Ataxia refers to a lack of coordination. It comes from the Greek language meaning “lack of order”. It is used in reference to all animals and people. A cat with ataxia will suffer from an inability to coordinate voluntarily muscle movements. Ataxia is a symptom of some central nervous system disorders or injuries. It is not because of muscle weakness.
There are many causes. One is Feline Cerebellar Hypoplasia. Gordon (above) has this disease:
I won’t go into great detail on causes but other possible causes are:
- an inherited metabolic disease that causes the degeneration of the central nervous system. Apparently Siamese cats amongst the cat breeds are most often affected (see also Siamese health problems). For a breeder it means a DNA test needs to be carried out to remove carriers from the breeding line.
- inflammation of the brain caused by an infection. Viruses that cause this sort infection include feline infectious peritonitis, panleukopenia (“panleuk”), feline leukemia.
- feline stroke.
Update: this is Flick in a video from Marion of Cats Protection (see comment). Flick has CH (Cerebellar Hypoplasia) and it makes her head wobble.
Here is a tortie navigating the stairs with ataxia. Well done to her.
Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.
SOME MORE ON ATAXIA:
Hi Marion
Get in contact I’m in Edinburgh and looking to adopt a ch kitty. I have experience as have lived with my ch cat Priscilla all her life.
Thanks
Danielle
Ruth it is indeed very rewarding, there is a Facebook group devoted to finding homes think it’s mostly in US.https://www.facebook.com/groups/CHcat/
I have a feeling its down to the general decline in the care some people provide their cats 🙁
Thanks Michael
The second cat in the video of Gordon was doing really, really well. Other than the wide stance of his back legs during gait you could hardly tell he has cerebellar ataxia. That would be my goal if I were caring for a cat like that– to do things that would help him progress to that stage. I found myself wanting to reach in and help Gordon by putting my hands on either side of his hips and just giving a little touch, a little stabilizing so he could continue walking without rolling all the way over so often. In therapy we’d call that “tactile cues to facilitate righting reactions.” I think every physical therapist or assistant should have one of these cats. It would be great fun to come up with ways to work with them and it would be of great benefit to the cats.
When I’m with Monty outside I’m always holding him up to trees so he will reach up and hook his claws in and scratch to strengthen the muscles of his shoulders and upper back to protect him against osteoarthritis from all the jumping down he does because he’s too stubborn to climb down rear end first like God intended.
A few years ago I was working with a supervising PT who was very strict about encouraging each patient to walk as far as he or she could in every session, in order to keep them making progress. So one day I was out with Monty and a little bug was walking near me. The bug would stop and I’d gently nudge him with my finger and he’d walk some more. This happened several times before I realized I was treating that bug like one of my patients, “C’mon, you can walk just a little more.” Geez. I think I was born to work in physical therapy. It’s just a shame there’s so little work in that field since the ACA passed. I went from being able to work seven days a week if I wanted to not even being able to sustain six hours a week in PRN physical therapy. There are so many people on Medicare not being helped, who would have been getting therapy before. Maybe I should go into working in physical rehabilitation with animals. When I wrote that article about cat physical rehabilitation, the vet I interviewed gave me the information on a training program. It’s focused on dogs, but you can definitely transfer the information to working with other animals.
Some friends of mine had an eighteen year old dog who had a vestibular issue like that. The head tilt did become permanent, not that he lived much longer. I know lots of older humans with vestibular issues. It is very, very common. I should probably take a class in treating vestibular conditions for some of my PTA continuing ed. I know a few things to do, but not nearly enough. It is so common that I think it might actually be a major cause of falling and the intense fear of falling that older people sometimes have. It can become a fear of almost any movement, and they just sit totally still. I had one patient who was fearful just lifting one leg to do some long arc quad exercises sitting in the chair. But if you’re experiencing vertigo constantly, even doing that would be frightening. She could barely tolerate being transported anywhere in her wheelchair, because they movement caused nausea and dizziness. We had to d/c her from PT because we made very little progress. I did everything I knew to help her, but it was without success. My supervising PT tried a few more things, but nothing really helped. I feel like we really failed there. Maybe with more training we could have done more. At least the trend is for more awareness of this condition. Hopefully, as treatment improves for humans, there will be a carryover into better treatments for animals too.