About a month ago, our cat came in with a paralysis tick. Dh, the hero that he is, grabbed the tweezers, and extracted it intact.

Sunday just gone (03/01), the other cat (they're brothers from the same litter, born Nov '06) came in with one as well. Dh extracted this one as well. He's popped them into some alcohol to show me (coz, conveniently, I was at work both times). This one is like 10 times bigger, seriously! It's got a great big sack on the back of it (it really looks like a big sack with some small sticky bits sticking out of it - how descriptive), looks like it's filled with blood.

Dh tells me if you remove it wrong and squeeze it, it injects poison and the animal is pretty much not going to live much longer.

Anyway, dh has removed it, and seems to believe no poison was injected.
The cat however has been very very slow. He can move his tail, whether it's a reflex or not, I'm not sure.
He can move his front legs.
His eyes (the pupils) seem permenantly wide, like he's in the dark, even when he's not.
Only in the wee hours of this morning did he make his first "miaow" noise since it happened, and it was faint at that.
He doesn't purr.
He doesn't/hasn't eaten.
We think he's eliminated once (thank gosh we have tiles), and it didn't smell like cat wee - more like baby spew. (thought I'd tell you all the facts )
He tried to jump off the bed this morning (dh put him up there last night) and landed on his front two legs but his back end just kept going. Very ungraceful.


This may sound bad, but we don't want to have to take him to the vet, if we're only going to be told to wait it out. Waste of money coz we're doing that already.

I'm about to call the vet now, see what they say. Just hoping he's not in pain.

What do you know of paralysis ticks?