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ProfessorTomoe

Loudmouth's Journey Inside

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Well, Mrs. Prof has washed, dried, and replaced the bedsheets in Loudmouth's room. We'll have to see if this was a sleeping incontinence issue, a territory marking issue (shouldn't be, since he's neutered), or a problem with his litter box since the lid was on (it's been removed now). No further signs of problems yet. I just hope there aren't any problems tomorrow, since Mrs. Prof will be at her office and I won't be able to check.

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37 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

his expertise is really with Sphinxes

 

2 minutes ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

You mean these?

The small one in the picture is actually more typical

The big one at Giza got that way because Uncle Chephren was a pushover for his favourite pet and would not stop feeding the beast.  They say that he and the cat grew to look alike over the years...

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6 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The big one at Giza got that way because Uncle Chephren was a pushover for his favourite pet and would not stop feeding the beast.  They say that he and the cat grew to look alike over the years...

I wonder if Phix would know anything about that ...

WapsiSquare_Phix_library_thumb.jpg

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Mrs. Prof has a theory about why Loudmouth peed on the bed. We have a Litter Genie cat litter disposal thingy that usually sits next to Baker's litterbox. Well, she accidentally left it in Loudmouth's room, containing Baker's poop. Bingo—territorial odor issue. The Litter Genie is out of Loudmouth's room and back where it belongs. Loudmouth has gone back to using his litterbox.

For now. :eusa_pray:

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Baker ate a bit more of his wet food at the new location tonight. Mrs. Prof put out the on-demand dry in the same new location for overnight feeding. I'll move it another couple of feet tomorrow morning before she feeds him and see if he notices. Here's hoping he'll eat the wet food again. :eusa_pray: ( <—going to be using that emoji a lot over the next few weeks)

Right now, Mrs. Prof is playing with Loudmouth in the cat room. Baker is parked directly outside, wondering what's going on outside and probably wondering why he's not being played with. He's meowing at the moment. Man, this is going to be hard.

EDIT: I called Baker over to me (and he actually came!) after the meowing started and picked him up. I was going to put him on the sofa next to me and pet him, give him attention, what have you, when Mrs. Prof figuratively burst through the door of the cat room. So much for that idea. Now we've got a cat with what we call "cocaine eyes," running from one end of the house to the other, demanding playtime. Mrs. Prof is giving him laser chase time. In fact, he just slammed into the metal doors of my closet (I need a SAFER barrier there).

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It's shortly after 5:30 a.m., and Baker hasn't finished off his dry on-demand yet. He'd polished the bowl the two previous nights, so this is confusing. He also hasn't knocked off the top of his water fountain so far.

I'm still going to move his food a couple of feet away from where it was. We've got to make this work, and we can't pussyfoot around.

(looks for The List, gladly offers his name)

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FARK SCHMIDTT BOB GAMMAGE DAM IT TO HAILSTORM

Baker turned up his nose at the EVO wet food this morning. After I ordered an entire case of the stuff and put it on Autoship at Chewy.com yesterday, he has the gall to play Morris the Cat with it this morning. Mrs. Prof had to open up a can of Friskies to get him to eat wet food (he did come running to the Friskies, she says, which is the goal of the exercise). Of course, the outdoor ferals loved Baker's leftovers.

N.B.: the outdoor ferals do NOT get Loudmouth's leftovers. Every bit of those, dry included, go straight into the garbage can to avoid infecting any of the cats with FeLV.

All of Baker's histrionics took place another couple of feet closer to the door. I'd say we still have about 15 to 18 feet more to go (450 to 550 cm) before he reaches the door.

And now, it's time for another outburst.

FARK SCHMIDTT BOB GAMMAGE DAM IT TO HAILSTORM

Loudmouth peed on the bed. Again. Without any territorial scent inducers in the room, this time. His Feliway arrives tomorrow, so we'll see if it helps, but meanwhile we're looking at another possible day of wet bedsheets before it gets here. Also scheduled to arrive Thursday via USPS is the Jackson Galaxy "Ultimate Peacemaker" set. I'm not sure if we shouldn't have included a bottle of "Safe Space for Cats" while we were at it. I'm concerned about how he'll respond once he's out of the cat room, because look at aaallll of the lovely bedding real estate we've got elsewhere in the house ... :o

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Baker has been eating his on-demand dry in the location of the day. This is good on multiple counts. First, he didn't eat well yesterday, and second, he didn't do all that well with his wet food this morning. At least he's getting nutrition, which is extra-important for a cat since they develop fatty livers when they go off of their feed.

Loudmouth has been quiet, thankfully. I hope he's refrained from peeing on the bed, since Mrs. Prof had to go in to her office.

EDIT: I'm going to try and talk Mrs. Prof into setting up the Trail Camera and aiming it at the spot on the bed where Loudmouth has been violating his litterbox contract. No, I'm not going to post any of it here. I'm going to have her set it up in video mode. Two problems:

  • Mrs. Prof won't be home until after 8:30 p.m. tonight.
  • It's going to be hard to tell when Loudmouth is actually going on the bed.

If we capture it, we'll get a timestamp on it (I think).

