Hi all,

Never posted in this sub before but looking for some advice/suggestions.

This morning my 6 year old bengal had what I believe to have been a seizure episode or was choking on something very intensely. (Edit: my wife says she saw her in loaf position, then she vomited up a little bit of fluid then she started running around the house.) Then I heard her hacking up a hairball from down the hall (or so I thought) and then next thing I know she was running around the house bowling through everything in sight. She finally stopped in the kids’ bedroom, collapsed onto her side and was convulsing/retching on her side. Her mouth was open and I couldn’t hear her breathing at all. Her paws weren’t paddling based on the descriptions of a seizure, but her mouth was open and she was drooling. She peed while she was on the ground seizing. I ran to grab some kitchen gloves so I could help and when I came back she had stopped seizing and was still laying there, breathing fast but without any obvious sounds of wheezing, etc. after maybe 30 seconds she got up slowly and started walking around.

Something similar happened a couple months ago in the middle of the night and at the time I could see something small and brown in her mouth - I suspect it was a mouse but could never confirm. Whatever it was she swallowed it - but it was very similar to this incident. I’ll mention there is rat poison placed in the crawl space under the house so it’s possible she may have gotten secondary poisoning but there was no obvious signs at the time and we couldn’t afford a full battery of testing at the time to determine that. (She’s also impossible to get anything done at the vet without drugs)

She generally is very stressed - we got her in 2020 as a 6 week old and had no kids at the time so she grew up with another cat we got that was the same age as her, and they get along great, but had no socialization with other people. We now have 2 kids under 2 years old and she is only just now finally allowing them to interact with her but is still skittish/territorial of me and my wife. We obviously don’t have the time to stimulate her the way she needs it now between everything going on.

She has a habit of seeking out plastic and eating it and while we do out best, we sometimes miss little things, but I’ve seen her eat/cough up pieces of plastic and it’s never like this. Obviously with the kids the house its even more chaotic than ever and we may have missed something.

I called around and the pricing for an ER visit is just insane, not to mention they will want to do imaging and labs, etc. which we are just not prepared for right now.

She is fine now but I’m keeping a close eye on her of course.

She’s very sweet with us (mom and dad) and has helped us through some tough times so i feel bad that we can’t get her the care she needs.

I’m debating re-homing her for hers and the kids’ safety but I worry she would just pine without us (VERY clingy), and would only want to do that as a last resort.

Based on the limited info I’ve shared what do you guys think this was and what would you do in my situation? I understand you guys can’t give qualified medical advice, just looking for some help/ideas Thanks in advance.