I know what you mean about vestibular disease. There are 1,001 causes for it
in HUMANS, 9/10 of which they cannot explain or treat (see: benign paroxysmal
positional vertigo, for instance), so why should it be any different for cats?
My sister-in-law had a severe inner ear virus about 10 years ago, and she
said that she still has vertigo from time to time. I myself had (and still
have) a balance disorder caused by fluid retention--luckily I can control it
with something as simple as potassium supplements.

The vet has him on prednisone right now (2x/day), and next week I will reduce
that to 1x/day. After that, she wants to see if there is any improvement
before she tries one pill every other day. If it IS a brain tumor, the
prednisone should reduce the fluid build-up, which is what causes the balance
problems.

This is weird, but I just have the strange "gut" feeling that we will have
him for 2 more years.


yngver wrote:
Yep. One of the first things she looked for was an ear infection, but he's
fine. The problem with feline idiopathic vestibular disease in this instance
is that the onset is usually quite sudden (like when humans get an inner ear
virus...) and it usually goes away in a few days, but as you said, it can
sometimes last for months.

With our cat, it did come on suddenly but it took about a year for her
to completely recover. Even so, she never has been quite the same--she
has never completely regained her earlier sense of balance. She still
once in awhile jumps on something narrow and loses her balance.

This has been happening very slowly, over a period
of about three years. She said that it is probably a very slow-growing tumor
on his right side. I wish that it could just be a vestibular problem too, but
this vet's practice is dedicated to cats only, so I'm sure that she knows
what's she's talking about when the symptoms are this pronounced.

Our vet runs a cats only clinic too. He never could find anything wrong
with our cat, and he did a lot of tests. It was me who suggested
vestibular syndrome, after doing research on the internet, and he just
said "could be, but it's taking quite a long time to resolve." However,
I think the main reason he didn't pursue it any further is because a)
our cat was slowly getting better and b) there isn't much can be done
about idiopathic vestibular disease anyway. I realize your case is
different because your cat is gradually getting worse.

The only
thing that kind of baffles me is that she didn't take my word for it when I
told her that something was wrong with him several years ago.

Well, if she can't find anything wrong now and can't find a tumor, I
guess she wouldn't have found anything back then either, so probably it
wouldn't have made any difference.

The only other word of encouragement I can think to give you is that my
friend was told her sick cat likely had a malignant tumor about four
years ago and that there was nothing could be done but wait until she
was in too much pain and then euthanize. However, once the cat was
given appetite stimulants she began to eat again and perked up. The cat
died a couple months ago of kidney failure, at age 18. No tumor.

Good luck--
yngver

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