cat becoming aggressive after a vet stay?

my cat recently had to stay two nights at the vet for calicivirus. as a result of the virus, she had ulcers in her mouth.

early the morning of the day i took her in, i noticed her looking like she was smacking her lips a lot when she nibbled at the baby food i gave her.

she was pilled twice at the vet and force-fed (hadn't eaten much at all for days). i had been very happy so far with this veterinary clinic (an all-cats clinic).

she is an extremely sweet and docile cat. when i brought her home, i noted a 100% improvement in her health; however i was to pill her for a few more days.

i have pilled cats more than 20 times, with generally no problem at all. when i placed her on the counter (not even restraining her), as soon as i opened her mouth she shook her head back and forth violently with her teeth bared. on the second attempt, she bit me (i washed it well, called my doctor, and no signs of infection 24 hours later).

i have never seen her behave in such a manner. it was as if she was expecting something EXTREMELY unpleasant to happen. when i questioned the clinic, they said it was due to ulcers having been in her mouth and being painful. one of the people at the front desk found it necessary to call me at 8am today to tell me she had not been traumatized there.

she didn't look like a cat expecting pain in her mouth. she looked as if she thought i was going to try to kill her.

does this sound unusual to anyone else? i'm now leery of that clinic. she is supposed to go back for a re-check in 2 weeks. i was going to see how she behaves when she sees the vet who was treating her; she has been very good at the vet's up until now (this is a new clinic for my cats, and was the first time she's been seen there).

thank you.

edited to add: her behavior otherwise is great; it was just when i started to open her mouth, she completely went wild.

It is so hard to say (for me anyway). If it were a vet you'd taken her to for a while, where you know the vet techs etc., you'd know this was due to the ulcers, and I do believe they make things quite ouchy, force-feeding would not have been something she was happy about.

It could be a bit of roughness, but I'd rather believe it was simply strangers, sore mouth and being force-fed in that strange place by strangers. I'd give them another try and watch her behavior there carefully.

I will be interested to see what everyone else's take is, and hope she's going to mellow out now that she's home with you and let the pilling get easier.

It could be that she didn't like the force-feeding or the pilling, and she's trying to keep it from happening again. I know that after the first week of medication even Merlin, who is my calmest cat, will try to bite me to get away.

She's probably stressed from being at the vets, too. I'm sure she'll calm down once the pain in her mouth stops, and she feels like she's safe.

It is a bad virus and the mouth can be quite painful. Even opening it wide would cause a problem. I would get a pill gun from your vet and not open the mouth very wide at all and see if that helps.

thank you so much for the feedback.

i'm afraid i left a rather terse message for that clinic last night (at 8:55pm, no one had called to advise me as to what to do regarding her medication as they had promised). also, they have seemed agitated that i called several times in one day to clarify how to treat her and followup (i believe all my calls were justified and information-based; not just "how is my poor baby?"). i don't care for the way the vet techs are treating me. they have gotten well over $1,000.00 in payment from me (for serious illness in my other cat, emily, a month ago), and i think i deserve to be treated a bit better. so this, combined with what i thought was possibly rough treatment of ashley made me angry.

luckily, she did take the medication in baby food last night. i'm going to give it to her late at night well after dinner time so she will not be full enough to refuse food (although she loves to eat just about anything- and thankfully apparently has a very quick metabolism!).

thanks again, and i would welcome more feedback.

btw, i take coumadin (anticoagulant) and don't think i'll be getting anywhere near ashley's mouth again!

you can learn about the virus here

http://www.thecatsite.com/Cats/Cat_H...lter_cats.html

thanks! i read that article a couple of days ago.