My cat isn't acting right. Please help
Background info; Tinsel is a female around 7/8 years old, is spayed and has almost all her teeth removed
My cat Tinsel started acting strange around 3 weeks ago. My husband just started temporarily working the night shift as opposed to his normal morning shift and only a few days later she started acting strangely. We has sort of assumed she was throwing a temper tantrum as she can be very temperamental especially regarding sudden changes
First she was just a little distant and seemed kind of sad and depressed, but then she started acting scared of us and hiding under the couch and in the closet. That really concerned us so we promptly made a vet appointment and took her a few days later. We had the vets look her over, told them all our concerns and had them run a full blood panel. When the results came back the vets told us she was in perfect health and there was literally nothing wrong with her
We were convinced at that point it had to be a temper tantrum and figured she would get used to my husband's new schedule and come around. The weeks following she would start coming out and being friendly, letting us pet her and even playing and then go right back to being strange and acting scared of us. This up and down with her happened 2 or 3 times so we weren't sure what was going on
Just recently, within the past 3 days she has started cocking her head to the side and stumbling around. She gets pretty bad earwax buildup in her ears and I know ears are important to balance so we assumed she had a buildup and needed to have her ears cleaned. We did and she did start to walk better, but it quickly got worse again with her stumbling and staggering around
She almost fell over tonight when I got home from work and it scared me so bad, it had never been that bad before. My husband cleaned her ears again and we did get some pretty nasty stuff out but she doesn't seem to be walking any better. She also seems really out of it, dazed and confused and she feels a lot lighter than we remember so she had to have lost some weight
I feel awful because I was hesitant to take her to the vet again as we are struggling financially and the last visit cost over $400 just for the vet to tell us she was in perfect health. But I also don't want something bad to happen to Tinsel because I won't take her to the vet. I just really need help figuring out what's wrong with her and how to help her. I'm going to try to get her into the vet as soon as possible, but any and all advice on how to help her out would be much appreciated