Hello everyone,
I have a ~4 year old neutered male ragdoll, an indoor cat only.
I saved him from a life as a stray. He was abandoned at less than 6 months old and had wandered 12 miles to the apartment I lived in at the time. His first owners had him microchipped but very soon after getting him, apparently they decided they didn't want him and just let him go. When I found him and took him to the vet where my mom works as a groomer we discovered the microchip and contacted the owners, and thats how we knew they didn't want him. Unfortunately, the apartment I lived in didn't allow me to have pets. So my mom's boss, the owner of the vet, found it a home with his daughter, also a veterinarian.
She had the cat for 2 years, but she was getting married and her fiancé found the cat too annoying, so she had to find it a new home. By this point I had bought myself a home, it was too big for me alone and I found myself lonely at times, so decided I would take the cat. I did find he meowed quite a bit, but I grew up with all sorts of animals so it didn't bother me too much, but he certainly meowed more than any cat I had ever had. This was all fine though because I was single and a really deep sleeper, almost nothing can wake me.
Well little more year and a half later, I am engaged and trying to merge my life with the woman I love. She is a nurse and works the night shift, so she sleeps during the day mostly, but we have an overlap sleep period on days she doesn't work, so she is on a sometimes normal sleep schedule too... Starting off, on days that she came to my house after she got off work, she would try to sleep in my bed while I was at work. The cat turned out to be more dominant in the bed than her, she would toss it off push it whatever, but the cats movements would keep her up, she is quite a light sleeper by the way. Not to mention that he would meow like crazy whenever he felt like it, at the top of his lungs. I have come to learn having been with her a while now he would do this while I was sleeping too, but I am totally unfazed.
She just couldn't deal with it, so we locked the cat out of the room, but this resulted in the cat meowing outside the door all night and all day long at the top of his lungs (when there is no conscious human in the house). I mean completely non-stop, never, we have recordings hours long of him continually meowing.
Of course i had expert resources since my mom worked at a vet, so we had him checked out for anything that seemed obviously wrong and I got the advice to play with him before bed, as did my fiancé. We have toys that he loves to play with, and I have a tall cat tree by a window near an outdoor bird feeder to keep his attention if possible! This worked for a little while, but one day we were playing with him, and then he just stopped running around crouched and started crying the most blood curdling meows, like he was dying. I rushed him to the vet and had him checked out, it turns out he has a heart defect that is quite common in ragdolls. He has thickening of his heart muscle walls, which is something that can be managed.
Because of this I have modified his diet so he gets proper nutrients to help minimize the problem and we are still trying to find out how severe the issue is to look into the proper medication to help him.
Unfortunately we have come to learn now we can't play with him for more than 5 minutes at a time or he could have one of these episodes if his heart rate gets up too high for too long. This is where things have begun to turn into a total disaster for us, we are now unable to adequately tire him out for my fiancé to get any sleep if she is at my house. we began letting him into the bedroom again because we would at least shut up for hours at a time then, but she still ends up fighting with the cat and not getting enough sleep, so we bought him a cat bed and put it near the bed hoping it would help, de didn't care at all that it was there.
Despite the death threats from my mom and vet, because we were desperate we resorted to a spray bottle to get him off the bed. Good news is, behavior modification worked, he stopped getting on the bed and started using the one on the floor near the bed. However, he now much more frequently meows, my fiancé says so strategically that its worse than when he meowed nonstop, she says he waits until the moment she has fallen asleep to meow, which makes it that much harder for her to fall asleep again. Spray bottle does not work on stopping him from meowing though, in fact he's just too damned clever, he sits just outside of the reach of the spray bottle when he meows so that we would have to get out of bed or chase him if we wanted to spray him.
So we have found ourselves in a place with seemingly no hope. I have considered getting another cat for him, but ragdolls are known for being noisy so I am not convinced it will solve the problem, I even fear it could make it worse.
I may have no choice but to find him a new home! Besides this issue though, he is a great cat, fiancé adores him, he's great with people and children, he's not skittish, he's super friendly, pretty much the best cat I have ever had if it weren't for this issue. I really seriously need help and new ideas because we are at the end of our rope
Andrew
I have a ~4 year old neutered male ragdoll, an indoor cat only.
