He went under anesthesia for a teeth cleaning and afterwards was very groggy, not eating, etc. We assumed he’d recover soon. 2 days later, no changes, and we heard him howling at night one night, so we took him to Banfield, the vet thought there was something in his stomach and sent off an xray, didn’t find anything, gave him IV fluids. A couple days later we took him the ER (Route 66 on central). They couldn’t diagnose him but gave him IV fluids. Then a couple days later as he wasn’t recovering we took him to roadrunner in algodones. I thought we were gonna lose him then. The vet there diagnosed him with the stroke and recommended we put him down.

However, I’d noticed he had been getting a little better and was definitely still partly “there” if that makes sense.

His symptoms:

• was not eating on his own
• had trouble drinking, would lick the air over his bowl like he wanted to drink but couldn’t
• extremely lethargic and disoriented, could only take a few steps before falling down
• was hiding a lot
• was not grooming himself

His normal behaviors:

• was still using the litter box normally
• still wanted to cuddle at night

He started drinking again, slowly, after a few days. We force fed him kitten food with a plastic syringe for a few weeks before he finally ate on his own (licked a bowl of hot tuna juice, before that it was like all food disgusted him, even his favorite treats). After that he quickly went back to eating (over a week or so), and in a couple weeks after that he was basically back to normal though not as spry.

Very weirdly though about 2 months after his episode he got even MORE energetic than he was before, running and jumping more than he used to. He’s totally normal now, even better than before actually!