Sendhelp Posted March 2017
Caregiver's cats behaving badly.
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Does your Cat (or any pet) misbehave since caregiving your loved one?
Have you been required to take care of your loved one's pet after they have passed? Does your pet have cute antics that entertain your loved one?
And finally, has the cat or dog transferred their loyalty to your Mother?
Now Bruce, he may be a talker. He has a few sounds....the cutest one is the "chirp." Which he uses when he's feeling kittenish and lovey-dovey and is about to jump on me. I am not sure if I want to encourage this, though.
I dated this guy once....it lasted MAYBE two months. And his cats....they never, ever, EVER shut up! After it was over, I realized they were a product of his way of being....because HE never, ever, EVER shut up either! Drove me mad! It was like he constantly had to fill up any peaceful, silent space with the noise of his own voice. Even when we weren't hanging out together, he'd be texting me all day. (I was working on a friend's ranch then, and didn't have free hands for that nonsense, never mind time to stop and reply. "Don't you have work to do?" I'd eventually text. "I'm doing it!" he'd text back from the comfort of his desk.) (Yeah, that was never gonna work out.)
My point....I realized my cats' silence is a product of my own lifestyle, which is to enjoy a lot of quiet time at home. (As a musician, I like to be able to hear the music in my head.) So I dunno if Bruce will ever become a chatty fellow.
I read somewhere that cats are actually pretty silent creatures once they become adults (except for their mating rituals), and that they developed their vocalizations solely for the purpose of communicating with humans, rather than other cats! Which is kind of neat!
Back in the 1970's I had a Siamese mix "Alex" that had a variety of sounds, so I tried word association with him. Just a couple of words to see if he would parrot them and understand the word usage. I used the "one word" only technique as that was easier. Like the words "Mom", "Out", "No", etc.
Eventually Alex surprised me with one sentence "I want out" in cat accent. It was clear enough sounding that when we had friends over to visit, both of them said "did that cat say what I think he said 'I want out'?" Then we started talking about it, ignoring the cat, Alex was losing patience so he then said "I want out NOW !!" Oh my gosh, we were rolling on the floor laughing, and yes, Alex went outside.
So I have been doing the word association with Charlie for the past 17 years. He has an interesting vocabulary. Charlie would be upstairs and I would be downstairs calling for him. I start laughing whenever he would say "what?" like he is annoyed.
Cats can be so interesting :))
Bruce does NOT like the vet's office.
The up side is I'm the one who took him out of there after the thermometer incident, so he was extra lovey-dovey when we got back here, and still is. I think I'm his hero now!
Edit: the funny thing is, everyone at the vet's office adores Bruce. We are kind of in the "poorer" side of town. The vet's office does a brisk business in doggies....but I think they mostly see cats when they're sick and/or at the end of life. So even the vet himself giggles when he sees fluffy, shiny, healthy, curious Kitten-Bruce.
Since chocolate is poisonous for pets, just don't expect to come home with a chocolate treat from the vet.
Bruce did NOT like that one little bit.
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lol
He is better than any cat I've had about taking his medicine, too. Of course, I made them give me the liquid antibiotics, but still. Carmella would fight me every step of the way if it were her! And I'd definitely come out bleeding. But Bruce just accepts his fate, lol.
I think I might be a little under the weather now, though. Maybe I stressed myself out too much. When the vet first said licorice could kill a cat, I just about lost my s***! But yeah, it wasn't the licorice, and if I hadn't caught him with the licorice, this pancreatitis mightn't have been caught in time!
He doesn't seem TOO put out about the loss of people food. He always wants Temptations though....just giving him fewer.
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Glad Bruce is ok!
Be sure to check under the couch for some hidden licorice stash.
Hoping you also have recovered from the worry.
One reading at 3:00 in the morning (awake since midnight) should not be laughing so much! How am I going to get to sleep now?
Reminds me of a moment I'm sure the celeb in question would rather everyone had forgotten - I won't name her, I'll spare her blushes, if we can assume she ever did realise what she'd said wrong. She was asked for a comment after the gala première of Jurassic Park and said "oh amazing! Just AMAZING! You just couldn't tell where the special effects ended and the real dinosaurs began."
All your suggestions were great about obtaining repellant, especially the wolf poop, with prices and everything.
On our day trip over the grapevine, we pulled up to buy ice, and next door was an antique mall of strange stuff.
On the window was painted this sale: Dinosaur Poop.
I found it, but did not go in, the price was likely prohibitive for use as
aversion excrement. o well.
I admit to serious bias. Can't bear the woman. But it's still true - !
My cats are indoor ones, so....yeah, I do believe the pancreatitis is entirely my fault with the people food and cat treats. It's not like I've never fed people food to cats, but Bruce must just be a little more susceptible to problems. Plus after losing George only a year ago, I'm probably a little weaker in the parenting department. ;-)
Ha ha! I do think there are some good dieticians. With my mom's kidney disease, she managed to ward off dialysis for 10 years just by following the dieticians' nutrition system.
