Lofty132 posted:

She is 8 months old, we have two cats. The other is 3 years old. Dolly is being a pain when she goes out. The older cat makes short trips on the yard wall before coming back, Dolly is capable of scaling the wall yet routinely ends up in a neighbours yard and won't return, crying until she can see one of us. We give the cats treats when they return and the older one comes back immediately when she hears the box of treats being shaken. Dolly is not taken in by such a ruse. The problem is she causes so much aggro in the house if she isn't let outside for a little while it seems cruel to keep her in, but her behaviour is becoming a problem.

She uses the 'lost crying kitten' act on strangers to get taken in and given milk etc, if I was to respond to her crying and went to find her she would simply stop crying and watch me from an unreachable perch. Is there a tactic to combat that?

GabrielAisling posted:

Name your cats?

Alteisen posted:

Anyway to stop a cat from picking at a scab?

My retarded 6 month old somehow injured himself along his mouth, almost from corner to corner along his jaw, its scabbed over multiple times but he keeps scratching it off.

parthenocarpy posted:

i cant reveal my cats identities

Alteisen posted:

Anyway to stop a cat from picking at a scab?

My retarded 6 month old somehow injured himself along his mouth, almost from corner to corner along his jaw, its scabbed over multiple times but he keeps scratching it off.

His Divine Shadow posted:

Polydactyl and extremely social, my nephews birthday was this weekend and we where and the kitten got moved from lap to lap and it didn't care a bit about all the strange people handling and petting it. It has really cool and weird coloring I have not seen before on a cat, seen from behind the tips of both ears are orange.

JustJeff88 posted:

So, to sum up at the start, I need a suggestion for something to keep my cats away from the door.

Here's the backstory: A few weeks ago, very suddenly and after having shown no inclination to do so previously, my longhair Valentina got out one night and ran away. I would see her outside with the other feral cats in the colony from which I adopted her, but she wouldn't let me come near her and I gave up trying to get her back while assuming that her feral instincts had reasserted themselves and she didn't want to be a housecat anymore. A few weeks ago, I saw her outside and noticed that her once very fluffy tail had been mangled; most likely she was curled up in a parked car for warmth and someone started it up, causing her tail to get shredded in a fan or belt. I was very upset but couldn't do much as she wouldn't let me handle her. Yesterday morning, my neighbour came by holding her in her arms, and I took her and put her back inside. She seemed frightened but also seemed to still remember my apartment, and she did eat a bit and let me touch her some as well. Despite the state of her tail, she didn't seem to be in pain. I had my neighbour take her to the pet hospital and they are going to amputate 3/4 of her tail, but the surgeon assures me that it's a relatively short recovery and it shouldn't cause her any great physical impediment. While I'm glad that she isn't as badly off as I had feared and I am thrilled to have her back, I obviously don't want this to happen again.

I've been using a stack of those tension-mounted baby fences to keep my cats away from the door when I go out, but those are obviously a huge inconvenience. There's a power outlet right by the door, and I was wondering if there was any sort of product that I could plug in there that would keep my cats away from the entranceway. It would only need a range of a few feet. People talk a lot about SSSCat, but I don't think that they make a plug-in version and the "gas duster with a motion sensor" really isn't what I need.

If anyone has any suggestions for products, I'm all ears. Spending 5 minutes putting up those barriers every time I go out is going to get old fast. I have to stack 3 of them all the way to the ceiling to make sure that my furry little buggers don't climb over them.

Tamarillo posted:

Teehee I might try that door trick. Hugo and Decoy are allowed out during daylight hours if we are home, but every time we open the front door Hugo is waiting right behind it to dart out without his collar.

Another thing you could try is train your cat it come to the sound of a clicker. Cram that foofy face with treats or ham or something every time you click it. Both my cats come running from wherever they are outside when they hear the clicker, its how I call them in at night. Even Hugo, who is dumb as a sack of hammers, has figured it out. (Note if you do this it will probably complicate any attempts to clicker train her to do any other tricks)

Edit: also it probably wasn't reasserted feral instincts - cats are just dicks about being approached outside. Even Decoy rarely lets me go and pick him up when he's tumbling about in the garden - it's all a big game and he sprints away. (It's kind of weird she didn't come back when life got uncomfortable though. Maybe because she never usually went outside she wasn't sure where her home was? I dunno)

His Divine Shadow posted:

My sister got a cat (despite being allergic):





Polydactyl and extremely social, my nephews birthday was this weekend and we where and the kitten got moved from lap to lap and it didn't care a bit about all the strange people handling and petting it. It has really cool and weird coloring I have not seen before on a cat, seen from behind the tips of both ears are orange.

