I've been thinking seriously about starting another blog just for the trials and tribulations we've had with our rescue cat, Sassy Boo Boo. We came back from our winter vacation to Florida on Saturday. When we travel, we have a family that looks in on Sassy every day making sure the litter box is clean, she has fresh water and food and they stay and play with her for a while if she's amenable to that. Periodically, we get updates. Only one accident, she hid every time they came over, she didn't eat her treats, they couldn't catch her to give her the Prozac. A call to the vet said there would be no problem discontinuing the Prozac until we got home so we told the sitter to just leave her alone. When we left she was skittish, hid from us, hated to be picked up, would run every time we approached her and was generally not very friendly, although she has never been mean. If you follow my blog, you know we've tried pheromones, we've tried different litter boxes, different litters; in fact, we've tried everything the vet recommended except locking her up in a small space with her litter box. We are in this for the long haul, we will not give her up and I can't help thinking there is something we're missing.
Since we returned home, she's been the most loving she has ever been. She comes when called, she lets us love on her, she's ok with being picked up, she follows me everywhere - and the biggest change: she lays on my footstool and allows me to brush her. Since she's a 'fluffy' cat, she has lots of fur, it isn't long but it's very dense. She wouldn't let me anywhere near her with a brush before; now, I just tap the footstool with the brush and she's there. Her temperament has done a 180. She's vocalizing more now. Last night she actually woke us up by sitting on the floor next to our bed and caterwauling. It sounded like two cats fighting under our bed. When I woke up, I sat up and patted the bed, she jumped up, we did the loving bit for a few minutes, she jumped down and was quiet the rest of the night. As if she needed to reassure herself we were still there.
This morning we found another mess on the waterproof pad. The Feliway bottles are still full, not due to be changed for another week and I'm not so sure they're helping anyway. She's getting all the attention she's demanding. She's eating and drinking well. She has three bird feeders that vie for her attention, she has a good life and still....
We tried one more experiment today. We have large round plastic discs with a one inch high edge that originally were to put under a Christmas Tree so you didn't get water on the floor, they're about the size of a sled saucer. We put one of those in the center of the two extra large boxes we have out now and put cat litter in it. Maybe it's edges she doesn't like. We've noticed when she uses the litter box, 100% of the time she scooches back until her rear touches the side of the box and then she goes. She never goes in the middle, at least, we've never found a mess there. She also doesn't like to cover anything up, so the scattered litter won't be a problem. We're tried almost everything else, trying this won't hurt anything. Stay tuned....
Aw bless her my cat has a covered in litter tray and she stick her bum outside and des ita arghhh its so frustratin, it doesnt happen every time but often, its trial and error eh poor little thing awww big hugies Juen xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
ReplyDeleteI'd say that Sassy has made good progress, despite the accident. It's great that she's interacting with you so much now. Hopefully you will find the key to her potty issues soon. Several posts back I mentioned to you that my grand dog had started moaning one evening. At the time we thought it was because he wanted in our bedroom, but the moaning became a regular thing every evening and we knew something was wrong, because the only other time he had ever moaned like this was when he was in pain after he'd had surgery on his leg. I finally made the connection that the moaning would start after my daughter gave him his allergy pill in the evening. She stopped his pill and the moaning quit the next day and has stayed gone. I don't know what the pill was doing to him, but it wasn't good.
ReplyDelete