Cat Changed Out Of Blue.

[TomCreg]

My cat is a fixed female Calico that I found in the woods almost a year ago.
She is almost a year old.
She was healthy before behavior change.

The cat did fine in a house with dogs that were inside/outside dogs. There were even cats outside. This is a house in the woods isolated on private property.

My wife and I moved to the city and brought our cat with us. She took about a week to adjust to the apartment and new noises, but after the first week she has been 100% fine. Up until a month ago, give or take.

She was fine all winter, and about the time it started warming up she started getting weird. We came home one day and found her in the "dumb cane" plant. She was just laying in it. We know the plant isn't good for animals and we were about to take the plant to my in-laws place the next day, but the cat got into it first.. We immediately washer her and moved the plant. She began hiding under the couch and not coming out unless we pulled her out, then she stopped eating and drinking unless we put her by her food. We took her in and found out she had an "ear infection" in both ears, which they gave us antibiotics for, and they gave her special food to help regulate her.

We followed the procedures for 7 days.

The ear infection cleared up but she never turned back into herself. She would hide under the couch and barely eat or use the litter box. After a few weeks, we took her back to the house she used to live at and to a different vet and they said she checked out fine. They thought she was bitten by a spider so they gave her a cortisone shot which did nothing for her. While she stayed at the other house, she began acting normal and eating/drinking and using the bathroom as usual. So we picked her up the following weekend and brought her back to the apartment. She seemed fine for the first night, then began hiding again and we have patiently worked with her.

Currently, she doesn't hide under the couch anymore, she will instead try and hide under blankets and such where she will not move from for days. She even began to pee on furniture and the bed.. So until we can find a solution, kitty is locked in the bathroom where she contently lays in the sink and seems happy.

She also seems afraid of the litter box.

My biggest concern is how did this behavioral issue occur out of the blue with absolutely no signs of anything being wrong. As soon as it began warming up outside, she lost her mind and is not herself at all.

We have changed the litter.
We changed the type of litter.
We changed the brand and type of litter multiple times.

We moved her food into the bathroom where she now resides, the litter box has always been in the bathroom.
We changed her food, didn't help.
We have replaced her water and cleaned the container multiple times. Didn't help.
We have tried letting her spend more time with us at night when we sleep, she repaid us with a huge urine stain on the bed..

We are near or wits end with the problems, we just need advice...

 

[moorspede]

She's a bottle baby, you found her just after she was born.

It's unlikely to be a territorial problem, there were cats outside in your house and she wasn't worried about them.

It's unlikely to be a health problem which has loss of bladder control as a symptom because she was ok in the house.

I expect that since you say you worked with her, you know that cats who are forced to take medication tend to trust in the person giving it to them for awhile. Being washed can also be traumatising for cats.

Since she bounced back at the other house there is something about your apartment that is causing her stress.

It may also be something about the weather warming up. Did you mention it to your vet?

What happens when the weather warms up? There is more pollen in the air but that can't be it because she would have asthma symptoms. The other thing I can think of that happens when the weather warms is that there are more people on the street outside, there are windows open in the other apartments, hence more noise.

I can only speculate but coming from a peaceful place into a place which is full of noise and smells very different must be very disconcerting to an animal which is very sensitive so both smell and sound.

Have you tried calming products such as feliway, calming chews, Bachs flower essences etc?

Could it be something like depression? Anxiety? You may need to talk to a switched on vet or a behaviourist to get to the bottom of the problem.

 

[TomCreg]

This cat has always been very trusting of me, she didn't freak out very much when we bathed her, or gave her medicine. She didn't seem to like the ear drops, (understandably!), but she for the most part let me put them in her ear. I always put the drops in while my wife held her and I would pet her and talk to her in a comforting voice to try and relax her.

My thoughts took me to pollen as well, but she would have had more contact with pollen at the house rather than the apartment. We don't often leave the windows open here at the apartment, but we would sometimes leave a window open for her at the house. When we do leave the window open here, she doesn't seem to mind it.

The only other thing I could think of is here at the apartment I think they spray round-up or some other chemical which would have probably started around the time she began freaking out. We don't use that stuff at the house.

I forgot to mention, around the time of all of this, she began grooming and scratching. She will groom almost non-stop, and scratch until she pulls out fur.

Already checked for flees and other bugs, she is clean, the vet even said so. I assumed she is doing the grooming to self-soothe. But we still pet her as often as we can.

The apartment faces a man-made pond and we have always left the blinds open for her to watch outside because she enjoyed watching the birds, ducks, geese, and squirrels. She also used to sit in our other window and people watch into the parking lot.

I read last night about some of those calming products, I may invest in a few and see how she reacts to them.

Thank you for your response.

 

[moorspede]

Overgrooming is a classic response to stress, as is inappropriate urination. You poor cat is really suffering.

Cats are extremely sensitive to chemicals. Your cat may feel better in there because the bathroom has it's own ventilation system or the door is closed and the smell can't get through to that area.

The Roundup may be making her feel ill which could be causing the anxiety. Could you talk to whoever is doing the spraying to ask them to stop short of the outside of your apartment just as an experiment?

If your kitty doesn't get relief from the calming products the vet could try medication but obviously it's better to find the cause.

 

[TomCreg]

Thank you, I will talk with the apartment and ask them to please stop the spraying near our apartment to see if she gets better.