Silver is now standing on his own again!

[ThomCat]

:woohoo:

In this thread I posted that one of our cats suddenly collapsed last week and couldn't even sit up to feed himself. He couldn't support himself to stand or walk. His movements were twitchy and weak.

This past week has been like being the parent of an infant, being so excited ever day with all the new things the baby can do.

The first time he sits up by himself.
The first time he can eat without needing support.
The first time he can crawl with his front paws.

Now, as long as he can get to a wall or a piece of furniture he can push himself up against, he can push himself all the way to his feet. :D

He can't take any steps yet, and he can't stay on his feet for more than a second or two before he falls over again. But this is still Great progress! Especially because it has only been a week since he couldn't do anything at all.

He's Determined to be able to get around on his own and he always knows where he wants to go. He lets us scoot along beside him, holding him up by his chest and belly so that he "walks" with our support. At first he could only take one or two steps that way even with us holding him up. Now he can cross half the apartment this way before he tires-out and has to rest.

This cat is determined to recover! He's refusing to give up his alpha position in this house, and that means being able to walk around and swat the others when they get out of line. :)



This was Silver lounging on one of my wheelchairs playing with yarn back in much more active days.



My ball. I took it away from the dogs, and they're afraid to come take it back. They know who's boss around here.

[TZ]

1. Yay Silver!

I'm so happy he seems to be recovering!:woohoo:

[ThomCat]

4. Thank you!

We aren't getting much sleep because someone always has to be wake with him at all times.

The Chihuahua is also getting very jealous because she is usually attached to me with an invisible umbilical cord, and she doesn't like having to vacate my lap for any damned cat. :P

But despite the upset to all the house routines, this is all going amazingly smoothly so far. :)

[kiva]

2. Great news!

My alpha boy has a tumor and is failing, but also refuses to give up his place as head of the house.

[ThomCat]

3. I'm very sorry that he is failing. :(

We had to watch Silver's brother, Gray, gradually fade away as his cancer progressed. We kept him nurtured and going as long as we could, as long as he wasn't physically in pain, as long as he was happy and wanted to keep going.

It's a hard thing to do, caring for a beloved pet you can see slowly going...

:hug:

You and your boy both have all my best wishes. When his time comes, I hope it is peaceful and totally painless, and I hope he knows how much you have always loved him. In the meantime, I hope he gets to remain the head of the house and enjoy himself as much as possible.

[kiva]

34. Thanks, Thom -

he's doing well for now, gets to eat and drink whatever he wants - he's become a half and half junky.

[ceile]

5. Good news!

I hope he continues to progress. My kitty threw a blood clot a few years back, but there was no way for her to recover without painful and expensive surgery. It was in her spine. I miss her. But I am so happy you're having a happy ending!

[ThomCat]

6. Thank you!

I'm sorry your kitty wasn't able to have the same kind of good fortune. :(

Even if surgery is affordable, I don't know if it's advisable if it will be painful. How do you get a pet to understand that all that pain will be for the best in the long run? How do you determine how much pain an animal can tolerate, and for how long, and how much pain is it worth enduring to get to that eventual better place?

Those aren't fun thoughts to have to consider. We can only give our pets the best possible lives for as long as we can, and hope it never comes to that.

:hug:

[ceile]

8. Thank you.

The vet said the recovery might be too much for her. She was a few months shy of 11 and was on meds for an auto-immune condition. I just couldn't see putting her through it.
Please keep us posted on Silver's recovery!

[VenusRising]

7. Good kitty!

Sorry to hear about his health problems, but I feel he is stubborn like his human. ;)

I'm so glad that you've been able to help him.

Sending good vibes for a full recovery!

:hug::loveya:

[ThomCat]

19. He's definitely as stuborn as his human.

:P

Thank you! :hug:

:loveya:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. That's wonderful news, my dear ThomCat!

I am so encouraged to hear this!

I'm sure Silver knows exactly how much you both love him: A Lot!

I hope he will continue to improve every minute...

