- Joined
- Dec 25, 2016
- Messages
- 32
- Purraise
- 10
Hi everyone,
My wife and myself are both first-time cat owners. We adopted our cat from a shelter early December. However, a couple of days after we took her home she became lethargic and soon starting coughing, sneezing and gagging. Her eyes were giving out yellow and brown discharge. We took her to the vet and they did the whole wellness examination thing. The cat seemed fine to her at the time so she told us to come back if other symptoms show up.
A few days later, she began squinting her right eye, especially under daylight. However, her appetite was coming back, so we waited a couple of days and then booked another appointment with the vet. When her appointment day came, her eye had recovered. The inflammation around it was gone and she was no longer squinting. She was pretty energetic actually, for about two days. She was playful. She was active around our apartment. Her tail was usually lifted up, tip curled, when she walked around the apartment. I'm not an expert in cat behavior by any means ( first cat), but I thought that she was getting confident about the apartment being her territory now. At the vet, she was pretty active and was just looking fine, so the vet told us that she probably recovered from whatever ailed her right eye. This is about two weeks from the adoption.
A couple of days later, now her left eye starts squinting. However, the other symptoms of a URI had vanished. Now she is just having discharge from her eyes and being very lethargic and irritable. So, I figured I'd look through the medical history the shelter gave us about her. It turned out that she was rescued about a month before we adopted her, but their vet has declared her not yet ready because of URI and conjunctivitis. A month later, she was ready and we just happened to meet her one day after she was declared ready to be adopted. Her history worried me, because most of what I read online says that URIs should last from one to three weeks. Is it normal for a cat to have these symptoms coming and going for about seven weeks now?
On a different note. This cat was such a sweetheart at the adoption shelter that she stole my wife's heart. For the first couple of weeks she was also like that with us at home. She loved rubbing her forehead onto a hand and would rub her face and forehead onto our own faces. She would leap onto our bed every night. She would whine every time she couldn't find us (in that tiny apartment), untill she walked to the other room and found us. She especially took a liking to myself, as I made sure not to touch her if she tried to move away in any way. My wife was a little overbearing with her due to inexperience. I thought the cat was bonding and getting used to us.
Now ( week four ), the cat's behavior changed towards us. The cat just suddenly stopped enjoying any of the attention. She still hates being lonely so much, though, and would always follow us to the other room if we both went there. However, now she keeps her distance and any attempt to pet our touch her just causes her to take her body low low low low, and crawl past any fingers with minimal contact.. To sleep, she would find a corner that is close to where we sit, but is behind any kind of small barrier that she can't see us and we can't see her so she can sleep, rather than walking right up onto our laps and curling to sleep like she used to. The past few nights she even stopped climbing onto our bed. She comes at night and just curles up near the doorway to our bedroom, stares at us a little and then just sleeps there. I would say she suddenly became terrified of us and hates us for some reason (perhaps overfussing) , but am confused by the way she follows us and almost always decides to be near us, rather than going into any of the myriad of dark, hiding spots around the apartment. I'm also really confused by the advice I've found in online articles. Some say ignore her and give her her space, some say continue to be affectionate towards her.
Was she just being friendly for us while she was insecure and deprived of human contact, and now that she can be herself she is just not at all the friendly cat we thought she was?
My wife and myself are both first-time cat owners. We adopted our cat from a shelter early December. However, a couple of days after we took her home she became lethargic and soon starting coughing, sneezing and gagging. Her eyes were giving out yellow and brown discharge. We took her to the vet and they did the whole wellness examination thing. The cat seemed fine to her at the time so she told us to come back if other symptoms show up.
A few days later, she began squinting her right eye, especially under daylight. However, her appetite was coming back, so we waited a couple of days and then booked another appointment with the vet. When her appointment day came, her eye had recovered. The inflammation around it was gone and she was no longer squinting. She was pretty energetic actually, for about two days. She was playful. She was active around our apartment. Her tail was usually lifted up, tip curled, when she walked around the apartment. I'm not an expert in cat behavior by any means ( first cat), but I thought that she was getting confident about the apartment being her territory now. At the vet, she was pretty active and was just looking fine, so the vet told us that she probably recovered from whatever ailed her right eye. This is about two weeks from the adoption.
A couple of days later, now her left eye starts squinting. However, the other symptoms of a URI had vanished. Now she is just having discharge from her eyes and being very lethargic and irritable. So, I figured I'd look through the medical history the shelter gave us about her. It turned out that she was rescued about a month before we adopted her, but their vet has declared her not yet ready because of URI and conjunctivitis. A month later, she was ready and we just happened to meet her one day after she was declared ready to be adopted. Her history worried me, because most of what I read online says that URIs should last from one to three weeks. Is it normal for a cat to have these symptoms coming and going for about seven weeks now?
On a different note. This cat was such a sweetheart at the adoption shelter that she stole my wife's heart. For the first couple of weeks she was also like that with us at home. She loved rubbing her forehead onto a hand and would rub her face and forehead onto our own faces. She would leap onto our bed every night. She would whine every time she couldn't find us (in that tiny apartment), untill she walked to the other room and found us. She especially took a liking to myself, as I made sure not to touch her if she tried to move away in any way. My wife was a little overbearing with her due to inexperience. I thought the cat was bonding and getting used to us.
Now ( week four ), the cat's behavior changed towards us. The cat just suddenly stopped enjoying any of the attention. She still hates being lonely so much, though, and would always follow us to the other room if we both went there. However, now she keeps her distance and any attempt to pet our touch her just causes her to take her body low low low low, and crawl past any fingers with minimal contact.. To sleep, she would find a corner that is close to where we sit, but is behind any kind of small barrier that she can't see us and we can't see her so she can sleep, rather than walking right up onto our laps and curling to sleep like she used to. The past few nights she even stopped climbing onto our bed. She comes at night and just curles up near the doorway to our bedroom, stares at us a little and then just sleeps there. I would say she suddenly became terrified of us and hates us for some reason (perhaps overfussing) , but am confused by the way she follows us and almost always decides to be near us, rather than going into any of the myriad of dark, hiding spots around the apartment. I'm also really confused by the advice I've found in online articles. Some say ignore her and give her her space, some say continue to be affectionate towards her.
Was she just being friendly for us while she was insecure and deprived of human contact, and now that she can be herself she is just not at all the friendly cat we thought she was?
