Shortly after Maddie Smith woke up one recent morning, she noticed her cat Ruby behaving strangely. Ruby appeared to be holding her head in an odd position as she walked — something she had never done before.
“We initially thought this was just because she was so cold,” Smith wrote in a Facebook post, which has since gone viral, “so we got her nice and toasty and left for work as usual.”
Unbeknownst to Smith, Ruby was presenting the symptoms of an underlying neurological issue. Her condition deteriorated during the day and when her owners returned home, they rushed her to the emergency vet.
“The vets were extremely concerned for her and could see she definitely had neurological problems because she simply could not walk properly, could not hear or see, couldn’t even eat or drink properly because she couldn’t function [with] her tongue,” Smith wrote on Facebook. “Her basic senses and abilities GONE in 12 hours. She was so helpless.”