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Okay, all kittens are assholes. However, I'm going to have to pick a method of training soon, and would appreciate some advice. My 16-year-old female, Sari, has been with me for 15 years. She bonded with a younger cat I got a year after her, but he passed away in 2010 (urinary tract infection.) My lease stated I was only allowed the cats I moved in with, but when my building went up for sale this summer, I asked permission to adopt a second cat to set the precedent when the new owners take over. Evil landlord gave no shits; yay! Why get a kitten? Because I have a disabled brother living in another city, and no other family, I have to go on trips a few times a year to meet with his workers. I also have friends and a godson there. Sari was showing more and more signs of stress while I was away, despite a great friend/cat-sitter visiting a couple times a day. I was gone for a full week once, and came back to her anxious, needy, and nibbling away fur and a few layers of skin from her legs and tummy. Not a happy cat. Even after I got home, she'd freak out occasionally if I wasn't in the same room--yowling anxiously--which had never happened when she had buddy to curl up with. Also, gently caress it, I've never had a baby cat before. I wanted to see what it was like. All my previous cats, dogs, and horses have been adolescent or adult rescues. So, I figured I'd do what worked last time. I wanted a young male for the best odds of acceptance with Sari. Enter  Slight tangent: end of July, both cats got seriously sick. Sari's existing pancreatitis flared up and she threw up blood at 3am. I took her straight to the emergency clinic. She started having really, really bad diarrhoea and refused food. I think she spent three or four nights at the clinic on IV. They put a feeding tube down her nose and a cone on her head on day two. I went every day to cuddle her for a couple hours, but didn't take her home until she was eating on her own. However, it gets better! Less than 24 hours after Sari got sick, Snowflake's energy plummeted, he threw up bile, and seemed to have a hard time walking. I took a quick video of his weird gait and got him into the regular vet, by which point he was extremely lethargic. The vet said to take him to the emergency clinic, as they could run tests faster than she could. In the 10 minutes it took to get to the emergency clinic, Snowy had gone from limp to being unable to lift his head. The vet (who was actually the very first vet he saw under my care) grilled me on possible poisons he could have gotten into. I drew a blank, and still do. She took him away for tests, and I went to take a shot at hand-feeding Sari. She burrowed into my shirt and smeared poop all over me but meh, priorities. My goon-bro EnEmE got dropped off at the clinic with food and a latte for me, ready to drive me home in my car when I was ready. (Priceless friends know when to take your car keys away.) Super serious vet pulled us outside to talk, because we shouldn't have even been in the kennel with ringworm spores on us, but everything had been so hectic we all forgot. She said Snowflake's kidneys had shut down and he probably wasn't going to make it. She showed me the test result of his potassium level and said it was only that number because the test was incapable of going any higher. She wanted my permission to DNR him if it was going to be a case of drawing out inevitable organ failure. They'd already started IV therapy. One of the techs bagged me up in sterile scrubs so that I could go say good-bye. I wasn't allowed to touch him. He was fully unconscious, under heated blankets, IVed. EnEmE drove me home, watched some TV with me while my clonazepam kicked in, then left me to sleep in my un-catted apartment. Snowflake made a startlingly fast turn-around in less than 10 hours and was chewing on vet-techs while still in isolation. They sent him home first. Sari was a little slower to come around, but she started eating and the tube was removed. She's got irritable bowel which is leaning pretty close to lymphoma, but she'd tanked out on sedation for that test, so the vets didn't want to try again. Snowflake had follow-up bloodwork to see if his kidneys were damaged, but seems he dodged that bullet too. Things are mostly back to normal, though we just did the first test to see if the ringworm has cleared out of Snowflake's system. I figure I'm a couple weeks (or less) away from being able to integrate the cats. The problem I have now is that Snowflake is older, stronger, and super bite-y. I've been managing it by redirecting him onto toys or ending play immediately when he bites too hard, but sometimes he gets a bit berserk. He really wants to be in the same room as Sari. A couple times, he's bolted out of the bedroom between my feet and if the opportunity presents itself, he leaps on Sari, who loudly protests and tries to get away, which is a fantastic game for him. When