I have blogged about mum’s cat before.
She comes from a broken home you know.
Years ago, when I lived with a strange young man in Oxford, we had two kittens. He didn’t want kittens, but I went out with my friend Rosalind one day, and came home with two kittens.
As you do.
Tess was one of them.
Her sister was killed to death in an argument with a car. She lost.
Tess has always been rather eccentric, but in recent months she has become increasingly mad.
She is very demanding. She cries and talks all the time. She sits on your chest in the bath, she has started to get in the shower with mum. She is always underfoot because she refuses to be left out of anything, and it is driving my parents bonkers. It is like having a small, tabby shadow haunting you.
My mum has discussed this with the vet. The vet has several opinions on this issue. One is that the thyroid medication the cat is on, is sending her a bit loopy. Then there is the fact that she could just be senile. Apparently vets are increasingly noticing that old cats are getting properly batty.
They lose their knitting on buses, go for tea at the wrong house and quite often leave the gas on when they go out.
The vet has recommended that mum try a device which is rather like one of those plug in air freshener things, but for cats. It is supposed to emit an odour undectable to the human nose, but which cats find both alluring and calming.
Yesterday, after having had one too many showers with the cat, mum drove down to the vets and purchased one at vast expense.
She brought it home and plugged it in. We all stood round and stared at it, even the cat. She loves a crowd.
Now we wait and see.
This morning when I got there, the cat was nowhere to be seen. This was rather unusual, as she likes to have a second or third breakfast of the morning with the children, depending on how long she has been up. She has been known to nibble the odd Frostie if the mood takes her.
She finally surfaced at about two this afternoon, after having spread out on Tilly’s bed all morning with her nose glued to the radiator.
We felt that the vapouriser must be working, as she had left us all alone for the best part of the day.
Then she came shrieking across the drive and attempted to get in the car with my brother when he went to work. Then she went shrieking back the other way to give her opinion on mum’s ebay activities, and has been being just as big a pain in the arse as ever, ever since.
It could of course be down to the fact that cats are very canny buggers, and she was just lulling us into a false sense of security this morning, all the time laughing down her furry paw at us.
It could also be the case that it takes more than six hours for this vaporiser thing to work.
I have no idea.
If it is any good we are all going to have them strapped to our ankles to stop her winding around us at key moments of the day.
I am also thinking of developing one for children. Tallulah is being particularly trying again at the moment, and if I could spray her (or me) with something that would stop her being a gigantic pain in the arse, and me shouting at her every three minutes, it would be worth its weight in gold.
In the meantime I shall resort to the old fashioned method of bed for children, wine for mama.
Poor darling. We once had a cat very similar. Raised in the wild and never quite got civilized. It got to the point where you could not walk past a piece of furniture without her jumping out at you and clawing your ankles to ribbons. She would also run laps through the house at high rates of speed and often run into walls. Since this was in the dark days of the 1990s and before modern vaporiser medicine, our vet just prescribed valium. It was hilarious (lots of trying to jump up on things and missing) but really didn’t work. I wish you luck and recommend more wine. And now, I am off to sit through a Night With Middle School Orchestra, featuring a Lady Gaga Medley. Wish me well.
Ms Caroline
Goodness. I hope you survived the Lady Gaga. I blame Glee. Really school concerts are not the staid affairs they used to be.
You could try a little water spray thingy with a few drops of citronella oil in it.
I will pass this wisdom on to mama.x
My cat Mia got like that when she got old as well. She would spend half the day sticking one claw into my leg, while I was at my desk, to get attention and she wanted to be cuddled all the time. It got to the point where I had to sneak round hiding from her. She was a bit dotty in her old age as well but she did live to 19 so I suppose it’s understandable. For a few months she got very energetic and hungry (thyroid) and then slowly just kind of wound down until she passed on (kidney failure). Still miss the cranky old bat – she was a great friend.
My Mum inherited 2 cats from my sister and tried the pheromone things when the cats came to live at her house to try to settle them down and stop attacking Mum’s Westie but it didn’t seem to make much difference really. If you could develop a pheromone spray for kids and teens that actually worked you would become the richest person in the world very quickly. All the governments would want them to spray out on the streets and in shopping malls.
Sorry for the long comment. Must be feeling chatty this morning.
Karin
Not at all. Yes, my friend is a chemist and I am going to get her on the case immediately. My funds are running dry and I need to be a millionaire stat. Still if The Rapture happens I shan’t need to worry about it one way or the other.
If you develop one for children/teens please let me know. It would be worth a lot of money to you. I had a horror day at school yesterday when teenage girls, who are not my daughters so I had no innate reason to like them much at all really, bitched, argued, moaned, refused to do as I asked, demanded not to be “Spoken to like that” and generally ignored my reasonable tone until I yelled at them, at which point they threatened to leave the classroom, and just generally made want me bitch-slap them. Not that I don’t love my job or anything. . . crazy cats? No idea what to do about them.
Josie x
Josie
I will get Andrea on the case immediately.
My grandma’s dog went senile. She used to follow her around and sit outside the bathroom door crying when she went to the loo. I think the vet prescribed a special diet and some kind of medication.
Bev
The cat’s got both of those and she’s still bonkers. I think they’d be alright with it if she didn’t keep tripping them up all the time.x
Hmm. We never noticed any real difference with the plug-ins. Does Tess have medication for an over or under-active thyroid, or having had one or both removed?
Acksherly, I suspect it’s just getting older and regressing into kittendom a bit, which I suppose is not unlikely – some humans do the equivalent, after all…
Noreen
Yes she does have thyroid meds. I think you are probably right. She is eighteen this year which is very old for a puss.
My old boycat, Sylvester, aged 14 1/2, has become incredibly vocal since his sister died last November. I know he’s not deaf because he can hear a carton of cream being opened from the end of the garden, but it’s just bloody shout, shout, shout, whinge, demand, complain all damn day now. Bugs the hell out of me. And he’s getting arthriticky as well and hence a bit hobbly. But I adore him, for all his dander and farts, and don’t want to think about him not lying next to me on the sofa with one paw just touching my leg – as he is right now, in fact.
Mrs Jones
I rather feel that way about Tessy too, even though she will insist on licking the children’s breakfast cereal. I just try to code it as them getting a very buoyant immune system.
My sister’s cat was a rescue cat and he used to hate people – even them, though he tolerated them as they fed him. If anyone went round to visit he stalked off and hid under the bed until the visitors had gone. He spent a lot of time under the bed. Then when he was about 17 he was ill and spent the last 2 years of his life on medication, and turned into a completely different cat. He was chilled out, calm, almost friendly. He stayed around to see visitors and even let us stroke him. I dunno what he was on but it must have been bloody good. He was clearly stoned out of his brain!
Alienne
Has she still got any of his meds left? We could try them!