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Cats are tough animals and have few medical problems in certain areas. Neurology is just such an area. During my entire veterinary career, I saw very few neurology cases in cats. Their nervous system is not plagued by many diseases, but a few interesting cases did arise.Niacin deficiency is rare in any animal, especially in cats, though it can occur. I had a kitten come in who was holding his head down low, as though it was just hanging over, and as I hadn't seen this condition before, I had to call Colorado State University Veterinary College for a little advice.
I talked to Dr. Ingram who was the head of neurology there. He immediately knew the diagnosis and I started the kitten on a B Vitamin supplement, and it was better by the next day. The kitten got to go home with just a little vitamin powder to sprinkle on it's food and avoided any shots, blood tests, or surgery. Lucky kitten.
The most common neurological problem in cats in Distemper, also known as Feline Panleukopenia. The Distemper virus attacks the respiratory system and nervous system of cats who have never been vaccinated for it and, if they live through having the disease, they are left with a permanent state of the wobbles that makes it difficult for them to coordinate their walking. Actual destruction of the cerebellum occurs in cats with Distemper, and those neurons never regenerate.
When I was a boy, our neighbor, Natalie Marx, had two orange tabbies that got distemper and they both walked very awkwardly for the rest of their lives. She fondly named them after our vet who saved them, so they were called Tucker and Burr.
One other unusual neurological case I had was with a cat that had a lymphoma tumor in it's medulla oblongata. The cat just got progressively weaker and weaker. The diagnosis required a Cat Scan (no pun intended) to detect the tumor. Unfortunately, that kitty had to be euthanized.
So speaking of neurology, what would cause an entire staff of three veterinary technicians and one veterinarian to go without electricity for three days at a vet hospital? Well, if the lights went out, what would you do? Call the electric company? Check the breaker box? Call to the main hospital of the group to ask Dr. Ikeler what to do with no power? All the above are proper courses of action, none of which was done. It was me wondering why I couldn't download computer information from that location, three days later that prompted the simple act of me going over and checking the circuit breaker box and clicking it back on. Four adult women, one with a doctorate degree, couldn't figure this out on their own. Sound frustrating? It was.
How about at one of my other five Cat Hospitals where I went in to use the bathroom, and slid across the floor like it was a skating rink. I looked to see if the floor was wet, it wasn't, then I wondered why everything in the bathroom was greasy. I looked around and quickly noticed there was a can of Pledge furniture polish sitting on the back of the toilet, right where air freshener would normally be. The entire staff, and the doctor at that location, were spraying the pledge around in the bathroom after they used it, and none of the four of them knew Pledge isn't an air freshener. How many geniuses do you think worked at that veterinary hospital?
It was incidents like these that made me question human intelligence in general. One of my professors at Cornell University was Carl Sagan. He also questioned if humans were intelligent and was quite open and honest that he didn't think we were. He thought we might have moments of semi-intelligence, but basically a lot of what people did to themselves and the planet he thought was very dumb. It was a privilege to have had such a famous person be one of my college professors. I still feel honored today to have known him.
Dr. Doug Ikeler http://www.ikelerbooks.com/
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