Also, a brand new, $36 case of EVO wet cat food, now known to be semi-useless, arrived from Chewy.com today. They have a distribution hub in the Dallas area, which makes it great for foods and other things they keep in stock normally. We get next day service.

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Correction: Mrs. Prof won't be home until almost 11:00 p.m., if not later. She got stuck out transporting cats in preparation for TNR surgery tomorrow. We have two very hungry cats here. I have a feeling that Baker will eat anywhere that food is placed when Mrs. Prof feeds them.

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Too much other crap going on. Baker won't touch what's put down in front of him. How the hell do you do this when you've got to feed four (five?) outdoor ferals first, then him, then Loudmouth? God, this is never going to work! Baker is freaking crazy.

Do you have the time
To listen to me-ow
About this food and that food too
All at once

I am one of those
Melodramatic cats
Neurotic to the core
No doubt me-ow-t about it

(With apologies to Green Day)

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Well, there was no need to set up the Trail Camera. Loudmouth had already gone on the bedsheets. Again. Before Mrs. Prof got home. All this time of being the perfect little cat, then WHAM! Behavior problem. I'm baffled.

The Feliway and the Jackson Galaxy stuff are both due to arrive today. I hope they do some good. Pleeeeease let them do some good. :eusa_pray:

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Mrs. Prof brought up a fair point last night. Prior to her attempts at shifting Baker to wet food, Mrs. Prof had been giving him a "taste" of the wet food that the outside ferals had been getting during their evening feeding. He'd get that first, before she fed the ferals a mix of wet and dry. She'd then give him his dry. Well, we agreed to switch back to this method, since the shift to wet food has been a complete and total failure.

This morning, Mrs. Prof did a variation on this. Normally in the morning, she feeds the ferals dry food first, then gives Baker his dry food for the day. Today, she fed the ferals their dry, and instead of giving dry food to the indoor cats, she gave both a serving of Sheba, which is about the same size as the "tastes" she'd given Baker previously at night. She reports that both ate a fair amount of it. That's enough to at least initiate a meet & greet, I believe.

I must say, looking at Baker, he does appear more relaxed. He's spread out on the floor at the beginning of the hall, but he's not showing a care in the world.

I've tried to get info out of Mrs. Prof as to how she's going to handle tonight, but it's been like pulling teeth out of a pissed-off shark. She just got up, she's on her first cup of coffee, she's only had X hours of sleep, you name it, she's throwing it. There's obviously no plan yet, so I'll have to report later on what she's going to do. It'll probably be a post-event report, since she'll likely bite my hand if I ask her how she plans on handling things. She won't have a plan until after the deed is done, I'm betting.

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The Feliway for Loudmouth and the stuff from Jackson Galaxy arrived about ten minutes ago. Weird experience: I have my hearing aids on and was hearing the postman scanning the packages outside. However, I thought it was Mrs. Prof's cell phone or computer making some kind of odd noise—something she couldn't hear. We both figured out what it was when the postman knocked quite loudly on the door.

Still no Loudmouth bed pee today (yay!). My fingers are crossed that he won't do it again, and that the above mentioned stuff will help both him (via the Feliway) and Baker (both, actually, via the JG stuff) to get closer to a real introduction.

I might see if I can get Mrs. Prof to take a shot of Loudmouth's entire room tonight. Not sure if that'll work, given the limitations of her phone's camera. Loudmouth's going to have a lot more room to deal with when we do a "base camp switch," since the second bedroom (out of three) is much bigger.

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Good luck!  If Loudmouth urinates on the bed again, I'd take him in for bloodwork and a urinalysis, just in case.  Better to find out early if it's actually a medical problem and not just behavioral.  If he's got idiopathic cystitis, stress can trigger episodes, but anti-anxiety meds and/or pain meds can help a lot!  Young cats, it's almost always not a bladder infection, but as they get older the odds of it actually being an infection go up.

As for the Jackson Galaxy stuff, I find highly suspect any product line that boasts of how a product "helps release toxins and stuck energies in respiratory system."  If a cat has parasites, I'd rather give them a dewormer I know will actually kill the parasites, rather than something that "helps clear energy imbalances that allow parasites to colonize the physical body."  If my cat were declawed, I'd rather give them pain meds as they recover than spend my money on something that "helps "rebuild" energetic balance in the paws."

If they're upset introducing a new pet, anti-anxiety meds are proven to have an effect -- you have to prove both safety and efficacy to get FDA approval, something none of these "flower essence" products has been able to achieve.  I'll believe they work when I see the double-blinded clinical trial in a peer-reviewed journal!

Hmm, maybe I'll have to redirect any further discussion to the Politics thread, although homeopathy and the like seem much more akin to religion....

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3 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hmm, maybe I'll have to redirect any further discussion to the Politics thread, although homeopathy and the like seem much more akin to religion...

Yeah, I know, but for us it's any port in a storm. We had them work earlier (although I can't remember if it was on Baker or a previous cat), so we're trying them again. If they work, they work. If they don't, they don't. We aren't holding our breath.

