Holiday = Stressed Kitties

We've had a plethora of boisterous people coming over the past several days, from construction workers hammering on home fixes, putting up all the X-mas decorations including some hammering, small very loud and playful children that decided chasing the cats was really fun, and to top it off a "dog person" decided to sneak up on the cats while the window was down and they were perched all relaxed, jump out and go BLUAAAAAHHH with arms out... meant well and dogs might find funny and exciting, but had Wesley hiding under the couch most of the day terrified the apocalypse was near.

So sure enough, this morning Wesley puked twice (which he hadn't done since he was a kitten), has diarrhea, and was licking himself down below more than usual making me now even worry about a UTI (although there was a pee clump, whew).  Ugh... 

So how are your furkids handling all of the holiday stress?  New Years fireworks are next.... 

Oliver enjoys company and Tripod hides. I would be really ticked off if someone purposely scared my cats.

Once, a friend of my DH's held Oliver high in the air. Oliver, of course, struggled and jumped out of his arms. He bumped his head on the coffee table on the way down. I was so angry and did not hold back on this guy. He knows better now.

Aww, poor Wesley. I have a small apartment, so I've been attending my holiday festivities at other people's homes. Of course, I just brought home a new brother for Holland, and that's stressful too!

If anyone ever scared my cats like that, I'd let 'em have it.

I think all of mine are getting too old to care anymore. We had people over on Sunday and Riley slept on his bed the ENTIRE time. Claire, Fred and Bogey all hung out in back sleeping. Only Simon came out to be social. We even pulled a chair over to the table and he laid in it just kneading and purring while everyone ate. 

However, my MIL did give many bites of ham to Simon and the dogs so they had upset stomachs, but luckily, no vomiting. 

Trout is not too bad, she just hides when anyone comes over.

Riley does fine with the holidays. He's pretty social and wants to cuddle with everyone who comes over. Although none of my friends have kids yet, so he may change if any children are running around in the future 

I've had contractors in and out of here for months renovating this house. On top of that the furnace went out and we had to replace it the week before Christmas. All 4 of mine have favorite hiding spots and that is where they stay most of the time. I think they are kind of used to it by now.  I did find one pee spot on the floor but it's because 'Bitz couldn't get to the litter box upstairs and the furnace men were downstairs.  But that is the only accident so far.

We don't have any company at our home. Holidays or no. My brother died this year, he was the only outsider we had visiting and he played with them. Someone comes to the door, they run and hide. I don't answer it for it is usally a salisator or trouble. People don't like me having eight cats. Why I don't know. They don't like seeing them play and romp in their own yard... People are weird about cats. They see a cat and think they are vermon or something.

Our Amber Louise is the only one who freaks out with company, but she's doing better if we have just a few people over at one time; large crowds make her spastic. After people have been here for about an hour or so, she'll come out and visit. The slightest move from anybody, though, and she's gone again. Back to the bedroom and under the bed. (And since Mollipop and Tabby came into the house, Amber has gotten much, much better about being out and about instead of staying in the bedroom all the time.)

The rest of the cats? They're absolutely fine with pretty much anything that happens. On Christmas, there were tons of people here and the cats moved through the living room and kitchen, jumped onto laps and expected to be oohed and aahed over. While I was putting the finishing touches on dinner that day, I also gave the cats their dinner and they made their way through the kitchen and its mess of tables and chairs and all the people standing around and sitting, and they ate their dinner. They don't care one way or another. Even Tabby, who has to wear the e-collar from being spayed, took everything in stride. (And Mollipop only jumped on the table once.)

We had Rick's birthday party back in May and everybody wanted to come inside and see the kids. And the kids were more than happy for the attention. They just went from one person to another. While I was getting the food ready, people would come into the kitchen to help and they usually ended up paying attention to the cats. (We had put a sign on the kitchen door:" Please do NOT let the cats outside!" and everything was fine. We also had a sign in the bathroom: "Please put the lid down when you're finished! Meow and thanks!"   ) We did have all the cats back in the bedroom for awhile because I was worried about them getting outside, but people would come inside and then open the door anyway to see the cats and so we left them have the run of the house. They're pretty good about not trying to get outside anyway, but with that many people (and children), I was nervous.

Even when we had the guys here to install the French door in the kitchen and the bay window in the living room a few years ago, the cats were very curious. Not scared at all. We ended up having to put everybody in the bedroom with the door closed because when the guys took the old bow window out of the living room to install the bay window, the cats were curious about the large hole in the house!

So other than Amber, the cats don't scare and they're used to everything that goes on around here. I think we're lucky in that the kids seem to be very trusting and they know they nobody would hurt them.

Part of the problem I think is a combination of Wesley being a spaz (always been a hyper boy) and I'm not super social and never host parties so there are rarely more than one or two people over and definitely no screaming fast moving 2-6 year old subadults rampaging.

Good news is that its a false alarm, and it looks like Wesley is doing well now and is his chipper self again.  

The fireworks did freak him out last year though, but not as bad as my sister's dogs that not only tried to fit their giant bodies under the bed but ended up pooping inside... so gross!  

Perhaps I should start playing fireworks on TV to desensitize em!  

Best luck EVER!

To say that we had fireworks here is an understatement.  We had professional (or seemed that way) fireworks at the mall that's just down the street, and then because of the huge empty farm field directly behind my house ALL the neighborhoods decided to launch theirs right there, so we had hours worth of fireworks.

With the stereo playing some tunes, Wesley and Buttercup were total troopers and didn't bat an eye and even seemed to enjoy it looking out the windows tails held high.   I totally expected traumatized cats.

Finished off two bottles of sparkling wine w/ fam AND I won the last match with a yahtzee score of 472... never gotten that high before! 

Jasper is high strung already.   The holidays really stressed the poor thing out.

First of all, he did NOT like the big tall green things with stuff all over them.  Though it was kind of fun to watch Holly play with the toys hanging from the branches.  But one of them smelled too much like the outdoors- so he had to keep spraying it so that it smelled like him.  SIGH.  Even though I had 2 Feliaway diffusers running downstairs. 

All of the boxes we kept things in stressed him too.  He didn't like them coming down, nor did he like them going away.  It was too much (or so he felt) like when the human who used to own him had to move and he spent 2 days in this little cat carrier. 

Then we had people over one night.  He actually did better than I thought he would.  He laid down under the tree on top of some gifts- the whole time we had people over.  LIke they were all his or something LOL. 

He wasn't happy when we left him for 4 days.   Even though there are some very nice humans who come over and give him food, treats, love etc. 

Holly never even tried to scale the tree. 

Sneaky decided that she liked laying under the tall green thing that had soft material under it LOL.  We put out this villiage my MIL made years ago and got 2 packages of the "fake" snow stuff. 

We do know one thing- Jasper seems to like the show Glee .  The kids wanted season one of it- and we had a Glee marathon last night- Jasper had to lay on a lap the whole time.

Cheryl