- Joined
- Jul 22, 2014
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I've mentioned a few times around here that my kitten Claude, 9 months old and a member of our family for the last 7 of them, has steadily been developing an extreme case of anxiety. It's been puzzling and heartbreaking, since she came to us as a bold, bossy kitten, and has slowly become more and more afraid of just about everything. It's terrible to see any animal like this, but watching them deteriorate mysteriously under your care is particularly crushing.
The last several months have been an exercise in playing detective. I've found that having her litter box against a wall near a window, something she had no problem with to begin with, is too frightening to her now. I live in an old house with windows on all sides in a wooded area with lots of birds, squirrels, bunnies and chipmunks - this used to make for excellent theatre, but more often lately the sound of tiny feet on the roof leaves her wildeyed, hyperventilating and frozen in place. I've had to stop filling the birdfeeders around the house to try to minimize the visitors at the windows.
She gets freaked out by the sound of me scratching my elbows, or of cars going down the street. We had some loud, extended road construction off and on for two months - they tore the street up entirely and installed concrete tubing in the ground - and that would leave her a nervous wreck.
It's progressed to the point where she's afraid of the windows, walls and ceiling of the house, and was becoming afraid of all of the inhabitants. She no longer wants to sit on laps or be petted. She gets too frightened to eat or use the litter box. I've come home from work to find her hiding in her carrier, or cowering on my pee and poop covered bed, food and litterbox completely untouched all day long.
We've been to the vet again and again. We've tried calming treats, calming diffusers, calming collars. We've tried Anxitane, and we've moved on now to Prozac. We've moved all of her things - beds, toys, dishes, litter boxes - to areas as close to the center the house as possible. I've spent time creating little lairs around the house for her, behind end tables and in closets and under couches. This place is strewn with strategically positioned cardboard boxes.
All of this has helped, marginally. Particularly since she started the Prozac three weeks ago and I've built three exceptionally excellent lairs for her, she's become a bit more relaxed and a bit less frightened of my housemate and me. But one thing isn't changing: she wants nothing to do the walls.
So last night, the temperature hit -10 Fahrenheit here, and this morning the pipes in my bathroom were frozen. This has never happened in this house before, and while spending the day working on thawing the pipes, we've also been trying to figure out what went wrong. When my housemate walked around the house inspecting the exterior, she saw that several pieces of siding under the roof near my bathroom had been torn off. While she stood there examining it, she saw a squirrel climb into the hole and emerge with bunches of insulation. She found torn up insulation in the trees and bushes underneath the hole. And when she came back inside to tell me, I looked inside the walls in my bathroom and found the insulation all torn to shreds. We have a squirrel colony living in our walls.
We're going to have a wildlife specialist come out to help us trap and evict our squirrel colony. We'll have to have the insulation replaced and the siding of the house repaired. I don't know if this will solve all my kitten's problems. I hope it helps her. At the very least, it will help my utility bills and my pipes.
But the moral of the story is, I could have saved myself a lot of time, trouble and money, and my kitten months of distress, if I had just been able to understand what she was clearly trying to tell me.
The last several months have been an exercise in playing detective. I've found that having her litter box against a wall near a window, something she had no problem with to begin with, is too frightening to her now. I live in an old house with windows on all sides in a wooded area with lots of birds, squirrels, bunnies and chipmunks - this used to make for excellent theatre, but more often lately the sound of tiny feet on the roof leaves her wildeyed, hyperventilating and frozen in place. I've had to stop filling the birdfeeders around the house to try to minimize the visitors at the windows.
She gets freaked out by the sound of me scratching my elbows, or of cars going down the street. We had some loud, extended road construction off and on for two months - they tore the street up entirely and installed concrete tubing in the ground - and that would leave her a nervous wreck.
It's progressed to the point where she's afraid of the windows, walls and ceiling of the house, and was becoming afraid of all of the inhabitants. She no longer wants to sit on laps or be petted. She gets too frightened to eat or use the litter box. I've come home from work to find her hiding in her carrier, or cowering on my pee and poop covered bed, food and litterbox completely untouched all day long.
We've been to the vet again and again. We've tried calming treats, calming diffusers, calming collars. We've tried Anxitane, and we've moved on now to Prozac. We've moved all of her things - beds, toys, dishes, litter boxes - to areas as close to the center the house as possible. I've spent time creating little lairs around the house for her, behind end tables and in closets and under couches. This place is strewn with strategically positioned cardboard boxes.
All of this has helped, marginally. Particularly since she started the Prozac three weeks ago and I've built three exceptionally excellent lairs for her, she's become a bit more relaxed and a bit less frightened of my housemate and me. But one thing isn't changing: she wants nothing to do the walls.
So last night, the temperature hit -10 Fahrenheit here, and this morning the pipes in my bathroom were frozen. This has never happened in this house before, and while spending the day working on thawing the pipes, we've also been trying to figure out what went wrong. When my housemate walked around the house inspecting the exterior, she saw that several pieces of siding under the roof near my bathroom had been torn off. While she stood there examining it, she saw a squirrel climb into the hole and emerge with bunches of insulation. She found torn up insulation in the trees and bushes underneath the hole. And when she came back inside to tell me, I looked inside the walls in my bathroom and found the insulation all torn to shreds. We have a squirrel colony living in our walls.
We're going to have a wildlife specialist come out to help us trap and evict our squirrel colony. We'll have to have the insulation replaced and the siding of the house repaired. I don't know if this will solve all my kitten's problems. I hope it helps her. At the very least, it will help my utility bills and my pipes.
But the moral of the story is, I could have saved myself a lot of time, trouble and money, and my kitten months of distress, if I had just been able to understand what she was clearly trying to tell me.
