wonder if anyone can help - my sister just rang, she has a 12 month old cat that has just started fitting, 3 fits since Friday, convulsing and foaming at the mouth

my sister does not have any insurance and is a single parent, she has been to the vets who have taken bloods to check kidney and liver function, and they have suggested cat has an MRI (it all sounds familiar eh!)

basically she can't afford to go down this route, the vets so far have cost her £80, I have suggested she get back in touch with RSPCA where she got the cat from, but wondered if anyone here has any suggestions??

I don't know much about epilepsy in animals, will a change of diet etc help?? My sister is upset as she knows she can't afford life-long medication, and as the cat is only a year old I'm not sure if the epilepsy is a sign of something more sinister going on???

Any opinions gratefully received, then I can call my sister and see if we can help

thankyou 

(edited as I had put lover function not liver!!! eeek!)

An MRI won't do any good -all it can show is if there is a brain tumour or similar. The simplest and easiest and also cheapest option is to start treating the cat for epilepsy with medication and see if it makes a difference. (Usually takes 4-6 weeks before you can be sure.) This is what we did with my dog -my vet sad doing an MRI (cost: £1400 plus VAT!) would not be any use as if it showed a brain tumour, we'd still not be able to to do anything about it, even if it was removed at a cost of four figures it would still then only give him another 6 months or so, so we put him straight onto epilepsy medication and yes it worked. For a large 35 kg dog it costs me (two lots of tablets) around £40 a month, so a cat should be a lot cheaper. As the fits are so frequent sadly medication is probably the only option.

Just one question to play safe: your sister hasn't by any chance recently wormed the cat with a wormer bought from a pet shop rather than from a a vet? That has caused fits in many cats and when not used again they usually stop.

thanks for the reply, I will let my sister know

I hope Treacle gets better soon, my nephew is very upset (he found her when she was fitting :( )