Any Ideas What Could Be Going On With This Cat...

Hello! I'm new here, sorry to be off to a kind of blah start, but I'm looking for advice for my sister and her cat.

So my sister has a lovely orange tabby. She hasn't had him very long. He was a stray and is an intact male.

Before she could get him into the vet for a regular wellness exam she noticed him having this weird spell. He would basically seem to loose control of his muscles and just fall over. My sister thought he was having a seizure and recorded the incident, then got him to a vet.

Right off the bat the vet said that he has a very severe heart murmur. Without doing much testing the vet said that the weird spell he had was most likely a fainting spell caused by not getting enough blood to his brain. My sister has her doubts whether he's really fainting because when he has these spells he seems to remain conscious. After they happen he gets up and carries on like nothing ever happened. The vet claims that the cat isn't in any pain and booked him for an echocardiogram next week. They took blood but we haven't gotten the blood test results back yet.

His last vet apt was on Thursday and since then he's had more of these weird spells plus my sister noticed today that once in awhile he'll just start walking in circles. He does it for a few minutes then walks off like nothing was ever wrong.

His spells are weird to describe. Sometimes it will just seem like one of his legs is locked up for a few minutes and he'll otherwise be ok. Other times it will be a bit more severe and he'll fall over and almost look like he can't control his legs. But it's never really violent like how you'd think a seizure would be. He doesn't thrash around or twitch or anything like that. It's never lasted more than a couple of minutes and afterwards he always quickly returns to normal.

Does anyone know what fainting in cats actually looks like? I tried looking for videos online but didn't have much luck. Do his weird symptoms sound like they are related to his heart murmur or is something else going on here?

Any ideas? Like I mentioned he'll be seeing a vet for his echocardiogram this coming week and the results from his blood work should be in by then, so we can take things from there after that but I've been trying to do some research on my own and am not having much luck finding anything that matches his exact symptoms.

Thanks in advance for any replies!!

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A Google search on Idiopathic Feline Vestibular Disease should give you a good start. Posting the video here surely wouldn't do any harm, but - this solely an opinion - I'd say that your Sister's veterinarian is pointed in the proper direction.

Edit: one of our members in Australia is a Cardiologist. @Geoffrey - would you care to shed any light here, Geoffrey?
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While unusual, fainting CAn be associated with severe heart disease (cardiomyopathy). If heart function is significantly impaired by cardiomyopathy, this will lead to heart failure (often called congestive heart failure), where there is compromise to blood flow through the heart and blood output from the heart.

Cats can sometimes develop clinical signs without prior warning, and some cats can deteriorate very rapidly. Some cats with heart disease show signs of collapse, or 'fainting'. However, this is relatively uncommon and usually associated with marked disturbances to the normal rhythm of the heart (which can lead to episodes where the brain is starved of oxygen through poor blood flow).

Yes, he can be conscious through this. I would be very concerned and would suggest that she keep him as comfortably confined as she can, in a small space with a nice soft bed and everything nearby so he doesn't have to move much. In the meantime, you might want to research heart disease in cats so you will have more understanding of it to share with her.

Jackson Galaxy had a recent episode with a cat that fainted in front of the owner and himself. The cat just fell over. They took him right to the vet and the cat also had a murmur. They did an echo on the cat and he was put on medication. I always get the heart medicine mixed up but it was the one that blocks calcium from interacting with the heart.

Thanks for the replies so far! My sister isn't really a computer person so I've been trying to do as much research as possible to pass on to her.

She is keeping him confined to a single room for now. She was afraid he'd fall down the stairs and hurt himself if she didn't. Luckily he seems pretty content for now. It's weird because other than these weird spells he seems really healthy. He's active, playful, eats and all that normally. The vet estimated that he's only a few years old, 2 or 3, at most.

He's small for an adult cat, if that matter at all. I'll have my sister send me some pictures and the videos of him and see if I can figure out how to share them here.

We don't know if this is something that started suddenly or if he's been dealing with it for awhile as he was a stray before my sister took him in. She had him less than a week before he had his first spell, what the vet told us is fainting.

The vet told her his heart murmur is "severe". I asked my sister what grade it is but she didn't know. At the time she didn't know much about cat heart issues so didn't know to ask. I'm going to try to see if I can get off work during the cat's next vet apt so I can go in with her and talk to the vet.

I've worked quite a bit with rescue animals but mainly rabbits and dogs. My husband is, unfortunately, very allergic to cats so I don't have as much experience with them. I've dealt with/seen Vestibular Disease in both rabbits and dogs before and when her cat started walking in circles I actually did do some research on Vestibular issues in cats. The circling fits but I'm not fully convinced that his weird fainting spells/whatever they are do.

I'll do more research on heart issues/disease and see what I can find. Thanks again for the replies!