- Joined
- Jun 11, 2012
- Messages
- 47
- Purraise
- 14
Hi Everyone,
A bad thing happened last night and we had a bad reaction. I am beside myself with grief and guilt and hope someone can give me direction. Sorry in advance for the long post.
I’ve written before, but to catch you up, we’ve been feeding a feral for the past 8 months. Based on her behavior, we actually think she was a stray, but she is extremely skittish. My husband has never had a pet and I’ve only had dogs. So we weren’t considering a cat until she came into the yard. And now we’ve grown very, very attached to her and have tried to trap her 3-4 times. We have an appointment to take her to the vet this Thursday, which makes last night even more heartbreaking. She has become part of our family, we even change plans if she hasn’t eaten before we are scheduled to leave the house. She’s the first thing we look for in the morning and the first thing I tend to when I come home after work. Our dinner doesn’t get started until she’s eaten.
She never comes in the rain or snow, but one day early December she did. I opened up the door to let her eat inside and long story short, she’s been eating all of her meals inside (twice a day) – in the kitchen just inside the door. For a long time, she would eat and run, which was fine with me because at least I knew she was eating and eating safely. Then she started to stay a little longer. A few times, she walked into the kitchen or family room, but me watching her scared her and then when I tried not to watch, she would scare herself and run by the door again. When I wrote to you all earlier, I was concerned that by letting her eat inside and then leave after eating, it would create bad habits when she came inside.
Lately, she’s been staying longer. She eats and then stays in the house for 20 minutes to an hour sometimes sleeping. She never tried to go anywhere in the house again. Until last night. We had snow over the weekend and hadn’t seen her since Friday. We went to bed last night and my husband woke up to get something to drink around 1:00 am. We are constantly looking for her out the window and last night was no different. She’s usually like clockwork – shows between 6-7 am and 5-7 pm. He was surprised to see her and knew she would be hungry. So of course he fed her. I was in the bedroom not quite sleeping, but not quite awake. I should mention that I am the one that feeds her 99% of the time, but he sometimes does as well.
All was well; I heard him talking to her, but he was mostly reading the paper waiting for her to finish. I hear him say… ‘where are you going?... All of a sudden I hear a huge crash. He’s screaming. I come out of the bedroom and she running up my dining room curtains across the rod and onto a credenza. Before I came in the room, she had broken everything on top of my buffet and had climbed the walls causing our pictures to fall down. And then everything on the credenza comes flying down.
She then runs past me down the hall and into our office. When we got there, she was sitting in a chair. We were pretty shook up and frantic ourselves. I tried to talk softly and coax her with food, but she didn’t move. Then suddenly she jumps up on top of the chair, climbs up my office curtains; the curtains and rod fall down; she jumps on top of a bookcase and then to another and another. We didn’t know what to do. I realize in hindsight that we should have closed the door, let her calm down and walk herself out of the room. But, we were extremely scared at this point and could only think that we had this wild animal in the house and we needed to get her out.
At that point, I’m embarrassed to say, we were scared and just wanted her out of the house. We chased her until she finally went back into the kitchen and out the door. Please, please don’t tell me what a horrible person I am, I already know it. This is one of these experiences that I will never forget. I spend months and months trying to gain her trust and lost it in 15 minutes. I feel horrible for her, and can’t believe I chased her out. How scared and confused she must be.
I’m sure that she’s alright physically, but how much damage did this do otherwise and is there any way to fix it? I’m worried sick about her and would appreciate any advice to make her better.
A bad thing happened last night and we had a bad reaction. I am beside myself with grief and guilt and hope someone can give me direction. Sorry in advance for the long post.
I’ve written before, but to catch you up, we’ve been feeding a feral for the past 8 months. Based on her behavior, we actually think she was a stray, but she is extremely skittish. My husband has never had a pet and I’ve only had dogs. So we weren’t considering a cat until she came into the yard. And now we’ve grown very, very attached to her and have tried to trap her 3-4 times. We have an appointment to take her to the vet this Thursday, which makes last night even more heartbreaking. She has become part of our family, we even change plans if she hasn’t eaten before we are scheduled to leave the house. She’s the first thing we look for in the morning and the first thing I tend to when I come home after work. Our dinner doesn’t get started until she’s eaten.
She never comes in the rain or snow, but one day early December she did. I opened up the door to let her eat inside and long story short, she’s been eating all of her meals inside (twice a day) – in the kitchen just inside the door. For a long time, she would eat and run, which was fine with me because at least I knew she was eating and eating safely. Then she started to stay a little longer. A few times, she walked into the kitchen or family room, but me watching her scared her and then when I tried not to watch, she would scare herself and run by the door again. When I wrote to you all earlier, I was concerned that by letting her eat inside and then leave after eating, it would create bad habits when she came inside.
Lately, she’s been staying longer. She eats and then stays in the house for 20 minutes to an hour sometimes sleeping. She never tried to go anywhere in the house again. Until last night. We had snow over the weekend and hadn’t seen her since Friday. We went to bed last night and my husband woke up to get something to drink around 1:00 am. We are constantly looking for her out the window and last night was no different. She’s usually like clockwork – shows between 6-7 am and 5-7 pm. He was surprised to see her and knew she would be hungry. So of course he fed her. I was in the bedroom not quite sleeping, but not quite awake. I should mention that I am the one that feeds her 99% of the time, but he sometimes does as well.
All was well; I heard him talking to her, but he was mostly reading the paper waiting for her to finish. I hear him say… ‘where are you going?... All of a sudden I hear a huge crash. He’s screaming. I come out of the bedroom and she running up my dining room curtains across the rod and onto a credenza. Before I came in the room, she had broken everything on top of my buffet and had climbed the walls causing our pictures to fall down. And then everything on the credenza comes flying down.
She then runs past me down the hall and into our office. When we got there, she was sitting in a chair. We were pretty shook up and frantic ourselves. I tried to talk softly and coax her with food, but she didn’t move. Then suddenly she jumps up on top of the chair, climbs up my office curtains; the curtains and rod fall down; she jumps on top of a bookcase and then to another and another. We didn’t know what to do. I realize in hindsight that we should have closed the door, let her calm down and walk herself out of the room. But, we were extremely scared at this point and could only think that we had this wild animal in the house and we needed to get her out.
At that point, I’m embarrassed to say, we were scared and just wanted her out of the house. We chased her until she finally went back into the kitchen and out the door. Please, please don’t tell me what a horrible person I am, I already know it. This is one of these experiences that I will never forget. I spend months and months trying to gain her trust and lost it in 15 minutes. I feel horrible for her, and can’t believe I chased her out. How scared and confused she must be.
I’m sure that she’s alright physically, but how much damage did this do otherwise and is there any way to fix it? I’m worried sick about her and would appreciate any advice to make her better.