Annoyed at the neighbor, don't know what to do :( help, suggestions?  

Your neighbor can't help it, and there's probably very little or nothing you can do to persuade her that that's her cat and she needs to let/keep her inside. My mom had Alzheimer's, so I know just how frustrating it can be. Your neighbor is losing her own identity/personality.

Can you at least feed and water the cat on a daily basis for the time being, and get the pills off your neighbor and give them to her? Put some sort of outdoor shelter (box) out for the cat? Does your neighbor have a caretaker? Do you know if anybody has a power of attorney for her, who could give you permission to get the cat vet care in her name?

its not your neighbours fault! she doesnt understand I to know someone that has it and its terible to watch her go downhill so quickly. Is there any famliy that you can talk to anout the welfare of the cat?

Carolina, I know you do a lot of traveling, but I agree - kitty needs to be cared for. At 11 rehoming her likely means a long time at a shelter, unless you can find a foster network to take her. As your neighbor disclaims ownership of her, I'd look into finding a foster network, and just doing what I could to care for her myself (and instruct cat sitters accordingly) in the meantime.

If you're willing to take her to the vet, I would call them and explain the situation. She obviously needs care!

If she's decided to basically abandon Gracie, whether willful or not, I'd just treat it like that.

You've written about the situation before, we know you do what you can. It's an awful position to be in.

I know. At this point, I'd get her care, do what I could to take care of her while trying to find her a new home or a foster network willing to take her in. Your neighbor says she's not hers? Fine. There's nothing you can do to make her take care of Gracie, but you can do what you can. That's what's best for Gracie, IMO.

just because she can remember and make decisions ffor one does not mean that she is fully aware of the other one its a degenerative disease and wont be fun for your neighbour either i think the best thing to do is speak to a vet and try and speak to any family relation you can

If this were me I would start now looking for a rescue situation for Gracie, and when you find one, just take her to them. And in the meantime, yes, call the vet and explain what is happening to her and ask if they will honor you seeing she gets the care she needs, and her medicine.

Alzheimers is a tricky thing, for all we know she may, half the time have forgotten Gracie was ever hers and thinks it is a cat who has always lived outside that she lets in occasionally. Other times she may remember that Gracie is her concern.

I took care of an Alzheimer sufferer for a few years, my friend's mother. Sometimes she knew she was in her daughter's house, other times she thought she was living in a house her father built. She lived with her daughter, only, but in Dot's mind, there were two other people living there, Dot's daughter, and "that woman who lives upstairs" (also the daughter) She would sit there and say terrible hurtful things to her daughter, and then without a blink, say to her (the daughter) in the same breath "you see what I have to deal with, with this girl".

You are a wonderful caring soul and I know how it must break your heart to see this little cat be neglected and starved and suffer. So start looking for a home or rescue group to take her, while you provide her with as much care as you can.

I will pray that a solution is found.

PS I also recommend you contact your state's Office of the Aging and report that this woman is possibly incapable of caring for herself. It sounds to me like Social Services needs to be involved. At the very least, she should not be driving.

I agree with Otto 5,000%!!! She may drift in and out of knowing. She is married.. .and you said the husband is very detached from the situation, this is not good. He may not be coping at all with the changes in his wife and is hiding out. They need social services support.

As for the cat, I also agree with what's been said.

what a terrible thing for an older cat to go through. your neighbor will not be getting any better because of this disease. a third party does need to step in and get the cat somewhere where she can be safe and cared for. I know how heavy your heart is seeing Gracie treated like this. It's very frustrating because you are such a cat lover. Can you get her into a fostering situation or a no-kill shelter?. This woman has no children or relatives besides her hubby that could help? The best I can offer are my prayers and vibes

it sounds like a good solution

Carolina, you seem llike a person with a really big heart. This woman is blessed to have you for a neighbor. I hope you can get something worked out for this cat so it will have a home and be taken care of.

That is great. I understand your feeling that you have to get her okay even though she seems to be disowning the cat. At least this cat will know you care. I feel sorry for the woman too. I think it is sad when a person loses their mind. My dad spent the last year and a half of his life in the nursing home. There were old people there who just didn't know anything. It is so sad. I hope the woman has some family who cares about her. You have a lot to do trying to help her and now even more trying to make sure her cat doesn't starve.

Sounds like a good plan.

