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- Aug 22, 2009
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I'm writing here as a last resort. I need help dealing with a serious cat problem and I am out of options. This post is long, so if you just want to get to the "what I need help with" part, scroll to the bold. Thanks.
My wife and I have a cat that is 2 years old along with our older adopted rescue and two chinchillas. All are male. The 2 year old, named Claude, seems to suffer from what I could only call massive separation anxiety.
We got Claude roughly 6 weeks after we lost Puma; an adopted stray I had rescued from a shelter shortly after I graduated high school. Puma had been with me (then us) for ten years, suffered from Feline FIV, blindness, and later diabetes. After the vet failed to convert Puma's weight from pounds to kilograms for his insulin, Puma had to be rushed to the hospital on a fourth of July to save his life.
After that incident, Puma was diagnosed with a fluid building around his heart that would eventually lead to congestive heart failure. We kept him lavished him with the finest of everything for the remainder of his life, until we had a vet come to the house to put him to sleep when he could no longer walk or use the bathroom without help.
I tell this story as a precursor to the Claude incident only so those who will judge my "commitment" to my animals understands the lengths of which my wife and I will go through to help our animals.
After dinner one evening, my wife and I wandered into a local mom and pop pet store just to see the animals and maybe even get a fish or two for the tank at my office. I was immediately taken with a small kitten that just adored suckling on my finger when I went to pet him. I had heard you should never, ever buy from a pet store, and I always felt that if you have room in your heart and home for an animal, you should rescue; but I also am a firm believer in animals choosing their owners, and not vice versa.
We got Claude home and in the evening, he began displaying a behavior that was immediately troublesome: When I flopped onto our bed without a shirt on, he immediately made a dash for my chest, attempting to latch on to my nipple. After a scream of "Dude, I'm a guy!", we laughed it off as something that a kitten might do when he was confused.
It has never stopped.
At night, he'll climb up on my wife's chest and attempt to suckle on her ear in the same fashion. In my opinion, its more of a reaffirmation that he had been weened too early, but time, discipline, bitter apple, etc. seems to cure him of this.
As he got older, he began urinating outside the litter box. We have tried a number of different options to solve this problem (including trying to rescue another cat that we now have, hoping that he could 'teach' Claude) but again, nothing works.
Claude has been on Prozac for several months and the issue has not gone really stopped. If anything, the situation with Claude's "baby-like tendencies" always seems to ebb and flow. You can tell he's headed for a regression when he jumps into our bathtub and tries to nurse from the faucet with his doughy eyed look that he gets when he's trying to nurse.
The situation has taken a turn for the worse in recent months. He's begun liking back legs to the point of bloodiness, and has been fashioning a halo for the past two weeks. After the first week, we took it off after they were healed over only to find him doing the same thing again.
He 'seems' happy. He's quite social and loving, even if his purrs aren't always there. When my wife went to get groceries this morning, I awoke to the smell of urine as he took the chance to let 'er rip in our bedroom. I yelled at him, rubbed his nose in it, but I know that its not going to help...and I don't know if I've run out of options.
So, here's the problem:
The cat urinates outside the box, nervously licks himself to the point of bleeding, and still attempts to nurse at over two years of age.
We have spent hundreds of dollars in Feliway, blocking windows to avoid outside stimulus, buying him a buddy, catering to him, disciplining him, setting up an array of webcams to monitor him, and countless others to no avail. Pretty much everything in the sticky above are things we've tried.
We have spent equally hundreds if not thousands dollars in veterinary visits, test, and prescriptions and had no success. We've only tried Prozac at this point but I've been recently advocating for something stronger.
We have a calm and serene house. No kids but the biological clock is a'tickin and the thought has crossed our mind. We need to resolve this situation before we can consider human babies.
We're not rich and I don't know how much more we can afford in changing vets and starting the process all over again. Between him and the cat before him, we're looking at a nice down payment on a house that has evaporated because of pet costs above and beyond what's normally expected of a regular owner.
