An Episode With the Cat

I have had a couple of stressful days with the kitty. I took him in on Tuesday for his annual teeth cleaning. When I went back to get him, it was as if some kind of weird change had overtaken him. For one thing, he was not fully awake from the anesthesia. When I peeked in at him in the car, he hissed at me and struck out at the front of his carrier. I charged it off to him still being groggy.

When we got home, I decided to leave him in his carrier with his blanket thrown over the top, in a quiet place in the house so he could wake up better. Every so often, I went in to check him and to talk to him. His eyes were still doing circles in his head, even after two hours. He was also complaining. So I carried him and the carrier upstairs, shut the guest room door and the gate at the top of the staircase. I didn’t want him trying to jump on the guest bed, or climb down the stairs, since he still seemed so out of it, but I figured he was hungry and thirsty and maybe needed to use his box. 

He came out of the carrier like a dart, but then wandered fitfully around my office like a drunk. He didn’t seem to recognize me at all, and was especially skittish. This cat has always had a tendency towards skittishness, but he was clearly still not his old self. I left him alone up there, careful to close the gate when I came back downstairs. 

A couple of hours later, I went up to check on him. He was lying just inside the gate and he spoke to me when he saw me coming up the stairs. I eased opened the gate and he shot past me, racing downstairs. OK, I thought, we’ll see how he does with rejoining the household. And for a while, he did all right, lying on a sheet of newspaper between the two lounge chairs. 

My SO is out of town working, and about 9:00 he called to check in on us. While I was on the phone with him, the cat suddenly began to hiss and growl. I thought maybe the dog had walked up and spooked him, but soon realized that these angry hisses and growls were aimed at me. The dog was in the sunroom asleep on her wicker settee. I quickly hung up, and all the while, the cat was angrily sounding off. I called the dog, to keep her from becoming embroiled in the conflict, and closed her up in the bedroom. When I came back to the living room, the cat began again to hiss and growl at me. I decided to go on to bed, and let him have the run of the house, hoping he would be better by morning, but I was upset and almost cried on the phone to my SO.

Next morning, when I awoke, I ventured out to see how the kitty had fared overnight. He vocalized as I came in the living room, and even let me sit in the floor and pet him, as we routinely do first thing in the morning. I picked him up, gave him a hug, and set him on his condo. He accepted his morning treats, in fact, seemed ravenous for them, so I gave him more than usual. He watched me open all the blinds to let the morning into the room, and then he jumped down from his condo and began again to hiss and growl at me. And again, I walked away. 

The dog was at the sliding door wanting to be let inside. I always let her out the door in the bedroom when we wake. She came exuberantly inside as she always does, wanting her boney-treats. The cat began to hiss and ran under the table. Immediately, I took the dog back out,. Then went to feed the fish. I was so shaken up by the whole episode that I dropped the bag of algae wafers and some spilled out on the carpet. The cat ran over and acted as if he were going to start eating the wafers, so I shooed him away. He bowed, hissed, and ran up the stairs growling. I waited a beat, then followed to close the gate  behind him, basically caging him in upstairs. I came back down and called the vet. I asked  what had happened yesterday when he was there, and she told me that he had “gone postal” on them when they tried to take him out of his carrier, lunging and spitting. They’d had to throw a towel over him to bring him out. She couldn’t explain it, and I wondered why they hadn’t told me of this behavior. I spent the rest of the morning chatting online with an animal behaviorist in Austin.

After these discussion and my assessment of things, I started putting together the puzzle pieces. I had taken the cat in at 7:30 in the morning. When I called at a quarter to one to see how things had gone, the dental tech said he had just come out of surgery, which means that for roughly 4 hours he sat inside his carrier listening to other cats have their teeth cleaned, smelling all their fear, and generally becoming more and more traumatized. Another clue to what had happened were the diaper-like objects inside his carrier and his ruffled appearance. I’m pretty sure he must have soiled himself. And here’s the other thing -- I have been paranoid about him ever since last year when he nearly died. As a consequence of that, I have been rushing him to the vet every time he seems a little off. So I’m partly to blame as well. But now I’m worried about how he will react when I pack him up to go to the cabin in a couple of weeks. I’m so glad that I have one carrier for the vet and one for traveling, and have never interchanged them. I call them the “doctor” carrier and the “fun” carrier. I sure hope the trip is fun. We’ll see. 

This morning, all seems well. Last night, after I put the dog to bed and let the cat come downstairs, he willingly jumped in my lap, purred and rubbed his head on my hands. He has done the same this morning. He seems back to his loving self. But this whole incident has taught me again that old lesson about domesticated animals. They are not human. They have their own set of life rules and we should never forget that. They are tamed but they are capable of feral behavior when their boundaries are crossed, or when they get too overwhelmingly fearful, which is what I think happened on Tuesday. The joy that they give us is not always unconditional.

Onward ....