Luna came to our family in a rather unique way. She was abandoned as a kitten and dropped on the doorstep of a pet shop. The pet shop noticed that she had certain ‘episodes’ and labeled her a “faulty product” with the intent to euthanize her. My brother heard about this little kitten and sent me some photos of her with the thought that I might be quite fond of her and from the minute I saw her I knew I had to save her.
The first thing we noticed about Luna (other than being extremely cute), is that she had a constant twitching face. Quickly after this, we noticed she began having tonic-clonic seizures. Luna becomes very scared during the seizures, her arms and legs lock up, she screams in either fear/pain or both, and she often becomes incontinent due to the spasms. Unfortunately, Luna was having anywhere from 2-5 seizures each day, and every time it happened, I worried it was hurting her and causing even more harm to her brain.
In order to work out what was going on for her we first visited our local vet where Luna had several different tests done to check for a liver shunt, viruses, worms, cerebellar hypoplasia, toxoplasmosis and more. Nothing turned up a positive result and Luna’s seizures continued. In fact, it got to the point where after seeing her constantly have seizures I questioned whether I was even doing the right thing keeping Luna with us in the world as I hated seeing her seize. In spite of her episodes however, Luna was eating and drinking, walking, climbing, jumping, playing and was making excellent strides and so I thought as a last-ditch effort, I would start a go-fund me and a TikTok account to raise money to take Luna to SASH North Ryde to see a neruologist.
Astoundingly, Luna’s account grew. She gained almost 17.1 thousand followers, with one of her videos even reaching 1 million views. We developed a community who cared for Luna, supported me, and in turn, donated to her fundraiser. With the generous support of the public, we raised enough money to get Luna an appointment with a neurologist at SASH. She then went on to commence multiple different medications which she has four times a day, and we even raised enough money for her to have an MRI under sedation which allowed her to be diagnosed with epilepsy.
This brings me to now. Luna has just celebrated her first birthday, she is happy and otherwise healthy and her seizures are now well controlled with her various medications. She has the sweetest little personality, is highly inquisitive, has an obsession with biting toes and sleeping underneath the blankets, and often thinks she’s a guard dog and will man the front door. She likes to tip her little igloo upside down whilst sleeping and is getting along very well with her 16-year-old sister Mia. I am so thankful to SASH for helping us get the treatment and information we needed to equip us in looking after a cat with special needs, and I wanted to say a huge thank you to Luna’s neurologist Dr Lydia Poad who would respond to my emails at all hours, constantly reassured me, listed to my concerns, and always advocated for Luna.
