Foil, spoons, keyboards: the sounds that trigger seizures in older cats
Published by Planète Pets · managing editor: Clément Lacaille · how our guides are written
A fifteen-year-old cat that startles, stiffens or breaks into brief jerks when you crinkle tin foil is not being difficult. The phenomenon has a name, it was described by British vets, and it involves objects handled every day. Our guidance on everyday equipment is gathered in the cat accessories section.
Contents · 5 sections
The sounds involved, ranked
Lowrie, Bessant, Harvey, Sparkes and Garosi published an open-access survey of 96 cats in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery in 2016, selected from 128 owner reports (see the study). Twenty-one different triggers were reported; here are the top eight:
- Crinkling tin foil: 82 cats out of 96.
- A metal spoon against a ceramic bowl: 79.
- Clinking glass: 72; a crinkling bag: 71.
- Keyboard typing or mouse clicks: 61; coins or keys: 59.
- Hammering: 38; the owner's tongue click: 24.
A phenomenon of the older cat
Onset is late: 15 years on average, ranging from 10 to 19. The commonest sign is not a dramatic seizure but myoclonus — a brief jerk, always under thirty seconds — present in 90 of the 96 cats and the first abnormality noticed in about 70% of cases. Half the cats (48 of 96) also had owner-reported hearing loss or deafness.
Avoiding the sounds abolished seizures in 72 of the 96 cats. But avoidance is not a solution: in 32 cats the same noise could equally trigger nothing at all, which makes the exercise unworkable across a whole home.
What the survey does not show
This is not a prevalence study: owners came forward because they recognised the picture in their own cat. No figure of the form "X% of cats are affected" can be drawn from it, and it would be wrong to write that high-pitched sounds cause seizures in cats generally. The data are owner-reported, without electroencephalography, and the authors themselves state that deafness was not confirmed by objective hearing tests. Thirty of the 96 cats were Birmans, that is 31%: the authors read this as strongly suggesting a breed predisposition, and therefore a hereditary component. Caution argues for retaining the over-representation in this series above all, since recruitment ran through appeals to owners, with no count of the reference population.
What to actually do
The useful message is not to live in silence but to describe these episodes to a vet rather than write them off as old age. A randomised trial from the same team in 2017 compared two drugs in 57 cats and reports at least a halving of days with jerks in every cat of one group, against a very small proportion in the other. These are prescription medicines: the owner's job stops at reporting, precisely and with dates, ideally on video.
- Note the exact sound that precedes the episode, and the time — this is the detail most often missing in the consulting room.
- Dampen what can be dampened without upheaval: a ceramic or stainless steel bowl on a mat is quieter than a bare bowl on tiles.
- Adapt the rest of the home as for any ageing cat: see our guidance on senior cat home adaptations.
Frequently asked questions
My cat is deaf — can it be affected?
Half the cats in this series heard poorly, which did not prevent the seizures. Suitable equipment is covered in our article on the deaf cat, and all our guides are on the cat hub.
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This guide is part of Planète Pets’s Cats universe. Our advice is general in nature: for any health concern, your veterinarian remains the only reference.