Not good news

Miss Kit is not very well – and has not been very well for some time as you all know. Having been away for a fortnight, we came back and saw her, as one does, with fresh eyes, and reckoned it was time she had a professional once-over. She’s got so scared by the vet’s after some bad experiences we got a vet to come and take a look at her here yesterday, to see what she was like in a normal state and not stressed out of her wits. This was, unfortunately, not reassuring. It’s possible that she has toxoplasmosis, about which something might possibly be done (though a long, long, course of antibiotics had no effect other than upsetting her). It’s also possible that she has fallen victim to what journalists are calling Robotic Cat Syndrome, which sounds like a highly hilarious YouTube lolcat post, and isn’t. It’s an utterly mysterious cat disease which popped up in north-east Scotland around the turn of the millennium: its victims are rural cats, mature to elderly, living between Inverness and Aberdeen, and its official description is ‘slowly progressive lymphohistiocytic meningoencephalomyelitis’. In other words, a slowly degenerative disease of the brain and nervous system. It’s highly unusual because by and large, diseases of cat’s brain and nervous system are rapidly degenerative, viz. about a fortnight from something apparently wrong to the sad phone call, and Miss Kit hasn’t been right in herself for a year; the problem with her spine and lower back seems now to be taking a more ominous form. She shows one of the most characteristic symptoms, which is carrying her tail rather stiffly straight out, which I put down to damage to her lower back, but also has the stiff, toddling walk, which is what gives the syndrome its popular (or unpopular) name, though not currently in an acute form, ears pricked forward anxiously, and an increased affectionateness of a reassurance-seeking kind. ‘Mild behavioural changes and the rigid extension of the tail were the most consistent early signs of the disease’, say the researchers. I have wondered for a while if she was going blind because of the way she bumps into twigs and things in the garden, but the vet thinks this is more probably a degree of mental confusion – i.e. she can see the twig or whatever it is, but can’t think what to do about it. The important thing is that it was only clinically described a couple of years ago, and nobody is anywhere near a cure since it's not clear what is causing it (it seems to be viral but that helps only up to a point). Basically we all live with it till it gets worse, and she keeps falling over or stops being able to swallow – there’s nothing wrong with her ability to eat at the moment, but it’s a feature of the late stages. The common ground between the various victims is that they have all been cats free to roam outside and hunt, so best guess is that this is something they have caught from rodents – though of course that simply shifts the mystery from NE Scottish cats, who are being well observed by concerned owners, to NE Scottish wild rodents, who aren’t.