[sumtechguy]

Could also use it to figure out where it is happening.

My friend had a cat that had nearly the same thing. He accidently figured out what was triggering it. It was the fabric softener he was using and the cat liked to roll around on the bed.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Cats have a lot of chemical sensitivities.

I had a cat that was allergic to Frontline (the anti-flea stuff that you put on their shoulders). If I put a drop on her, she would start foaming at the mouth.

I found out that there's a particular insect repellent (Permethrin), that is popular, hereabouts, as it repels ticks, that many cats have sensitivity to. It can cause seizures.

[xkcd-sucks]

The systemic bug killers are fucking terrifying. They're not approved for human use, so there's some baseline concern. They're neurotoxins which are "specific" to bugs [0], but, all living things are remarkably similar and no drug is 100% specific to its target. Finally, it's formulated to persist in a body for a month, which means it's really hard to flush out an overdose!!!!!!

The product booklet in revolution / frontline rx is actually really comprehensive and worth a read here, it goes in to the pharmacology in detail.

... In spite of all this I still do poison my cat's bugs but try to pad the dosing schedule by a week or 2 each time, it's not like the life cycle of the critical parasites is longer than that.

[0] mostly glutamate gated chloride channel activators, and mammals don't have these receptors. but mammals do have glutamate gated cation channels (AMPAs/NMDAr) and the drugs bind activate them too, just only a little tiny bit... that adds up in an overdose. What you get from excitatory glutamate channel activation is seizures.