DOSE:

oral

Amanitas - A. muscaria

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

8 lb

I was sleeping on a Saturday night when my roommate woke me up around 12:45am saying, 'Um, the cat is acting weird.'

This was shortly after the sounds of the cat puking pierced my slumber, without quite rousing me out of bed. My subconscious probably told me he had nibbled a houseplant, a passing thought that had kept me from waking up entirely.

'He's foaming at the mouth.' That got my attention. I walked past my roommate, who was cleaning up the mess, and found the cat crouched on the floor, looking fairly normal, aside from the *drool* pouring out of his mouth. It was an alarming sight. I wiped his chin.

We keep the toxic-to-cat houseplants up out of reach so I wasn't worried about poisoning-by-philodendron. My roommate was telling me how a few minutes earlier, he'd noticed the cat next to the couch where he'd been reading. The cat looked... worried. And he had kitty litter on his paws, which was really unusual.

The drool gave it away, though. I went over to a low altar table, which normally has a little pile of dried Amanita muscaria on it, and sure enough, there was a big one on the floor. I picked it up, and the rim of the cap was damp from where the curious cat had been gnawing on it. It seemed like only a little bit of it had been consumed, the rim looked ragged and chewed up, but fairly intact. I don't know why the cat picked today to nibble the mushrooms.

Back in the living room, the cat had moved over next to the wall, and continued to look worried, but calm. I got down next to him and spoke soothingly, rubbed his head, and settled in for an indefinite period of trip-sitting. I had a feeling he'd be fine, though my roommate was concerned.

The cat jumped up on his favorite chair and blanket. For about 45 minutes, he just sat there, drooling onto his paws and alternating a thousand-yard-stare with closed-eye reverie (his ears remained alert). He was clearly altered. We had instinctually begun whispering around him and moving as slowly and quietly as possible, lest we alarm him. I kept up with gentle head rubs, which seemed to help keep the worried look off his face. I quit trying to keep up with the unreal amount of drool, though. Concerned that he might get dehydrated, I brought him a bowl of water and propped it up right next to him on the chair. He drank, and drank, and drank. We'll never know whether or not he would have eventually gotten up to go to his water bowl's normal location in the next room, if I hadn't brought it to him.

My roommate camped out on the floor with the intention of holding vigil and I stayed by the chair. After the 45 minutes, the cat jumped onto the coffee table, loosening a spray of drool all over it. He carefully stepped across the table onto the floor and made his way over to his 'sheepie' [a sheepskin we keep on the floor that he likes to groom]. I moved the water bowl next to him. He proceeded to very thoroughly clean himself, except when he reached for his privates… that part he seemed to reconsider and leave alone, I think because he was slightly uncoordinated.

Once I observed him grooming, I figured he was going to be just fine, and I could think about heading back to bed. My roommate had fallen asleep lying next to him. I had gotten up at about 12:45am and it was now 2:45am. By the time I headed for bed, the cat seemed to be back in his closed-eye reverie.

The next morning I woke up at 6:30am and was greeted by a bright-eyed hungry cat.

We've taken the A. muscaria off the altar.

Exp Year: 2012	ExpID: 98098
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 29, 2012	Views: 24,221
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