Tonight, I arrived home from work to find Matuse laying in the back pasture. I heard him crying and it sounded like a really bad cry so I located him finally in the tall grass. He tried to run from me- which is a first because even though he is a barn cat, he always run to me. He was dragging his back legs and didn’t get very far. I rushed him to the vet only to find out that his spine was broken, more than likely from a collision with a vehicle. There was nothing they could do for him-so amid a flood of tears, I said goodbye to him. He now joins his brother Ollie and the others who have gone on before him.
Goodbye sweet boy, I hope you didn’t suffer long and I was able to find you in time to put you out of your misery. We will meet again my black and white boy- now I wonder who will rise to the rank of Alpha.
May he rest gently! Sleep little angel.
My sincere sympathy.
I’m sorry that you lost Matuse. I needed to ask a question and I wasn’t sure where to post it since your most recent entries are so sad too and have nothing to do with my question so I didn’t want to come across as being tacky.
I need to know is there a difference between an alpha cat and one who wants to be alone? I have a cat who I bottle fed since she was 1 week old and now she’s a little over a year old and she has just recently beome agressive with the other cats. She was fixed a week ago (long story as to why it took so long) and she still goes after at least one cat very aggressively.
part two.
Then I have a foster cat who lives in the upstairs section of our duplex and she growls and swats at my cats too but she doesn’t chase them like my bottle baby does. She was fixed last week too and she’s been with me for about a month or two. She was brought into where I work (tossed aside by a man who didn’t want her anymore), kept her a few weeks until she was stable, brought her into the rescue where I volunteer, she aborted a litter and went into a depression so I brought her back home again. I don’t know what to do? Take them to the rescue and have them be adopted as solo cats???
It is probably because of the stress they endure when they are at the vets. It is pretty scary anyway you look at it for them to be there. Even the best of the vets can’t stop all the pheremones in the air that shout DANGER to the cats everytime they go in the front door. Many times, the cat brings back the scents of the vet office with them, causing the other cats to attack it- so it becomes defensive to protect itself.
You can help the situation by doing several things. You can purchase Feliway diffusers and plug them in to the different rooms. You can provide more litter pans than you have- You should have one litter pan for every cat you own, plus one more. You can provide places the cats can get off the floor- ramps, cat perches, condos, you can be creative and go to a local thrift store and look around for old pieces of furniture. You can also buy vanilla extract not the imitation type but the real stuff (very expensive) and apply several drops of this to two places on each cat- their chins and the base of their tail.
I wouldn’t give up on them quite yet, it takes time for them to adjust to each other. Think of it as a roommate situation- you are in college, you are in a small dorm with four extra people- do you think you would be getting along with everyone there all the time?
The thing is, is that the ones who got fixed are the ones who are aggressive. (I’ll be watching it happen) I was hoping that being fixed would calm them down but it hasn’t. I have a cat tree in just about every room (one even has two) and I know about the litter boxes, I have them in multiple rooms. Although I couldn’t have that many for space reasons. The vanilla is something I’ve never heard of but I will absolutely try it. Do you know what would cause a cat to get so aggressive when it didn’t use to be? I foster all types of cats and I have 2 kittens and 4 bottle babies and 2 adults (ferals who have been here a year). Could the kittens be driving them mad? Should I apply drops to the kittens too?
Again, they could have had a bad time at your vets- and even though they are fixed it can sometimes take months for the hormones to level out.