Dear God, no. It's only been six weeks.

Keiki is our cranky old lady.

Of course, she's been a cranky old lady since she was six months old and came unhinged after the death of my father-in-law, her beloved grandpa.  (But that's another story.)  Innyhoo, she's 13 now.

Since the girls arrived in our lives and in our home, Keiki has been...expressively out of sorts.  She began peeing outside the litter box.  When it continued beyond just the bladder infection she was first diagnosed with, it became behavioral.

We had to put the cat on antidepressants, of all things.

We used a compounded medication that was in a transdermal gel, which we smeared on her ear flaps.  It got absorbed into the bloodstream that way.  And it worked.

And we could often go several months between blitz-dosing her without a problem.  Then we'd have to medicate again for awhile.

Keiki, Christmas 2011

We're back on one of those times where she needs the meds.  So late last night, like the dutiful kitty mommy I am, I saw her on the landing by the brick planters on the main level of the house as I was getting ready to head up to bed, and decided I'd better dose her before I went to bed.

I set my pile of laundry, books, cake (hey, I needed to eat something with my antibiotic), and cell phone down and retrieved the dosing pen from the kitty supplies box in the pantry.  I sat down next to her on the stairs and stroked her head, and then rubbed in the medicine, splitting the dose between her ears like I usually do, so that it doesn't get all caked up on her ears and make her itchy.

Then I went downstairs and put away the dosing pen.

I picked up my pile of stuff.

I went back up the stairs in the semi-darkness--the stairs have their own little recessed wall lights--and smiled at Keiki, and then went into my office.  I turned off the air conditioner in there, and came out...

...only to see Keiki roll down onto the next step.

My first thought was that I expected that kind of lack of feline grace from Koa, who somehow missed out on that (I think she went back in line for a second helping of 'tude instead), and I grinned.

But Ke didn't stop.

She didn't catch herself and right herself.

She tumbled all the way down the stairs (there's only seven of them, thankfully) and laid there on her back, twitching like mad.

A minute, maybe, had elapsed between giving her the meds and the seizure.

I raced back down the stairs and shouted for Hubby, who, despite the lateness of the hour, was still up.  When he asked what was wrong, I said, "Keiki's having a seizure!"

She was still twitching when he ran into the hallway, but the seizure was ending.

Hubby and Keiki have a special bond, and have since she chose him at four and a half weeks old.  He could approach her when she was post-ictal.  He laid down on the floor next to her and began to talk to her in soothing tones.

She just laid there after the seizure passed, and was clearly confused about what had just happened.    Her eyes were almost completely dilated.  It took another ten minutes or so before she was mostly back to normal, her pupils now appropriately sized rather than taking up most of her eyes.  It was still another five minutes before she meowed and started sounding like herself.

She recovered quicker than I did, honestly.  My heart was still racing and I'd dissolved into tears more than once by this point.

Keiki was, however, almost comically scared of the stairs once she was up and walking around.

"Well," Hubby said, "the last time she was on the stairs, she ended up at the bottom of 'em and doesn't know why."

We checked the symptoms of overdose/side effects/allergic reaction to her medicine.

Seizure was one of them.

I called the vet the first thing this morning.

She called me back a couple of hours later.  I explained what had transpired.  Then the vet said words I did not want to hear.

"I don't think it's the medicine.  Not with how geriatric she is.  Given her age...it could be a brain tumor.  It could be high blood pressure.  Or hyperthyroidism.  But I don't think it's the medicine."

We agreed that the best course of action, since this was her first seizure, would be to take her off the medicine, just in case, until next week, and then reevaluate.

I explained the vet's potential diagnosis to Hubby.  Despite his irritation with Ke's continued adventures in peeing, this was not news he wanted to hear.  But still...we held out hope that it was a med reaction.

I think, though, that I found her post-ictal again this afternoon.  She was too mellow and her pupils were severely dilated, more so than the light in the room would indicate.

This seriously sucks.