he was younger, he was more tentative in approaching her. Now he goes straight for the tackle. Poor Sari doesn't deserve being a chew-toy, and I worry about stress impacting her health. She tends to pee in my laundry when she's unhappy. She's capable of whapping him over the head, but that'll just trigger the crazy, and I'm worried he might actually hurt her. He bit a vet hard enough to draw blood a couple weeks ago. (She cooed over his adorable kitten teeth, called him a starchild and kissed him on the nose. Weirdo.) I have a lot of tiny scratches and a couple bruises on my hands from his bites. I'm trying to teach him acceptable levels of force, but it hasn't really sunk in. Sari probably would have taught him that when he was smaller and easier to bowl over, but now they're closer in strength. So the TL/DR of it is that the cats are completely used to each other's scents, but have been kept in separate rooms for over a month due to illnesses. At this point, I don't know what to do about Snowflake trying to wrestle Sari other than wearing him out first, and tossing him back in the bedroom when he pushes his luck. I'm optimistic they can be friends, given how close they were getting in the brief time they had together, but I'm worried that Snowflake's gonna wreck that by playing a lot rougher than Sari wants. Ideas for deterring unwanted behaviour? Pixelante fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Aug 19, 2015 |
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Aug 19, 2015 00:54
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| # ? May 8, 2024 23:50 |
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I have no experience in this specifically, but wish you luck. Do you have a Feliway plug-in? It doesn't do much against rear end in a top hat kittens, but it might chill everyone out a notch or two. If I was you, I would re-introduce them in slow increments. Maybe crate Snowflake and let Sari explore his room for a half hour. Do a few sessions of this. Dont do the reverse though, Sari needs to be the Big Cat in this situation.
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Aug 19, 2015 02:02
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Suspect Bucket posted:I have no experience in this specifically, but wish you luck. Do you have a Feliway plug-in? It doesn't do much against rear end in a top hat kittens, but it might chill everyone out a notch or two. If I was you, I would re-introduce them in slow increments. Maybe crate Snowflake and let Sari explore his room for a half hour. Do a few sessions of this. Dont do the reverse though, Sari needs to be the Big Cat in this situation. Feliway doesn't seem to have any effect on Sari--I used it when I was away, but she was still a basketcase of needy snuggles when I got home. Still, I have the diffuser already, so I might as well get a refill to mellow Snowy. Since I made the first post I went to go read in bed; I'm sort of getting used to detaching him from books or my hand every few minutes. He chews on things like a puppy would. Dunno if that's normal for a kitten. Thanks for the idea of crating Snowflake in the bedroom. I was considering crating him in Sari's space first, but I think you're right. I'll make the bedroom neutral before advancing to the living room. The only three containable zones in here are the living room, bedroom, and washroom.
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Aug 19, 2015 02:11
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Pixelante posted:I'm sort of getting used to detaching him from books or my hand every few minutes. He chews on things like a puppy would. Dunno if that's normal for a kitten. It is a kitten. Probably still teething a bit. Get some cardboard boxes for him to jump around in/on and destroy.
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Aug 19, 2015 02:19
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I'm pretty sure that if she was truly sick of his antics she would just push his poo poo in and bash him properly- my two dicks play a lot but every now and then one will push the other too far and there will be a full on arse kicking to reaffirm the boundaries for a few weeks
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Aug 19, 2015 13:42
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Ferremit posted:I'm pretty sure that if she was truly sick of his antics she would just push his poo poo in and bash him properly- my two dicks play a lot but every now and then one will push the other too far and there will be a full on arse kicking to reaffirm the boundaries for a few weeks I hope so. Because of the ringworm, if he catches her I immediately separate them. Hoping he's clear now, but his treatment was interrupted by that whole almost dying thing, so he might still be a little bit of a spore factory. Ringworm sucks.
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Aug 20, 2015 21:43
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