Gracie

Please keep us posted Carolina. Gracie has become one of ours already, I think.

It's a tough situation. I honestly don't think it is a conscious choice on her part. I knew a woman with Alzheimer's, she was the world's most devoted mother, then she got sick and started to decline into the clutches of this awful disease.

She had identical twins, I had trouble telling them apart and half the time messed up who was who. Well, as their mother, she could tell them apart and all of a sudden one was her child and the other was a stranger. She called the cops a few times due to a burglar/intruder at her house, which was in fact her son. It got to the point where they could only visit together or he had to be with another family member because his mom was adamant that he was a stranger and certainly not her child. This was years before she had to go into a nursing home. This was something she would never consciously do. Sometimes this disease does strange things.

Take care of the cat as well as you can, whether she is doing this purposely or not(and I honestly believe it isn't intentional) she has decided this cat is no longer hers.

Please keep us posted. It's a horrible thing, both what has happened to the cat and that this disease is robbing your neighbor of who she is.

Also, adult social services needs to get involved in this to keep an eye on this situation and step in if necessary. It doesn't sound like she has much of a family support system at all.

It also doesn't really get that cold in Dallas compared to here(or for as long) and my outside cats are perfectly fine. Just make sure she has food water and shelter. Put a pillow case with cedar chips or some other insulated bedding in the shelter so she isn't on the cold ground. That is what I do with mine even though I'll look outside and sometimes find cats laying in the snow(Mama did that last year with her butt shaved bare) or on the cold concrete. When it snows there(and I know it does about once or twice a year) or gets below freezing keep an eye on her water so you can try to replace it when it freezes since the cat is older. Mine know in the winter to drink up when they can before the water freezes(they have several hours usually) because I can't replace their water 50 times a day for the entire winter because it froze again. My neighbor also has a pond which never freezes so if they are desperate they can go next door and drink from Mitzi's pond(which they have never done as far as I know.) I also try to give them unfrozen water when I notice they have an ice cube instead of a water bowl. Like I said it takes at a minimum a few hours for it to freeze to the point where they can't drink. I also stuck my hand in freezing water to get all the slush out of the bowl once for Half-tail because she demanded I do so(I had replaced the water maybe an hour earlier, it was freezing cold and in the middle of a blizzard so there was nothing I could do about their water freezing so quickly.) My hands were well frozen before this despite my well lined warm gloves which i had to remove to scoop slush out of the water.

Try to get her to gain weight before it gets really(well really by Dallas standards) cold since she is used to being a house cat but I have never heard mine say a peep about being cold. Mama had a rectal prolapse in Dec and refused to stay inside longer than a week before she let herself outside and as I said her rear end was shaved bare and I would find her lounging around in the snow. She was also THIN when she came back, they only fed her one can of food a day at the vet so she was starving and I could feel every bone in her body and she made it through(and quickly gained back weight once I started actually feeding her as much as she wanted.) I'm not sure if she is a long hair or a short hair, Mama looks like a Maine Coon mix but as I said almost half of her was bare and she was fine.

Just make sure she has a good checkup before winter and ask the vet for any suggestions on making her more comfortable this winter. As I said, it is a lot colder, and windier and snowier and icy here and mine were all fine last year and will be this year, they have shelter and bedding that keeps them off the ground when they need it and food and I try to make sure their water isn't frozen but that is honestly an impossible task, you shouldn't have that much a of a problem(or a problem at all) with frozen water that is the biggest obstacle to me with the outsiders over the winter, trying to keep their water unfrozen. Use on of those outside 'automatic' waterer things they keep the water from freezing longer than a regular water bowl. I use a small one and it really helps me out.

Taryn

because you neighbor is sick maybe you should try to talk to some of her relatives maybe someone can take the cat or maybe they can hire you to feed the cat and try to make sure she is inside if this can not be done maybe you should call your local animal control if you don't do something this cat is going to die please help her

My mom passed away from Alzheimers in 07. During this awful time, I gave her a picture of her kitty to hang in her room at the assisted living facility.

She insisted it wasn't her cat. I had taken her cat when she was admitted. So, I would take the cat to visit her there. Her remarks, "oh that's a pretty cat. But she isn't mine."

She loved that cat for 10 years at that point. It was just my mom and Little Girl. She would always have four or five different kinds of food put out for her in case she didn't like one. If she went out of town, I always had to visit Little Girl twice a day. Those were my orders.