:hug:

[ThomCat]

20. Thank you!

The Chihuahua is now starting to use desperate tactics to try to monopolize my attention. She's deliberately sneezing, pretending she's sick to try to get all my attention. Devious little dog! :rofl:

Silver is definitely taking everything in stride. I hope our luck continues. :)

[marzipanni]

10. Great news, ThomCat!

I hope Silver can stand and move berry much better each day!

[ThomCat]

21. Awww!

Thank you! :)

[TuxedoKat]

11. I'm so glad

to hear Silver is continuing to improve. Thanks for the update and keep 'em coming!

[ThomCat]

22. I will.

I hope there will be more good updates to give. :)

[BlueIris]

12. Best of luck, Silver.

You be good to your dad, now.

[ThomCat]

23. He's being the best! He's the easiest going cat.

Even when he feels a bit grumpy, his bad attitudes are so much more mild than the attitudes you can get from other cats. I hope he thinks we're as wonderful as we think he is.

:loveya:

[hifiguy]

13. So good to hear

Good vibes for him and I am sure my big ol' lumpenkatz Butch sends purrs his way as well!

[ThomCat]

24. Thank you!

Please give Butch a big hug for us. :hug:

[Forkboy]

14. YAY!!!

Cats are the most resilient little critters. :)

[ThomCat]

25. I certainly hope so.

:)

Silver is definitely doing his best to prove you right.

:hi:

[Pool Hall Ace]

15. Sweet!!

:woohoo:

[ThomCat]

27. Yes, very.

:)

We hope we're not setting our expectations too high based on early results. But if he keeps improving like this, it's a good bet he'll regain at least most of his ability to walk.

[Arkansas Granny]

16. That's good news, Thom. Hang in there, Silver.

[ThomCat]

28. Thank you!

:)

[hamsterjill]

17. Yippee!!! Glad he is improving.

I'm sure your attention and great involvement in his wellbeing has a lot to do with his improvement. Hi Oh Silver!!!

[ThomCat]

29. We'll give Silver all the credit.

He's doing all the hardest work. :)

He really does seem to know that he has to keep pushing himself to get back on his feet, and he's not laying back and giving up.

We're just hoping the improvements continue. As hard as he's trying, it would be a shame if he didn't get enough improvement out of this to be able to walk again. The odds are really good at this point, so we're optimistic.

[Bossy Monkey]

18. Yaay! Go Silver! n/t

[ThomCat]

30. Thank you!

:)

[MiddleFingerMom]

26. !!!!!

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[ThomCat]

31. Yes! Yes, it is.

:)

And hopefully it is just the first of the updates with good news. We are hoping that there will be more to come.

Soon, we hope he'll be stalking through this house on silent feet again, watching everyone with Alpha confidence, ready to reach out with a strong paw when anyone does something he doesn't like.

"Hey!" :poke: :poke: "Put that down. You're not supposed to be paying attention to that. You see us here? You see that nobody is petting us? You understand that this is a problem, right? We're going to climb into your lap now, me first, and you are going to realize that this is when you start petting us now. Okay?"

[TorchTheWitch]

32. Fantastic!

Oh, I'm so glad! I was hoping this would be what occurred... that he'd make significant progress very quickly. I really think this was probably a stroke. From what I recall about that cat we had when I was a kid what was wrong with Silver seemed so very similar. I just don't remember anything about her not being able to stand up at all for days, but she was hiding for a couple of days between the couch and the wall and we couldn't get her to come out, and my sister (who's much older than I and would remember all this better than I would) seems to recall that there was a few days where she couldn't stand up on her own (most of which she spent hiding in that little space between the couch and the wall). I just don't really remember that part myself probably because I never saw it.

If it was a stroke, Silver should get back to almost normal pretty quickly. He may always be a little off kilter like Tilt was but it never slowed her down. It just looked kind of funny when you noticed she had that wee bit of a lean to the left. She figured out how to negotiate getting herself around on her own and got so used to it it didn't phase her. And you never know, Silver might improve even better.