But then I think back to the 6-year old me (I look pretty normal in photos, maybe a very, very slightly bit rounded, like most of my father's side of the family)....mom took me to a dietician, who instructed me on how to count calories, and all the lovely things I must never, ever eat again. What kind of person with any ethics trains a 6-year old in obsessive diet management? (Edit: and also, they would never have done that to a boy - by "they" I mean my mother as well as the dietician! When I think of how "important" it was that I be small and thin.....I still smart at how long it took me to achieve normal eating habits. Into my early 30s!)
And then there's everything wrong dieticians still keep telling diabetics over and over and over again....basically loading them up with sugar.
The other thought that crossed my mind just now is that in any case owners of cats, unless they're confined indoor cats, who think they know what their cats eat are living in a bit of a dream world. We had one cat who liked lamb-flavoured Whiskas, but otherwise would nip round to the bins behind our local curry house for his dinner instead. It was the overpowering garlic breath that gave him away.
Don't start me on dietitians. It's personal. I'm sure of them are brilliant 😶
I have similar problems with dieticians....like my friend's mom is diabetic....so the dietician keeps telling her to eat all these carb-y foods like, say, she can have as much toast and Cheerios as she wants, and is told to stick to low fat products (like low fat salad dressings, yogurts, etc.).
But toast and Cheerios are refined carbs....which are basically sugar for a diabetic! And with the salad dressings and yogurts and other low fat stuff, they basically just replace the flavour you lose from fat....with sugar!
Same with the grain-heavy cat foods. It's basically giving a cat sugar, which they shouldn't even have in their diets.
Sugar is the worst. I have been eating more of it than I should....probably why I have more pain issues than usual right now. So yeah, Bruce and I are both gonna kick our carb-y sugar habits, lol.
reviews.com/cat-food/
Edit: I STILL have to wonder why no one makes mouse-flavoured cat food!? It can't be an animal rights issue - what's the difference between slaughtering chickens and slaughtering mice?
Cats are obligate carnivores. I'm not one for conspiracy theories but when you look at the number of things modern cats have wrong with them, and then you look at the rows and rows of cereal-packed kibble, it's hard not to get cynical really.
I also had an enlightening conversation with a nice man, new cat owner, in Waitrose. I suppose he looked at my trolley's contents, and then was surprised that I was buying Hi-Life pouches. Didn't I worry about non-px cat food? "I don't get our menu plan from my GP, either," I heard myself saying.
On the other hand. I can tell you that Eukanuba puppy food is brilliant for body-conscious cats. Todd (Sweeney's brother) exercised a kind of droit de seigneur over our new puppy's dish and it turned him into a feline Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He has to take antibiotics for a week. The vet did try to sell me their prescription Science Diet for Bruce's "sensitive stomach" that he thinks caused the pancreatitis, but I know that stuff is.....I won't say it's garbage, but it's pretty middle-of-the-road, "Iams"-level quality. It costs 3x what it's worth, especially when you consider wheat, corn, and rendered fat are the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ingredients, respectively. I buy grain-free, made in Canada food ("Now Fresh") from the pet store. I wish the vets would sell better food, but none of them ever seem to have anything but yucky Science Diet.
Anyway, I KNOW (mainly from my reading about pancreatitis) the problem was likely caused by People Food, and too many Temptations. And that's totally on me, because I am a sucker for those big golden eyes and I have been giving in A LOT.
NO MORE PEOPLE FOOD. And much fewer Temptations.
We're all going on a diet!
I worked in property maintenance for rental housing till an injury put me on disability. I saw many pets - cats, dogs, rats, mice, snakes, rabbits, gerbils, hamsters, birds - just abandoned or even "let loose" when people moved. I have seen cats and dogs left shut up in empty apartments with no food, and only water from the toilet - spent money out of our own pockets to feed them until we could find them placements. I saw many pets pregnant over and over - people becoming animal hoarders because they would not ("could not") spay or neuter or at least keep them inside. In one unit the tenants used the only bathtub as the litter box for their 3 generations of 11 cats - I can't imagine how they bathed themselves.
There are 3 cats that literally live at my vet's office because they were brought in for spaying and abandoned.
This is in a town where the SPCA opened a special spay/neuter clinic on the low income side of town - $50 (CAD) for those who can't afford the vet bills.
People seem to be able to spend $12 on a single package of cigarettes (that's what they cost here) every day, or scrounge up $60 for a quarter ounce of weed, or take their kids to McDonald's 3x a week, but it's most often those same people who "can't" find $50 to get their animals fixed. I am a liberal person, but animal neglect, like child neglect, p***es me off, royally.
I am happy you are doing good work, but I was talking about people who make a choice to acquire pets they clearly can't afford to maintain, not those who rescue animals.