Save Moki The Wobbly Cat

So we wanted to give everyone a quick update on Moki, try and answer the recent questions posed by Ratmammy, and send Auntie Deb a be-lated happy birthday wish. (Sorry we missed you actual birthday Auntie Deb...we hope you had a nice one!)

So here it goes...

At the moment Moki is doing quite well. He is actually doing better than I have seen him, in perhaps the past six months...He has a strong appetite, as you can see from the above video (sorry about the angle,) and has been incredibly playful, so playful in fact that he is mimicking Orange Boy's behaviors and actions! Orange Boy, ever since he was a kitten, has always loved to curl up in the secret hidey holes of blankets...Now Orange Boy is sharing his passion with Moki, teaching him all the ropes...and Moki couldn't be more thrilled about his newly learned lessons from Orange Boy.

Now in regards to Ratmammy's questions, since most if not all of the answers to Ratmommy's questions can already be found located through out Moki's blog, I will give only a brief answer to each of the questions, and if you would like more detail please let me know...

What is the reason for Moki's condition (his disability) and was this how he was when you found him? Or did he develop the physical disability?

The answer to your question is a very complex one, hence in order to fully understand one would need to go back and read all of our prior posts. With that said, I will do my best to try and answer the question in a way that might make sense while still keeping things fairly brief...

Moki was born a normal feral kitten. He was trapped by some kind soul and brought into the no-kill shelter where I volunteered 5 days a week. At that time not many of the shelter volunteers liked to socialize the feral kittens, so after a week or two of Moki being in the shelter, I agreed to bring him home for socialization purposes, so that he could eventually be adopted out.

Moki who was about as feral as they come hissed, spit and growled at just about everybody. However after a couple of days of cleaning his cage he began to take to me, and instantly bonded with my boyfriend when I finally brought him home for socialization. He loved being able to run around the house, and early on, could be found jumping off just about anything of height, beds, counters, you name it.

After a brief period of socialization, Moki began to show signs of what appeared to be a URI. Initially we treated it accordingly, but it got progressively worse. He was taken to both my private vet and the shelter's vet. Both agreed that it was nothing more than a URI, and sent us home with more medication. As things continued to decline, he was checked into the shelters vet, for a more detailed examination. Moki continued to get worse under the shelter vet's care, and I eventually had him moved to an emergency hospital who could monitor him 24hrs a day. By the time the move was made, Moki was so bad off, that the ER vet advised me to say my final goodbyes because they did not believe Moki would make it through the night.

The following morning when a new doctor came on shift, she called me because she believed that their had been a mix up in the medical charts. The medical description of Moki up to that point did not match the cat that she was now looking at, and she asked me to please come down to the hospital to confirm that this was the same cat. Moki had made a miracle turn around over night. Unfortunately that turn around was not without side effects.

Moki would survive but the ER doctor told us that Moki would most likely never be able to sit up on his own again, would always have to have a plate of food held up to his face to eat, and would most likely never walk. Personally I felt it was to early to reach such conclusions so I brought him home. At this time the ER doctor made a diagnoses of Cerebellar Hypoplasia, which as I have mentioned in other postings is a painless condition.

To the amazement of the ER doctor, in the days and weeks that followed, Moki started to sit up on his own, eat on his own from a plate on the ground, and walk, taking only a few steps before falling over, but walking none the less. His progress called into question the Cerebellar Hypoplasia diagnoses, so he was taken to the neurology department at UC Davis to see if they could make heads or tails of his case. This is when we did the MRI and many of the other tests, of course in the end however, even UC Davis was baffled.

In examining Moki, the neurologist, amongst other things, completed a number of x-rays over a period of months. The first x-rays looked normal, but the x-ray taken at the time of Moki's MRI revealed a change in Moki's thoracic inlet structure. At this point Moki's case was referred to one of UC Davis's orthopedic surgeons. The orthopedic surgeon had never seen anything quite like Moki's orthopedic problem before, so while researching possible causes, he recommended that we start Moki on a course of physical therapy. The physical therapist, in turn recommended doing hydrotherapy for Moki's condition.

So to shorten up an already long story, no one really knows what Moki is suffering from. They cannot tell us the exact cause of Moki's orthopedic problem only it's effects. What they can tell us is that the neurological problem has contributed to the orthopedic problem and hence Moki's physical disability, but they cannot tell us why or how. The best comparison I can come up with would be to that of a stroke victim, who prior to the stroke functioned normally, however after the stroke, the victim ended up needing cane, wheelchair or some other adaptive device. While we know Moki didn't have a stroke, the outcome is similar to many stroke victims if that makes sense...

That brings us to our current state. Nobody has ever figured out exactly what Moki has because nobody has every seen anything quite like it. To make matters worse, there are no known documented cases of anything similar to Moki's case. So that leaves us only with what we do know from what we have seen in Moki and that is whatever it is that made Moki sick originally, lets call it some sort of a virus, appears to still be present in his system. It is not contiguous as is evident by the fact that none of our other cats ever got sick, and neither have any of the cats who where originally housed with Moki at the shelter. The virus doesn't appear to be in an active stage at all times, but instead lies dormant for extended periods of time then suddenly out of the blue resurfaces. Thus far we have learned that we can control the virus with Tamiflu when it does surface, but we do not know exactly why the Tamiflu works, or for how long it will work for that matter. We know that the physical disability is in huge part a result of the virus but again we do not know why. We know that Moki is an amazing fighter, and that every medical test we have ever conducted after his initial illness for the most part has come back normal, making him appear completely healthy despite his obvious condition and most importantly we know that Moki is both happy and in no pain.

I hope that kind of answers your question. If you need further clarification please let me know...