International Cat Care was trying to find answers to questions being posed by cat owners. Some cats were having seizures, apparently triggered by high-pitched sounds. The charity asked veterinary neurologists at Davies Veterinary Specialists in the United Kingdom for their input.
Since little to no information about the subject had been documented, Mark Lowrie and Laurent Garosi from Davies Veterinary Specialists and Robert Harvey from the UCL School of Pharmacy in London decided to investigate, and compiled a questionnaire for owners to complete. Working with International Cat Care, and using the interest generated by the media, the story went worldwide (dubbed "Tom and Jerry syndrome" after the cartoon character Tom who has a strong startle reflex and often reacts with involuntary jerks to sound stimuli). They received hundreds of replies from across the globe from people who had noticed the same problem in their cats in response to certain types of sound. These owners had also found that their local vets had no information at all about it, and often did not believe that a sound had triggered the seizure, according to a press release.
Now the resulting paper, entitled "Audiogenic reflex seizures in cats," has been published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery and has pulled together information from 96 affected cats, looking at the type and duration of seizure and the triggering sound. It reveals that some cats do indeed suffer from audiogenic reflex seizures - those which are consistently caused by sounds (this is also recognized in people). Certain sounds induced "absences" (non-convulsive seizures), myoclonic seizures (brief, shock-like jerks of a muscle or a group of muscles), or generalized tonic-clonic seizures. This last category is what most people think of as a "seizure," with the cat losing consciousness and its body stiffening and jerking, often for several minutes. The new syndrome has been termed feline audiogenic reflex seizures (FARS).
The investigation found that FARS occurred in pedigree and non-pedigree cats, but that among the pedigrees, the Birman breed was over-represented. This is also a problem of older cats - the average age of seizure onset was 15 years, with cats ranging in age from 10 to 19 years.
The most commonly reported triggers for FARS were the sound of crinkling tin foil (82 cats), a metal spoon clanging in a ceramic feeding bowl (79 cats), tapping on glass (72 cats), crinkling of paper or plastic bags (71 cats), tapping on a computer keyboard or clicking of a mouse (61), clinking of coins or keys (59), hammering of a nail (38) and even the clicking of an owner's tongue (24). Other, less common triggers were the sound of breaking the tin foil from packaging, mobile phone texting and ringing, digital alarms, Velcro, stove igniting ticks, running water, a dog jangling its collar as it scratched, computer printer, firewood splitting, wooden blocks being knocked together, walking across a wooden floor with bare feet or squeaky shoes and, in one case, the short, sharp scream of a young child.
"How wonderful to be able to go back to those worried owners who came to us for help with a problem previously unrecognized by the veterinary profession with not only an explanation for their cats' behaviors, but a way to help them as well," said Claire Bessant, chief executive of International Cat Care, according to the press release.
