Sudden loss of mobility in front legs

Hi:

My cat is 19 years old, and about a year and a half ago (when she was
18), she had what we suspect to be a stroke. At around midnight the
night before,
she emptied her bowels on the carpet and then suddenly ran to the couch
where she curled into a tight ball. My brother saw this, but just
cleaned
up the mess and didn't disturb her. The next morning, instead of
demanding food as she usually does, she was still curled into a ball.
When we
put her on the ground, we discovered that she couldn't move her hind
legs.

We took her to the vet - she couldn't figure out what was wrong but
suspected that it was some kind of problem in her brain (like a
stroke). She also
told us that she thought my cat was blind. So we just took
her home and expected that she wouldn't live very much longer (my
grandfather died after never recovering from stroke).

However, she was still eating normally throughout the entire ordeal,
and she actually recovered almost all mobility within a week. At first
she was just dragging
herself around, and then she started forcing herself to walk.
Gradually (over the course of the week) her walking improved. The next
time we took her to the
vet, the vet was shocked, and also told us that she seemed to have
recovered most of her eyesight. She seems fine now.

So perhaps your cat is also experiencing something like this - please
don't consider putting her to sleep too quickly.