Is she punishing me??!?!?

So today I got my little 4 month old kitten spayed. She came home and was CRAZY. She acted like she had just woken up from the longest nap of her life. She was running around like crazy and the vet told me to try and keep her quiet. That was just not possible. She acted like she didn't even have surgery. Anyway, I have this house plant that she has been around for TWO WEEKS since I brought her home and she has completely ignored it, but today she started DIGGING the dirt out in it and chewing off leaves. She wasn't eating the leaves, just snipping them off with her teeth. I couldn't keep her away from digging in it and snipping leaves. She made such a mess on several occasions tonight. I don't understand why she would ignore it for so long and now she is SO interested in it. Plus I don't know if it is poisonous, but I am not taking any chances and tonight the plant is on the patio. PLEASE someone tell me:

1. why she may be doing this
2. How to keep her out of the plant when its inside
3. If she is punishing me for spaying her
4. How I may be able to keep her out of it without using a spray bottle...because I am about to.

Originally Posted by Longhornchick29

PLEASE someone tell me:

1. why she may be doing this
2. How to keep her out of the plant when its inside
3. If she is punishing me for spaying her
4. How I may be able to keep her out of it without using a spray bottle...because I am about to.

Click to expand...

1. She's four months old, the plant is fun, and she's a kitten. She was playing... Kitten mischief, from a kitten who doesn't know the rules yet. Like you said, she probably doesn't know she's been spayed; all she knows is that her stomach is a bit sore. It could just be the remnants of whatever medication she received making her hyper. In either case, it's kitten mischief, whether or not she's still high on something.

2. Find a way to keep the plant away from her, or find a way to make it distasteful to her. You can do the first by hanging the plant from the ceiling, by putting it in a room she isn't allowed into, by putting it on a wall-mounted shelf she can't jump to, or by placing some sort of barrier around it. You can make it distasteful to her by putting some bitter apple or Tabasco sauce on the pot and the plant, spraying citrus around it, or using just about any training aid that smells and tastes bad.

3. Nope, she's not punishing you. When cats are angry with someone, they punish by swatting with a paw or by a warning hiss... She doesn't understand that you own the plant, that you value the plant, or that you didn't want her to damage it. Cats might "own" toys and food, but that's about it. She isn't mad at you for taking you to the vet's. though she could've been mad initially. Cats generally don't stay mad for long--they just hiss and swat and get it over with--though they do hide if they've been stressed out by something (which makes their owners think they're angry); or they might avoid owners for a while, if the owners have perpetrated a "traumatic" event like a bath... . Your kitten evidently has gotten over her stress long ago, and is not at all traumatized. Young ones really do bounce back from the surgery.

4. See 2. If you train her, you might move the plant to your room, on your night table, and make sure she isn't destructive during the night--if you're not a heavy sleeper, kitten antics directed plantward should wake you up.

Re. Spaying and a cat "missing out on" something:
Spaying doesn't make a cat feel appreciably different--all that happens is that their heat doesn't come anymore. That's different from a human, because we humans are always sexually receptive, and a cat only sometimes. So her basic personality isn't affected by her periodic heats, the way a human's sex drive affects personality. At her age, she's never been in heat at all, so she will never know anything was supposed to be different; and her instincts will never drive her uncontrollably away from home to seek a tom.

With cats, it's not like with humans. Our love and sex are intertwined; but for a cat, there's no love in sex, just instinctive drive. Cats do love; but it has nothing to do with who their mates are... Cat love is physical closeness, mutual grooming, trust. Cats' sex drives are disconnected from romance; so when you spay/neuter a cat, you are not forcing the cat to "miss out on" anything it would have have enjoyed--just a lot of disease, headaches, and unwanted kittens doomed to early death in shelters.

no she is not punishing you. Cats are animals not people, they are not capable of those type of emotions and they certainly don't seek revenge.

If you are allowing her free run of your home you shouldn't be doing that. Confine her to the smallest room possible without a lot of interesting things to jump and play on. Like a laundry room or bathroom. Dim the lights or just put in a night light. Play soft music, but keep her calm. Do not let her run around your whole house. Give her some warmed up wet food and them leave her alone and she might just nap for awhile.

She may also have felt a bit sick from the anesthetic, and cats' idea of Pepto-B. is 'grass', so even if she didn't eat the plant, it was attractive to her all the same.

callista said it all.

There was a post here not too long ago about someone who had had their cat spayed or neutered and they came home wilder than a javalina.

Sometimes the vet gives the cat too much anesthesia and they react like they are absolutely wild.

Perhaps it would be good it you could get her/him back into a carrier for his/her own safety and keep them there for about a few more hours, until the anesthesia wears off.