Ever since we brought Five home from the humane society she has been obsessively licking herself. When I took her into the vet for the first time, he said she probably just was stressed about the change in the environment and I shouldn’t be too concerned unless it continues. Well, about 2 weeks ago I discovered that she was licking herself raw. I called the vet but our schedules didn’t coincide until today.
As I suspected, the vet said she probably has anxiety is sues. So, our cat is now on Amitriptyline. I find the idea of giving our cat medication somewhat odd. I don’t know why, it just seems like animals shouldn’t need medication.
Oh well, I hope this stuff works. Now I just have to figure out how to make her take it . . .
I’m sure the medicine is a good thing.
Just make sure that you lavish her with love. I’ve noticed that our kitties really perk up and act loving when we go out of our way to pay attention to them. Not just walking over and petting them a bit.
What really makes them happy is incidents like the following:
One of them is sitting on the floor. I walk over and rather than just petting her a bit and walking off, I look her in the eyes as I deliberately sit and then lay down right near her, and make it clear through my body language and my vocalizations that I came over specifically to give her attention. Then I proceed to do so for a while. It is amazing the loving reactions I get.
I dunno. I’m sure you do stuff like that. I just thought I’d share it. Its just that too often people take cats for granted, only giving them a bit of attention on the humans schedule, and then wonder why the cat seems aloof most of the time. The cat is aloof most of the time because that’s how it is being treated.
Even if you are treating your cat like a long-lost grandchild, it could still have anxiety issues if it is somewhat claustrophobic or something related to that. You said she used to be an outdoors-indoors cat, and now she’s only indoors, so that feeling of confinement might be accumulating.
I hope she gets better!
I’m afraid the amount of attention we give her is the problem. We don’t let her sleep with us since Jaeger is allergic. At first I didn’t think this would be a problem but now I’m not sure. We keep our bedroom door closed so she won’t accidently get into it. However, occasionally we don’t latch it or something and Five will get in. She plops herself on our bed and is happier than I usually see her. I feel bad but at the same time I’m not willing to put up with a sneezing husband …
BTW, any tips on how to get cats to take their medicine?
Eeek, I have no idea how to get cats to take their medicine. When we’ve had to give our female cat liquid penicillin, we forced their mouth open and used an eye dropper the vet gave us to force it into her mouth. Once it was in, she had to swallow it to get rid of it, since she seems to lack the mouth reflexes we have to spit it out.
If it is a small pill, you could try to inject it into a kitty treat she likes. Give her a few without the pill and then give her the one with the pill. That might work.
Regarding attention, do you give your kitty canned cat food once a day?
Our cats LOVE canned cat food for two reasons:
1. The variety from dry food and because I think they like the taste WAY more.
2. The fact that we go out of our way once a day to give them the canned food, shows them a special kind of attention. It is something we are doing obviously just for them, and sometimes the way they act I think it confirms that the love and attention that the act displays is as welcome as the yummy food.
Regarding attention, I agree that being shut out from the bedroom probably makes her feel very unloved.
Since she’s been shut out of the bedroom for a while, you might try letting her in and insisting that she only curl up around your feet on top of the covers. She might be easily trained to this because she is just happy to be there. Then if you have extra pillow cases on hand, every time she strays close to the head of the bed, where you think she might have touched his pillow case, you could change his pillow case.
If you combine that with a frequent vacuuming of your comfortor with some sort of hand-vac–I assume you vacuum the house frequently if alergy is a concern–that should help.
From what my wife tells me, alergic reaction is a sum total of all the alergens your body absorbs during a given day. So her sleeping at the foot of the bed might be countered by–say–vacuuming the house a day or two more often than normal or something. I don’t know for sure. Just some ideas.:-)
I never use to give Cat5 canned food. We never gave our cats canned food growing up so at first I didn’t even consider it. However, recently I started wondering if maybe our cats didn’t need canned food because they actually hunt. Five doesn’t hunt at all. I’m not sure she understands the concept of hunting.
So, when the vet gave me the pills for five, I bought a couple of cans of wet food. I got a turkey and chicken variety. I hear that cats are wildly fond of seafood but it doesn’t necessarily agree with their digestive system so I stayed away from the seafood.
However, cat doesn’t seem as entranced with the canned food as I would expect. She did nibble a little bit but it was a very half-hearted attempt. Maybe she just doesn’t like the turkey flavor. I’m a picky eater so I suppose my cat should be allowed to be picky ;)
One of the librarians at work said she hid her cat’s pill in meat baby food. I wandered down the baby food aisle at King Sooper’s and finally found a variety that just contained chicken and water. Got home and opened it up. Oh my goodness. That stuff smells worse than canned cat food. I can’t imagine feeding a humane that stuff. Anyway, I put the pill in that but five didn’t like it any better.
So, I’ve settled on the brute force method. I force open her mouth and pop the pill in far enough that she has to swallow. Five isn’t a violent cat at all so she doesn’t bite or scratch when I feed her. However, she always has this betrayed look on her face afterwards *sigh* I feel incredibly guilty but can’t think of a better solution.