Can CBD oil help cats with seizures? Bruce Kennedy, a journalist, writing on the Leafly website tells us that CBD oil can reduce the frequency of cat seizures and improve a cat’s appetite and overall movement if that cat is elderly. On first hand experience he says that his cat’s seizures were reduced by 75% after ten days of CBD oil treatment.
Bruce describes the seizures that his cat, Maple, suddenly suffered from at the age of 18. Maple is an orange tabby adopted by Bruce and his family as a kitten. He developed arthritis and began to yell at night, a sign of early-stage dementia perhaps. They put up with it but then, alarmingly, he began to have seizures. They lasted about 90 seconds and it would take Maple several minutes to recover his composure. He would bite his tongue causing it to bleed.
Bruce took his cat to his veterinarian who, he explained, is a particularly good one in treating domestic cats. His veterinarian said that he had been recommending hemp-derived CBD oil for the past eight months. He said he was treating dogs with arthritis and anxiety issues with CBD oil. He also said that probably one in four of his clients i.e. the cat or dog owners were taking CBD oil for themselves. Therefore there was no issue about prescribing it with respect to his clients but on a wider issue not every veterinarian is convinced about CBD oil as a treatment.
In early June, Maple began his treatment. It is a twice daily dosage of Mobility Oil manufactured by ElleVet Sciences. They are based in Portland, Maine. They increased the dosage up to 6 drops per dose as instructed on the bottle. This works out at 13.2 mg and the recommended dosage by the manufacturer is about 2 mg per kilogram bodyweight for cats.
The difficulty was in administering the treatment because ingesting CBD oil is not something a cat will do willingly. At the end of the day they added it to water and squeeze the water into Maple’s mouth with an oral syringe. This worked out but Bruce had developed a system of administering medicines to his cat in the past which he had got used to. This certainly assisted in ensuring that Maple accepted this treatment.
There was no immediate effect in calming or eliminating the seizures but there was an improvement in his cat’s appetite and movement. 10 days into the treatment Maple’s seizures were down from two a day to one seizure every two days. He believes that Maple’s quality of life has improved although CBD oil is not a miracle cure.
It is interesting to note that in a survey by the Veterinary Information Network CBD treatment of cats and dogs by veterinarians appears to be driven by their owners because 63% of veterinarians who took part in the survey said that they were asked by their clients regularly about cannabis products for their pets. In other words a discussion about CBD or treatment for companion animals is often initiated by the animals’ owners.
As mentioned, veterinarians are split about CBD oil as a treatment. Some are reluctant to recommend it. It is gaining in popularity nonetheless. There are a lot of products out there and perhaps cat and dog owners might be developing expectations which are unrealistic. Notwithstanding that, in this instance Maple clearly benefited from it and the answer to the question in the title has to be a firm YES.
Link to the Leafly article. Note: over time this link may become broken. If it is, I am sorry.
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