Pawning him off to a shelter is not an option. If Claude has a problem, we love him and want to help him if we can. But we feel like we have exhausted every conceivable option, and the only two things I can think of that are left are letting him run free (he loves the outside and we purchased a leash trolley and vest for him to stay outside for hours) or assuming that he is unhappy and unfixable with the end result being termination.
Possible solutions I've considered (but need feedback):
I've pondered the idea of placing him at a "cat hotel" for a week or so just to separate him from the things he's comfortable with. Kind of like how a teenager needs to leave home to grow up, I thought maybe this may work, but I've never needed to try such a thing.
I'd like to try a different prescription. Prozac is an SSRI and I'm aware that it doesn't necessarily work on everyone (or every animal) the same way. Is there anyone who can relate an experience of Prozac not working that was replaced by something that did that helped the animal?
We've tried crating him when we're gone, or leaving him in one room and that has ended usually poorly. At one point, he clawed the bathroom door to the point of making his paws bleed....and we had only been gone 8 hours.
Other than the anxiety, Claude is a loving, gentle cat. He gets along great with the other animals in the house and even will play with the Chinchillas when they are allowed to run around the Den. He sleeps at the foot of our bed with the other cat and has shown absolute indifference when meeting other animals. He's not bad....just sick.
My wife just returned home and burst into tears when I told her that he peed again. She cried that she's so tired of checking every corner, exiling guests from our house because we are embarrassed by the smell, and the effort of dealing with Claude's condition that is so seemingly impossible to troubleshoot and correct.
We love him dearly and the thought of putting him to sleep cripples us both with sadness. But if he is suffering, even if it is something in his head and not his body, then its our duty to not pass this problem off to someone else, and instead take ownership of the second guessing that may come if we have to choose such a terrible option.
One last thing: If you are going to post in here, please be sensitive to our situation and the situation of others that have been in our shoes. The last thing I'm interested in is a troll of a post judging me and my family for considering all available options. This topic is a polarizing one and unless you've been in a similar circumstance and environment, you have no idea how it feels to stare your values in the face and realize that sometimes the right choice isn't necessarily always the one that comes free of guilt.
Thanks in advance to anyone who has the mental fortitude to read through this long post. I appreciate your concern for our problem, and any constructive insight you may provide will go a long way in helping our situation.
My wife and I have a cat that is 2 years old along with our older adopted rescue and two chinchillas. All are male. The 2 year old, named Claude, seems to suffer from what I could only call massive separation anxiety.
We got Claude roughly 6 weeks after we lost Puma; an adopted stray I had rescued from a shelter shortly after I graduated high school. Puma had been with me (then us) for ten years, suffered from Feline FIV, blindness, and later diabetes. After the vet failed to convert Puma's weight from pounds to kilograms for his insulin, Puma had to be rushed to the hospital on a fourth of July to save his life.
After that incident, Puma was diagnosed with a fluid building around his heart that would eventually lead to congestive heart failure. We kept him lavished him with the finest of everything for the remainder of his life, until we had a vet come to the house to put him to sleep when he could no longer walk or use the bathroom without help.
I tell this story as a precursor to the Claude incident only so those who will judge my "commitment" to my animals understands the lengths of which my wife and I will go through to help our animals.
After dinner one evening, my wife and I wandered into a local mom and pop pet store just to see the animals and maybe even get a fish or two for the tank at my office. I was immediately taken with a small kitten that just adored suckling on my finger when I went to pet him. I had heard you should never, ever buy from a pet store, and I always felt that if you have room in your heart and home for an animal, you should rescue; but I also am a firm believer in animals choosing their owners, and not vice versa.
We got Claude home and in the evening, he began displaying a behavior that was immediately troublesome: When I flopped onto our bed without a shirt on, he immediately made a dash for my chest, attempting to latch on to my nipple. After a scream of "Dude, I'm a guy!", we laughed it off as something that a kitten might do when he was confused.
It has never stopped.
At night, he'll climb up on my wife's chest and attempt to suckle on her ear in the same fashion. In my opinion, its more of a reaffirmation that he had been weened too early, but time, discipline, bitter apple, etc. seems to cure him of this.
