Obtaining a total number of records in a cursor (Count)

I am curious to know if there is a command to obtain the number of
records (tuples) in a cursor such as a count(*)? I have an app. using
the libpq API that allows the user to search a database and then stores
those results in a cursor... in turn, the app. allows the user to scroll
through the resutls n at a time. However, I also want to display the
total number of records returned from the search. It seems highly
innefficient to do a SELECT count(*) and then standard SELECT of the
same query... After declaring a cursor and passing resutls into it...
is there a command, temporary table, or session in memory that I can
obtain a total count of records for that cursor?

Regards,
Michael