Goodness, at this point I’m quite at a loss for what to do and hope someone here can help out. It’s a bit of a long story, however, but hopefully someone can be bothered reading through and have some good input.
Our oldest boy, when we got him, never did anything outside of the litterbox. He’s a retired bengal breeder and we quickly noticed he was fairly stress prone, but he handled things well aside from getting the runs once in a while when things were real bad - like when we did some massive work on the house, among other things. But aside from being far more cuddly and a bit jumpy when that was going on, nothing else happened in that sense. The same people we got him from contacted us not long ago and wondered if we’d take in one of their more difficult kittens and we agreed, on the condition that he could be returned if the two didn’t hit it off.
There’s been no real issue with them, to be honest, and the old boy’s first reaction was to lick and cuddle with the little terror and though they get into some squabbles they seem to be very attached and spend more time napping together than anything else. After a while, however, one of our oldest’s teeth fell out and we booked an appointment with the vet. They pulled some teeth, he got so stressed he acted odd for weeks and had to be on medicines quite long as he had some accidents then, which seemed to be related to very specific things such as us taking him off the medicines or when we attempted to switch the litter. After switching back to the normal litter and splurging on some bigger boxes for both of them, things more or less returned to normal. It’s been months since then but after eating a bad ham and having some more accidents as he most likely got some mild food poisoning from that - along with everyone else in the house that ate it, which was great fun - this started happening.
Since we got them from a vet, we often call to ask for advice but it’s not always easy to figure out what it is. We’ve considered privacy issues, but their boxes are placed in our big bathroom where it’s well lit, clean and free from any real noise and disturbance. They love laying in there and sleeping and since we have two bathrooms they aren’t often disturbed in there. Washing machines are in the other bathroom, too, so they don’t have to deal with that. He seems to seek out where we are to urinate, however, going into the livingroom when the TV is on and everyone is in there. Other times it’s at night or early morning, especially if my stepfather gets up first though he doesn’t really do anything with the cats except for give them food if it’s out.
The last vet check showed no issues outside of his teeth and as we weren’t entire satisifed with them, we’re a little hesitant to go there again and they are, unfortunately, the only ones nearby. And considering how stressed he gets from it, we’re also hesitant to take him again because we’ve seen how it wears on him, both physically and mentally and for such a long time, but if it’s very needed we will. Though it doesn’t seem like a health problem. He gets into the litterbox fine, we clean it a number of times each day, there’s been no discoloration of anything in there and he doesn’t appear to be in any pain or have difficulty with anything. He’s not tender anywhere, he smells the same and while he has been shedding a little we think that’s because of the stress still, as he behaves oddly after urinating outside the box for a while and acts funny for a while.
There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to when, but he often goes on either our rugs or the pelts we have laying around or their wool bed. We don’t think there’s any real issues between the cats as the tiny one isn’t dominant in that sense and we play with them both as close to equally as possible. The older one doesn’t enjoy play as much, but we get in a lot of playtime either way with him since he’s often more eager to play when the tiny one is playing. They get fed at the same time, though we differ in who gets their food first to keep that as equal as possible too. They get various proteins so they won’t just get a single type of food over longer periods, but generally they enjoy what they get and none of them are overweight. They both spend a lot of time cuddling up still, so even there they get fairly equal attention and there’s no real warning to this. He’s got plenty of calm spots to sleep and stay and while we’ve tried a few ‘calming’ this or thats, he either hates it or doesn’t care much.
The only pattern I’ve noticed is that it seems to happen whenever either me or my mother are ‘too slow’ in getting to what he wants. Just today I was lighting the fireplace before going to feed them and he sat down to pee and now he avoids me like the plague even if no one really get’s angry with him or punishes him in any way. He seems to know what he’s doing is wrong and it doesn’t appear to be accidents at this time, but while this seems to happen whenever we’re ‘slow’ to so something that also feels odd. We can’t always run off to feed him the moment he looks at us, you know? They always have dry food should the wet food run out and even without a few teeth, he eats it fine still.
We have spoken to the folks we got him from about this, too, and they were fairly certain it is a behavior problem and not health related, but we’re not sure how to deal with it at this point. We’ve had two cats before him, my mother has had a lot more, but we never had any such issues with any of them so we’re a bit lacking on experience and googling around hasn’t brough up too much helpful, to be honest.
If anyone has any advice or ideas, it would be much appreciated. At this point it’s gotten pretty stressful for us, too, and we don’t want to have to consider any drastic solutions like giving him back or putting him down at all, but it feels very hopeless at this point. This post probably turned into a mess, but this entire situation feels like a mess at this point and I’m not sure if there’s anything I missed.