As he got older, he began urinating outside the litter box. We have tried a number of different options to solve this problem (including trying to rescue another cat that we now have, hoping that he could 'teach' Claude) but again, nothing works.
Claude has been on Prozac for several months and the issue has not gone really stopped. If anything, the situation with Claude's "baby-like tendencies" always seems to ebb and flow. You can tell he's headed for a regression when he jumps into our bathtub and tries to nurse from the faucet with his doughy eyed look that he gets when he's trying to nurse.
The situation has taken a turn for the worse in recent months. He's begun liking back legs to the point of bloodiness, and has been fashioning a halo for the past two weeks. After the first week, we took it off after they were healed over only to find him doing the same thing again.
He 'seems' happy. He's quite social and loving, even if his purrs aren't always there. When my wife went to get groceries this morning, I awoke to the smell of urine as he took the chance to let 'er rip in our bedroom. I yelled at him, rubbed his nose in it, but I know that its not going to help...and I don't know if I've run out of options.
So, here's the problem:
The cat urinates outside the box, nervously licks himself to the point of bleeding, and still attempts to nurse at over two years of age.
We have spent hundreds of dollars in Feliway, blocking windows to avoid outside stimulus, buying him a buddy, catering to him, disciplining him, setting up an array of webcams to monitor him, and countless others to no avail. Pretty much everything in the sticky above are things we've tried.
We have spent equally hundreds if not thousands dollars in veterinary visits, test, and prescriptions and had no success. We've only tried Prozac at this point but I've been recently advocating for something stronger.
We have a calm and serene house. No kids but the biological clock is a'tickin and the thought has crossed our mind. We need to resolve this situation before we can consider human babies.
We're not rich and I don't know how much more we can afford in changing vets and starting the process all over again. Between him and the cat before him, we're looking at a nice down payment on a house that has evaporated because of pet costs above and beyond what's normally expected of a regular owner.
Pawning him off to a shelter is not an option. If Claude has a problem, we love him and want to help him if we can. But we feel like we have exhausted every conceivable option, and the only two things I can think of that are left are letting him run free (he loves the outside and we purchased a leash trolley and vest for him to stay outside for hours) or assuming that he is unhappy and unfixable with the end result being termination.
Possible solutions I've considered (but need feedback):
I've pondered the idea of placing him at a "cat hotel" for a week or so just to separate him from the things he's comfortable with. Kind of like how a teenager needs to leave home to grow up, I thought maybe this may work, but I've never needed to try such a thing.
I'd like to try a different prescription. Prozac is an SSRI and I'm aware that it doesn't necessarily work on everyone (or every animal) the same way. Is there anyone who can relate an experience of Prozac not working that was replaced by something that did that helped the animal?
We've tried crating him when we're gone, or leaving him in one room and that has ended usually poorly. At one point, he clawed the bathroom door to the point of making his paws bleed....and we had only been gone 8 hours.
Other than the anxiety, Claude is a loving, gentle cat. He gets along great with the other animals in the house and even will play with the Chinchillas when they are allowed to run around the Den. He sleeps at the foot of our bed with the other cat and has shown absolute indifference when meeting other animals. He's not bad....just sick.
My wife just returned home and burst into tears when I told her that he peed again. She cried that she's so tired of checking every corner, exiling guests from our house because we are embarrassed by the smell, and the effort of dealing with Claude's condition that is so seemingly impossible to troubleshoot and correct.
We love him dearly and the thought of putting him to sleep cripples us both with sadness. But if he is suffering, even if it is something in his head and not his body, then its our duty to not pass this problem off to someone else, and instead take ownership of the second guessing that may come if we have to choose such a terrible option.
One last thing: If you are going to post in here, please be sensitive to our situation and the situation of others that have been in our shoes. The last thing I'm interested in is a troll of a post judging me and my family for considering all available options. This topic is a polarizing one and unless you've been in a similar circumstance and environment, you have no idea how it feels to stare your values in the face and realize that sometimes the right choice isn't necessarily always the one that comes free of guilt.
Thanks in advance to anyone who has the mental fortitude to read through this long post. I appreciate your concern for our problem, and any constructive insight you may provide will go a long way in helping our situation.