I saved him from a life as a stray. He was abandoned at less than 6 months old and had wandered 12 miles to the apartment I lived in at the time. His first owners had him microchipped but very soon after getting him, apparently they decided they didn't want him and just let him go. When I found him and took him to the vet where my mom works as a groomer we discovered the microchip and contacted the owners, and thats how we knew they didn't want him. Unfortunately, the apartment I lived in didn't allow me to have pets. So my mom's boss, the owner of the vet, found it a home with his daughter, also a veterinarian.
She had the cat for 2 years, but she was getting married and her fiancé found the cat too annoying, so she had to find it a new home. By this point I had bought myself a home, it was too big for me alone and I found myself lonely at times, so decided I would take the cat. I did find he meowed quite a bit, but I grew up with all sorts of animals so it didn't bother me too much, but he certainly meowed more than any cat I had ever had. This was all fine though because I was single and a really deep sleeper, almost nothing can wake me.
Well little more year and a half later, I am engaged and trying to merge my life with the woman I love. She is a nurse and works the night shift, so she sleeps during the day mostly, but we have an overlap sleep period on days she doesn't work, so she is on a sometimes normal sleep schedule too... Starting off, on days that she came to my house after she got off work, she would try to sleep in my bed while I was at work. The cat turned out to be more dominant in the bed than her, she would toss it off push it whatever, but the cats movements would keep her up, she is quite a light sleeper by the way. Not to mention that he would meow like crazy whenever he felt like it, at the top of his lungs. I have come to learn having been with her a while now he would do this while I was sleeping too, but I am totally unfazed.
She just couldn't deal with it, so we locked the cat out of the room, but this resulted in the cat meowing outside the door all night and all day long at the top of his lungs (when there is no conscious human in the house). I mean completely non-stop, never, we have recordings hours long of him continually meowing.
Of course i had expert resources since my mom worked at a vet, so we had him checked out for anything that seemed obviously wrong and I got the advice to play with him before bed, as did my fiancé. We have toys that he loves to play with, and I have a tall cat tree by a window near an outdoor bird feeder to keep his attention if possible! This worked for a little while, but one day we were playing with him, and then he just stopped running around crouched and started crying the most blood curdling meows, like he was dying. I rushed him to the vet and had him checked out, it turns out he has a heart defect that is quite common in ragdolls. He has thickening of his heart muscle walls, which is something that can be managed.
Because of this I have modified his diet so he gets proper nutrients to help minimize the problem and we are still trying to find out how severe the issue is to look into the proper medication to help him.
Unfortunately we have come to learn now we can't play with him for more than 5 minutes at a time or he could have one of these episodes if his heart rate gets up too high for too long. This is where things have begun to turn into a total disaster for us, we are now unable to adequately tire him out for my fiancé to get any sleep if she is at my house. we began letting him into the bedroom again because we would at least shut up for hours at a time then, but she still ends up fighting with the cat and not getting enough sleep, so we bought him a cat bed and put it near the bed hoping it would help, de didn't care at all that it was there.
Despite the death threats from my mom and vet, because we were desperate we resorted to a spray bottle to get him off the bed. Good news is, behavior modification worked, he stopped getting on the bed and started using the one on the floor near the bed. However, he now much more frequently meows, my fiancé says so strategically that its worse than when he meowed nonstop, she says he waits until the moment she has fallen asleep to meow, which makes it that much harder for her to fall asleep again. Spray bottle does not work on stopping him from meowing though, in fact he's just too damned clever, he sits just outside of the reach of the spray bottle when he meows so that we would have to get out of bed or chase him if we wanted to spray him.
So we have found ourselves in a place with seemingly no hope. I have considered getting another cat for him, but ragdolls are known for being noisy so I am not convinced it will solve the problem, I even fear it could make it worse.
I may have no choice but to find him a new home! Besides this issue though, he is a great cat, fiancé adores him, he's great with people and children, he's not skittish, he's super friendly, pretty much the best cat I have ever had if it weren't for this issue. I really seriously need help and new ideas because we are at the end of our rope
Andrew