Man, I'm just so happy to hear how much he's improved and how quickly! I really think it will work out well for him.
:hug:

[ThomCat]

33. I hope you are right.

If he recovers well enough to get around that well, and all we have to worry about is him being slightly off balance to one side, we'll count that as essentially a full recovery. We'll be Thrilled!

Thank you! :hug:

[TorchTheWitch]

35. that's pretty much how we looked at it

As far as we were concerned she recovered 100%... she just happened to have a wee bit of a leftward tilt. Often people didn't even notice the tilt when she got good at negotiating space differently than she'd been accustomed to so you just saw her walking and running around and jumping on furniture and stuff like a normal cat, and it wasn't until we answered the question of why we called her Tilt that they would really look at her and say, "oh yeah, she does lean a bit to the left - didn't notice that till you pointed it out".

Learning to renegotiate how to get through a doorway seemed to take the longest for her as far as getting around. I think cats prefer to travel closer to the perimeter unlike people and dogs that always seem to travel the center line. So a person or a dog would approach a doorway by aiming for the center, and that way even if you're unconsciously listing over to one side or the other you'd still make it through the doorway but just be closer to one side of it than the other. But I think cats approach a doorway aiming for one side or the other instead of down the middle. This worked out fine for her if she happened to aim to the right side so in getting through the doorway she'd just end up going through closer to the center... but if she aimed for the left side she often miscalculated in the beginning and ended up facing the wall next to the doorway trying to figure out what went wrong. Now, this was just fine if she was just strolling along, but at supper time when she'd race into the kitchen she quite a number of times ended up face-planting the wall... that wasn't fun. Until she got the negotiating doorways thing down you had to be there at supper time and grab her before she face-planted and point her in the right direction.

It really didn't take her long though to figure out how to renegotiate how she traveled through space. Even jumping onto furniture didn't seem nearly as difficult for her to re-learn as those darn doorways were.

At this point, I'm pretty much expecting that Silver will recover at least as well and maybe even better. The more I think about it, the more the two cats seem the same in what the problem is. I just didn't really recall any of the part where Tilt was that incapacitated, but it could be because of my tender age at the time the family didn't want me seeing her that bad. In talking to my sister apparently Tilt was as bad as Silver at first and for some reason I just don't recall it.

[KT2000]

36. Great news!

I remember now that a cat I had several years ago had a problem with her back legs collapsing, the right first and then the rest of her back end. She too used the wall to get from one place to another.
With her, she had been in the emergency vets and they gave her a shot in her back hip area. They must have hit a nerve or something. It took quite a while for her to regain mobility but she did.
Here's to Silver and his continued recovery!

[ThomCat]

41. The reading I'm doing seems to indicate that loss of the back legs

is more common. Loss of the use of the front legs seems to be rare. :shrug:

I'm glad that recovery seems to be common either way. :)

[Kat45]

37. Great news. n/t

[ThomCat]

42. :)

[GreenPartyVoter]

38. Oh, Thom! That's super news! *hug* Go Silver, go!

[ThomCat]

43. He certainly is!

Now that he knows that we'll help him go where ever it is he wants to go, he calls us!

Meow "Hey, come here!"

So we come over and give him support and he points with his head whatever way he wants to go and he keep him going in the right direction and he slowly makes his way one step at a time.

Now he's not only walking because he wants food, or water, or the litter box. He's calling us because he just wants to go lay down in a different spot.

"Hey, servants, Come here. I want to be over there for a little while!" :P

[GreenPartyVoter]

46. Tee hee! I can totally see my Pickles doing the same thing if she was in Silver's place!

[nolabear]

39. Hiyo Silver!!!

Away!

[ThomCat]

44. Not quite yet, but he'll be charging across the house soon enough.

I'm pretty much sure of it! :)

[bluesbassman]

40. Glad to hear that ThomCat!

Here's to him getting better every day. :)

[ThomCat]

45. Thank you!

:)