It's an awful disease. Sometimes she was more lucid than me, then others it was like she had just landed on earth and was totally confused.

I would just take the kitty in. This lady is really not responsible mentally. You sure have a good heart.

Poor Gracie. I think it is great she has you.

Alzheimer’s disease does not have logic. What you are observing might very well be true. Your neighbour can still be functioning on fairly high level on many levels, at many moments. Or she might appear to be. She might very well have made a conscious decision to abandon Gracie even. The fact remains it probably is not “her” who made it.

I can relate to your anger about the way Gracie was dumped. The tricky nature of Alzheimer’s is that even if your neighbour’s memory is still somewhat OK re: Gracie’s history etc, the disease most likely is impairing her higher cognitive functions. Those tend to go first and some of those are even finer and harder to pin point than memory and reasoning. When before she might have just as much disliked Gracie for not being a lap cat, her judgment and moral fibre was there not to just dump her outside. She would not have been able to just deny eg the guilt feelings relating to it. Right now she is obviously changed and regressed as she is acting like a little child who can just say “no” and walk away.

I am sure all of us who have had demented family members know of some of the disinhibition that seems to come with it. Things people tend to do and say and seemingly have no shame. That’s one common thing that comes with brain that is going and allows these things to happen. For some people it is talking about naughty things, for some it is doing things they would have never done in their right mind. I think hard part of it is when one doubts it must be willful because it does not happen 100% time but that’s the nature of the game. Sometimes the very emotional and charged things are where the extreme reactions or blind spots happen first. Sounds like Gracie was something that bothered her for a long time.

You are so very generous of jumping in and trying to help poor little Gracie. I don’t understand this law about 3 animals – it’s not a building law but a county/state law??

Just thought I'd share another story. When I was a home health aide I worked for 3 alz clients. One was immobile due to age and other issues. Fairly sweet lady took care of dog better then her family(brushed its hair with her brush, fed it what she was eating...) the next one had 2 dogs one was a few years other was a senior. She liked the older one as "he sleeps better at night"

And the last guy....
So I show up to work with a cop car outside. family fighting over the stray he claims to not own. His dog for 8 years or so. Next day he gives me the play by play. the dog doesnt like it here and runs away. and some other random "facts" This same guy drove WAY past when he should have till they started locking up the keys after he ended up hours from home looking for a long gone store.

I wonder if she knows how much trouble shes in and is tryinig to help out by having one cat.
Do what you can dont worry about the city to much just yet. I would probably try to put it in someone elses name just in case she trys to surrender it. If possible chip the cat or change it over if already done.

I think the lady needs social services in to assess the issues she maybe having and to see if anything can be done to improve her life. I believe in all stages it must be scary to know your slipping. See if any drugs are programs can help her live a better life a bit longer.

May want to pull up another blood sample to be sure thats all your dealing with if shes gone without water for some periods.

piikki
we had a law at one place I lived in-city had a hoarder-110 cats or so, and to many cats/kittens being turned over as "strays to the animal control. Basically where I saw it unless you made a scene of I have 7 cats(or whatever is one more then limit) no one cared if you weren't turning any in to AC.

I TOLD the AC guy once I had 7(before i knew it was law) he just looked at me and said 6-city law...and left it at that. Never came back bothering me about the rabies shots either,mine were all inside and never out when city came by. For the majority the laws are set in place to make it easier to get the ppl who are way over head

I was wondering the same thing, because sometimes there seems to be a weird kind of logic behind the irrationality.

My mom used to steal my shoes when I was visiting, and accuse my niece of stealing her shoes. We couldn't get her to accept new shoes, so I'd buy some, wear them a week or so, and then "accidentally" leave them where it was pretty certain she'd take them.

After I'd thought about it, I remembered that two decades before, she'd broken a toe right before visiting us. She really wanted to go sightseeing, despite her sore foot, so I gave her a pair of sneakers I had that were soft and broken in. I think that was still somewhere in the back of her mind.

Carolina's neighbor may at some level realize that she can't take care of Gracie, i.e., remember to bring her in and give her her thyroid pill, but isn't "consciously" rejecting her. It's a bad situation all around.

Carolina, do you ever see your neighbor's husband, or do you have his number? He'd be the one to give you written permission to get vet care, as needed, if your neighbor can't.