibrium and cause her to stumble. Opps.
Since then, Fred’s talked with some friends and co-workers, who have shared stories about their dogs with similar mats, who have fallen or passed out, because of them. So, there may be the cause of Nina’s “seziure,” and her underweight problem is caused by eating too much cat food, and not enough dog food. The only mystery left is the levels of important stuff in her blood, which we never would have known about and don’t seem to affect her really.
So… Fred and I are kicking ourselves for spending all that money to have vets tell us they don’t know what’s wrong with her, and say she seems fine. But hind-sight is always 20/20, right? I know my lesson is learned: no more cat food for Nina, and keep those behind-the-ear mats in check (since no matter what we do, they always seem to come back).
. They were going to begin taking off the old, white, aluminum siding (that is the same as the other 5 identical houses on our block), but we had some major thunderstorms, so they decided to wait and start tomorrow. I’ll have pictures up soon (as long as it doesn’t rain any more tomorrow!)
