Can A Cat's Personality Change After A Fright???

[AriSocks]

Has anybody ever had a confident cat take a fright and then become permanently more shy?

Neither of my cats have been shy before. Theyre about 9 months ish i think. Last week we had a guy in to install some internet. In a series of unfortunate events, he dropped a box of screws and as he was trying to grab it dropped a coil of loud cable... Ari (my confident boy) then smashed a teacup jumping onto the counter with fright. All this noise plus a stranger in the flat was too much for Socks (my cuddly boy) and he absolutely lost it, running up the walls trying to find safety, crying and trying to hide, I couldn't help him it was awful. He wouldn't come out from under the bed for 3 hours, not even for tuna so I knew it was serious - and he wasn't right for about 2 days after. Luckily hes not hurt though, he let me check him. Slowly he's gone back to normal but he seems to jump more at noises and even had a bushy-tail-attack when I put on new slippers that were big and fluffy. Only Ari now runs to the door to greet us but they used to come together. We now have my partners dad visiting and Socks had a little panic when the stranger walked in, which he's never done before. Bushed tail, low to the ground, hiding, the works.

It seems unlikely that one event would change his whole personality, but the scare was about 8 days ago...has anyone else had this happen?! He's healthy in all other ways - I checked his paws and he', not limping, he's eating drinking etc so I'm confident he's not acting strange through pain.

Thanks x

 

[amethyst]

It will probably take the cats a couple weeks after everything is back to normal, no strangers in the house (if the guest is staying he wont be a stranger for more then a few days), no loud noises, no new major things in the home, etc. for them to settle back down to how they were. I doubt they are permanently going to be scare now, they just had a fright. They are probably thinking, a stranger came into the house and scared us to death, is that going to happen again?!? Just give them time, since nothing physically happened to them, they should settle back down, they just need time to forget.

 

[AriSocks]

Thank you- it just seems like 8 days is a long time to still be a bit jittery!! We're trying to stick to our usual routine even though we have a visitor and no other new changes I don't think, so fingers crossed my boy will go back to his normal mad self soon