Thank you in advance if you even got this far, I know my rambles can be a pain to read through.
Our oldest boy, when we got him, never did anything outside of the litterbox. He’s a retired bengal breeder and we quickly noticed he was fairly stress prone, but he handled things well aside from getting the runs once in a while when things were real bad - like when we did some massive work on the house, among other things. But aside from being far more cuddly and a bit jumpy when that was going on, nothing else happened in that sense. The same people we got him from contacted us not long ago and wondered if we’d take in one of their more difficult kittens and we agreed, on the condition that he could be returned if the two didn’t hit it off.
There’s been no real issue with them, to be honest, and the old boy’s first reaction was to lick and cuddle with the little terror and though they get into some squabbles they seem to be very attached and spend more time napping together than anything else. After a while, however, one of our oldest’s teeth fell out and we booked an appointment with the vet. They pulled some teeth, he got so stressed he acted odd for weeks and had to be on medicines quite long as he had some accidents then, which seemed to be related to very specific things such as us taking him off the medicines or when we attempted to switch the litter. After switching back to the normal litter and splurging on some bigger boxes for both of them, things more or less returned to normal. It’s been months since then but after eating a bad ham and having some more accidents as he most likely got some mild food poisoning from that - along with everyone else in the house that ate it, which was great fun - this started happening.
Since we got them from a vet, we often call to ask for advice but it’s not always easy to figure out what it is. We’ve considered privacy issues, but their boxes are placed in our big bathroom where it’s well lit, clean and free from any real noise and disturbance. They love laying in there and sleeping and since we have two bathrooms they aren’t often disturbed in there. Washing machines are in the other bathroom, too, so they don’t have to deal with that. He seems to seek out where we are to urinate, however, going into the livingroom when the TV is on and everyone is in there. Other times it’s at night or early morning, especially if my stepfather gets up first though he doesn’t really do anything with the cats except for give them food if it’s out.
The last vet check showed no issues outside of his teeth and as we weren’t entire satisifed with them, we’re a little hesitant to go there again and they are, unfortunately, the only ones nearby. And considering how stressed he gets from it, we’re also hesitant to take him again because we’ve seen how it wears on him, both physically and mentally and for such a long time, but if it’s very needed we will. Though it doesn’t seem like a health problem. He gets into the litterbox fine, we clean it a number of times each day, there’s been no discoloration of anything in there and he doesn’t appear to be in any pain or have difficulty with anything. He’s not tender anywhere, he smells the same and while he has been shedding a little we think that’s because of the stress still, as he behaves oddly after urinating outside the box for a while and acts funny for a while.
There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to when, but he often goes on either our rugs or the pelts we have laying around or their wool bed. We don’t think there’s any real issues between the cats as the tiny one isn’t dominant in that sense and we play with them both as close to equally as possible. The older one doesn’t enjoy play as much, but we get in a lot of playtime either way with him since he’s often more eager to play when the tiny one is playing. They get fed at the same time, though we differ in who gets their food first to keep that as equal as possible too. They get various proteins so they won’t just get a single type of food over longer periods, but generally they enjoy what they get and none of them are overweight. They both spend a lot of time cuddling up still, so even there they get fairly equal attention and there’s no real warning to this. He’s got plenty of calm spots to sleep and stay and while we’ve tried a few ‘calming’ this or thats, he either hates it or doesn’t care much.
The only pattern I’ve noticed is that it seems to happen whenever either me or my mother are ‘too slow’ in getting to what he wants. Just today I was lighting the fireplace before going to feed them and he sat down to pee and now he avoids me like the plague even if no one really get’s angry with him or punishes him in any way. He seems to know what he’s doing is wrong and it doesn’t appear to be accidents at this time, but while this seems to happen whenever we’re ‘slow’ to so something that also feels odd. We can’t always run off to feed him the moment he looks at us, you know? They always have dry food should the wet food run out and even without a few teeth, he eats it fine still.
We have spoken to the folks we got him from about this, too, and they were fairly certain it is a behavior problem and not health related, but we’re not sure how to deal with it at this point. We’ve had two cats before him, my mother has had a lot more, but we never had any such issues with any of them so we’re a bit lacking on experience and googling around hasn’t brough up too much helpful, to be honest.
If anyone has any advice or ideas, it would be much appreciated. At this point it’s gotten pretty stressful for us, too, and we don’t want to have to consider any drastic solutions like giving him back or putting him down at all, but it feels very hopeless at this point. This post probably turned into a mess, but this entire situation feels like a mess at this point and I’m not sure if there’s anything I missed.
Thank you in advance if you even got this far, I know my rambles can be a pain to read through.
Just a thought.
