Hi all, I'm new to the forum but I thought you might be interested in this story about my cat. I'm sorry if this is a long post, I'll try to be brief. I absolutely adore my cat and she is very affectionate and friendly, well 99% of the time. Since Christmas she has been acting very strangely, the other 1% of the time she runs away from me and has even hissed at me a couple of times which she has never done in all the years I've had her. To be honest I found this really quite upsetting and I tried changing her diet, spending more and then less time with her, but nothing seemed to make a difference. She'd be her normal lovely self most of the time and then just seemingly randomly turn really skitty when I tried to stroke her. The more I tried to work out what the problem was the less I understood!
One of the things she does reguarly is come and watch me train at Kendo for an hour at sunrise and sunset in the garden. Except when it's raining or snowing of course, proof if you needed it that she's smarter than me!
I really like it that she sits in the same place every day and keeps me company.
Anyway, last night I had just finished and put my Katana (sword) on the table outside and sat down to meditate for a while before I went inside when she went absolutely mad! She jumped on the table and sunk her claws into the casing of the sword and was kicking like crazy with her back legs at it - luckily the sword locks together so you need to release it with a catch to get the blade out - and was biting at it and her eyes were huge and mad. It was a real shock but hillarious too, I wish I'd been able to video it because I've never seen her go so nuts, even on catnip! Then she jumped off the table and ran through the hedge and off up the garden!
I had another look at the katana, a present which someone gave me at Christmas. I phoned the person who gave it to me and asked what the material was on the handle and sheath, I'd assumed it was imitation snakeskin but as it turns out it's the real thing. She came back not long afterwards so I washed my hands and picked her up and she was fine. Then I rubbed my hands on the hilt of the sword and tried picking her up, bingo - she backed off and looked like she was going to run!
Problem solved, I tried showing her it but she went funny again and darted off so I put it back in its box and hid it away upstairs. She watched me do it and seemed extremely happy afterwards and was twisting around my legs and purring and generally being her normal self! I'm absolutely convinced that the smell of it triggered some kind of instinctive fear in her even though she's never seen or is likely to see a snake. Hopefully after this she'll be fine again!
Sorry for the long rambling tale, I just thought you might be amused to hear about her attempts to defend herself against an inanimate object! Anyone else had a similar case of weird cat behaviour brought about by an object?
One of the things she does reguarly is come and watch me train at Kendo for an hour at sunrise and sunset in the garden. Except when it's raining or snowing of course, proof if you needed it that she's smarter than me!
Anyway, last night I had just finished and put my Katana (sword) on the table outside and sat down to meditate for a while before I went inside when she went absolutely mad! She jumped on the table and sunk her claws into the casing of the sword and was kicking like crazy with her back legs at it - luckily the sword locks together so you need to release it with a catch to get the blade out - and was biting at it and her eyes were huge and mad. It was a real shock but hillarious too, I wish I'd been able to video it because I've never seen her go so nuts, even on catnip! Then she jumped off the table and ran through the hedge and off up the garden!
I had another look at the katana, a present which someone gave me at Christmas. I phoned the person who gave it to me and asked what the material was on the handle and sheath, I'd assumed it was imitation snakeskin but as it turns out it's the real thing. She came back not long afterwards so I washed my hands and picked her up and she was fine. Then I rubbed my hands on the hilt of the sword and tried picking her up, bingo - she backed off and looked like she was going to run!
Problem solved, I tried showing her it but she went funny again and darted off so I put it back in its box and hid it away upstairs. She watched me do it and seemed extremely happy afterwards and was twisting around my legs and purring and generally being her normal self! I'm absolutely convinced that the smell of it triggered some kind of instinctive fear in her even though she's never seen or is likely to see a snake. Hopefully after this she'll be fine again!
Sorry for the long rambling tale, I just thought you might be amused to hear about her attempts to defend herself against an inanimate object! Anyone else had a similar case of weird cat behaviour brought about by an object?