His Divine Shadow posted:

My sister got a cat (despite being allergic):





Polydactyl and extremely social, my nephews birthday was this weekend and we where and the kitten got moved from lap to lap and it didn't care a bit about all the strange people handling and petting it. It has really cool and weird coloring I have not seen before on a cat, seen from behind the tips of both ears are orange.

Nuclear Pogostick posted:

My cat has this small lump on the side of his jaw. It feels almost like a pimple but with no head. When I gently touch it he doesn't seem to be in great distress, but if I put any pressure on it he squirms so I've left it alone. It's been there a while now and doesn't seem to be going away, but nor does it seem to be getting any bigger. His behavior hasn't changed and he doesn't seem to be in pain, and it hasn't oozed or leaked or anything. What's up with that? He's 12, indoor/outdoor (comes and goes pretty much as he pleases), he's a healthy weight and he has never had a single health issue in his life.

KKKlean Energy posted:

Got a cat problem.

Toby has stopped eating - he ate on Tuesday night as normal and although he had a few biscuits on Wednesday, he just wasn't interested in his normal meals. Won't eat this morning either.

He took a piss Wednesday morning and had a normal-looking (but abnormally small) poop Wednesday night. Nothing since. No signs of vomit anywhere (he's a housecat, so we'd know).

We suspect he just has a cold or something, because he's been very lethargic over the past few days anyway (despite eating normally). He has FIV+ so we know it'll take longer for him to recover from a cold. But should he have stopped eating? I don't know what the symptoms are of catcold.

My worry is that he's eaten some inanimate object somewhere, but I can't think what.


Edit: he's also been doing a lot of licking over the past few days too (of his fur in general). He fur does seem a little less silky than usual, which I attribute to having a cold, and maybe that makes him want to lick it, but there's nothing else about it or his skin that seems out of the ordinary.

Edit edit: OK, I did some searching and now I'm thinking less likely a cold. There's been no eye or nasal discharge and no sneezing Maybe he has eaten something wrong... might have to be a vet visit.

Fruity Gordo posted:

older cats develop subcutaneous lumps sometimes and they're more often than not totally benign. when they're on the head they're just easier to feel because there's just skull and no soft tissue. try to remember how big it is now (write down an estimate if you're worried and put it somewhere you won't lose it), and check it every week or so. my cat will be 20 next year and she has a big lump on her left temple which developed quite quickly, like over the course of a year and a half (it's about 6mm across and 3mm high), and we had it needle biopsied and it's just a random old cat lump. it's stayed the same size for a year now, and it doesn't bother her. putting pressure on his jaw probably isn't the lump speaking, it's just him being outraged at being poked instead of scratched. mittens had a completely benign tumour on one of her mammary glands 6 years ago and she was totally unconcerned by it until i found it and started crying and squeezing it and insisted that she would die of cat boob cancer. the tumour didn't hurt her and it wasn't tender, it was when i manipulated it too much and squeezed it too hard that she became upset because i was messing about with the surrounding tissue too much, if that makes sense. so it's probably not the lump that is temder, it's the enthusiastically caring and paranoid prodding that makes the lumpy area tender

if it grows quickly over the next month or couple of months you should take him to the vet if you're worried or if he starts scratching his chin too vigourously. if he develops more lumps it could be acne or an allergy to food or something in the house. benign and malignant tumours are often itchy as they grow, don't freak out. plus it could always just be a boil. if it's a boil squeezing it and touching it too much won't help, same with acne. when you check it just use the gentle touches you're doing now. when we have lumps grow on our skin we don't immediately freak out and assume we have skin cancer, so try to relax when it comes to the pussycat as well. this is a lesson i need to remember as well, it's easier to give advice than to follow your own

Rah posted:

Tamarillo posted:

Sophie's little black nose is so goddamn cute it's criminal.