And just for the record, I don't buy into homeopathy. I steer Mrs. Prof away from it (she was no chemistry whiz). I'm throwing the dice on something else being in there. If it isn't, then no blindfold and make mine Winston before you give the order to fire.

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

If my cat were declawed, I'd rather give them pain meds as they recover than spend my money on something that "helps "rebuild" energetic balance in the paws."

I think our last cat had other ideas for dealing with being declawed, she was probably a year old when we had her front claws removed because she was scratching the heck out of the laundry room door and door frame (door being wide open too so it wasn't like she was wanting in or out). Shortly after that happened, she went and jumped up onto the wood stove, while it was active, suffice it to say her feet only had a split second of contact with the hot surface but she was certainly paying more attention to the pain from the burns than she was of the pain from being declawed. I'm still amazed that she still liked sleeping next to the fireplace while it was lit, but I guess she figured it was better than trying to sleep on the fireplace.

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Looks like I'm not the only one in the house with a gastric problem tonight (see the Changing Medications thread). Mrs. Prof fed Loudmouth his wet food and walked out to get everyone's dry food. When she returned, she saw that Loudmouth had thrown up his wet food. She cleaned up and left his dry food.

She's going to put his Feliway in his room before she goes to bed.

Baker and Mrs. Prof seem to be the only ones who haven't had a food problem tonight. As for Baker, I'm going to suggest a different method of moving his bowl tomorrow morning. I've been the one nudging his tray (with replaceable bowls) from one spot to the next. She's just been picking up the replaceable trays and dealing with them. My suggestion will be that, for the morning feeding, she takes the entire feeding station and loads it up however she plans to load it, then returns it to its new location a few feet closer to Loudmouth's room. Hopefully she won't argue. :eusa_pray:

BTW, Loudmouth got out of his room tonight. He went straight to our back door, with Baker on his tail, sniffing all the way. Mrs. Prof bundled him up and returned him to the cat room. This all happened before he barfed.

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Loudmouth is having gastric problems overall tonight. He barfed up some of his dry food as well. No idea why. Mrs. Prof thinks it could be a sign of his FeLV getting worse. I'm more inclined to think that he went too far between meals without eating anything, thanks to her being gone so long. Fortunately, she doesn't have anything planned for tomorrow night, so that shouldn't be a problem.

The Feliway is installed in Loudmouth's room. Here's hoping it helps.

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We once had a cat left on our doorstep at work, who turned out to be hyperthyroid, which has vomiting, diarrhea, and weight loss as the main signs.  The boss decided to do the surgery to remove the overactive gland -- they have one on either side of the neck, so if one is overactive, you can take it out and the other one can still do the job just fine.  Shaved her neck prior to surgery...and found she already had a scar from one side being taken out.  We figured her owners paid for surgery the first time, but couldn't afford to get it done a second time.  (If you ever have a hyperthyroid cat, getting the I131 treatment can get to overactive tissue even if it's ectopic in the chest, and leaves the surrounding normal tissue alone even within the same side.)

She did the surgery anyway, BTW, and sure enough, she had enough thyroid tissue left to be perfectly fine, was adopted by one of our kennel kids.

Do not leave a pet on anyone's doorstep, ever....but if you do, please leave a note with basic info like age and medical history!

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40 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

We once had a cat left on our doorstep at work, who turned out to be hyperthyroid, which has vomiting, diarrhea, and weight loss as the main signs.  The boss decided to do the surgery to remove the overactive gland -- they have one on either side of the neck, so if one is overactive, you can take it out and the other one can still do the job just fine.  Shaved her neck prior to surgery...and found she already had a scar from one side being taken out.  We figured her owners paid for surgery the first time, but couldn't afford to get it done a second time.  (If you ever have a hyperthyroid cat, getting the I131 treatment can get to overactive tissue even if it's ectopic in the chest, and leaves the surrounding normal tissue alone even within the same side.)

She did the surgery anyway, BTW, and sure enough, she had enough thyroid tissue left to be perfectly fine, was adopted by one of our kennel kids.

Do not leave a pet on anyone's doorstep, ever....but if you do, please leave a note with basic info like age and medical history!

I've reached my like quota for the day, somehow. Consider this post liked. :)

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Better news this morning for Loudmouth, post-Feliway installation. He used his litter box for both functions and has not thrown up his breakfast yet.

As for Baker, Mrs. Prof claims she forgot to move his feeding station. I'm not buying it. She gave me flak last night over the move, saying she wanted to leave it in the same place for a couple of days and not just one-and-a-half. Well, whatever the case, she didn't move his feeding station.

I did, and obviously so.

I even followed up the move by giving Baker his daily freeze-dried chicken treats a bit early, right by the feeding station. Baker did his tricks (up, shake, sit, high five) by the feeder, then went on to eat from it briefly before doing his covering action. I'd say it was a success, despite what I suspect was Mrs. Prof's alleged attempt to torpedo it.

N.B.: I could be wrong on the torpedoing, since she claimed early morning syndrome (just woke up, first cup of coffee, etc.), but she seemed awfully damned chipper for someone who'd just woke up. I'm usually the morning person (gack), but she was cheerful until I asked if she'd moved the feeding station. Too cheerful, if you ask me.

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