“I thought he was just playing at first”, said a Florida woman after her kitten died from a seizure induced by her new camera.
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Sara Tarbor had just gotten a new Cannon digital camera after her cat Taz gave birth to 4 kittens. “I bought the camera so I could show the kittens to my family back in Atlanta. The kittens had just turned 4 weeks old and were getting really frisky. My biggest kitten named Spike was rolling and jumping all around so I had taken quite a few photos of him. I was laying on the floor when he jumped at me as I took a photo. The camera flashed right in his face and immediately Spike started flapping around on the floor like a fish. At first I thought he was just playing but I soon figured out it was a seizure”.
Tarbor grabbed a blanket to cover the kitten from light because she had heard it helped people with seizures but it didn’t help. “The kitten stopped moving after 30 seconds or so and died”, said Tarbor. “I had never heard of a cat having a seizure induced by a camera flash so I didn’t think I could hurt them by taking photos”.
Thought rare, it is not the first case of a cat getting a seizure from a flashing light. It may though be the first caught on camera.