Anyway, this is the exact same situation I had with my two cats. I had Decoy the ghetto kitten for a month before Hugo the prissy purebred arrived. I started out by letting Hugo out to explore on his own, and then introduced Decoy by putting him in his cage so Hugo could approach him for a sniff.

First contact:


Then after they failed to turn into super screaming puffballs of rage I pretty much just let them roam around the same area with constant supervision, because kittens aren't as prone to being as butthurt about new additions as adult cats. There was quite a bit of carry on that looked like squabbling and I wasted a lot of time being an ANXIOUS NEW CAT HAVER worrying about it, but it really was just playfighting. They chase each other around just as much at nearly 2 years old.

If it's anything like my experience, they'll be wary for a bit but will get over it pretty quickly. This happened within a few days of them being together:

Rah posted:

Well, I decided not to get the other kitten after all. The one I was thinking of getting.. It was cute, but I didn't have the same feeling of falling in love with it as soon as I saw it like I did with Sophie. I still plan to get another kitten, but I want to find the perfect one rather than just getting one I'm not 100% sure about..

Maximusi posted:

Just spent a half hour making special renal diet food for my cat that he refuses to touch. Ironically, the healthy cat was interested in it. The diet is more rice than anything else, so I can't blame him. What I don't understand is why I need so much rice with turkey when I don't need it with pork or chicken? Is turkey lower in fat? Anyways, god this is a pain.

KKKlean Energy posted:

Got a cat problem.

KKKlean Energy posted:

Well it's definitely a good job we went to the vet. He saw right away that Toby was jaundiced, and referred us straight to a nearby animal hospital, where he was kept overnight for blood tests and IV feeding. The tests showed that his blood hemoglobin was at 10%, near critical (should have been 30%) and that the cells were being destroyed by something. What exactly we'll never know without doing scans and biopsies (could have been any of a number of things, like cancer or blood parasites) but given that he was FIV+ we think it was almost certainly Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia, suddenly triggered by the FIV, and there's no way he could go on with it. At least he wasn't suffering - just really drowsy and lethargic.

I'm so so glad we adopted him though - if his time was limited then he was really fortunate to get to spend his last year of his short life with us. Such a pretty cat, but so unlucky.

KKKlean Energy posted:

Well it's definitely a good job we went to the vet. He saw right away that Toby was jaundiced, and referred us straight to a nearby animal hospital, where he was kept overnight for blood tests and IV feeding. The tests showed that his blood hemoglobin was at 10%, near critical (should have been 30%) and that the cells were being destroyed by something. What exactly we'll never know without doing scans and biopsies (could have been any of a number of things, like cancer or blood parasites) but given that he was FIV+ we think it was almost certainly Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia, suddenly triggered by the FIV, and there's no way he could go on with it. At least he wasn't suffering - just really drowsy and lethargic.

I'm so so glad we adopted him though - if his time was limited then he was really fortunate to get to spend his last year of his short life with us. Such a pretty cat, but so unlucky.

Tamarillo posted:

Sophie's little black nose is so goddamn cute it's criminal.

Anyway, this is the exact same situation I had with my two cats. I had Decoy the ghetto kitten for a month before Hugo the prissy purebred arrived. I started out by letting Hugo out to explore on his own, and then introduced Decoy by putting him in his cage so Hugo could approach him for a sniff.

First contact:


Then after they failed to turn into super screaming puffballs of rage I pretty much just let them roam around the same area with constant supervision, because kittens aren't as prone to being as butthurt about new additions as adult cats. There was quite a bit of carry on that looked like squabbling and I wasted a lot of time being an ANXIOUS NEW CAT HAVER worrying about it, but it really was just playfighting. They chase each other around just as much at nearly 2 years old.

If it's anything like my experience, they'll be wary for a bit but will get over it pretty quickly. This happened within a few days of them being together:


edit: Oh, I did lock Hugo in a room for the first night. He let out piercing kitten wails for most of it (in hindsight it was his first night being alone). The next night I let him sleep with us and Decoy and no monstering occurred.

guidoanselmi posted:

A taste of things to come for your kittens:


I should post more photos when I get a chance.