x post from Reddit because I was recommended to post here.
Our cat's behaviour has recently changed and it's very unnerving. When we first got her when she was a skittish and standoffish cat who didn't like us at all, constantly bolting and hiding under the couch. Over the course of about a year she settled into a sweet but still timid friend who would sit on the couch with us, play, and generally be sweet and calm. Recently we think we might have inadvertently interfered with this as there's only one thing that has changed that we know of, and we're not sure how to proceed.
Over Christmas we discovered that she liked to play with a piece of string that we'd taken off a present. Her reaction to the string is about 40000% more enthusiastic than any of her other toys and because she liked it so much we went along with it, because she was enjoying it and it was fun and we didn't think we could cause harm introducing a game. Problem is it looks like we might have.
Her regular behaviour is now just sitting on her haunches in the living room about 6 feet from the couch, eyeballing whoever is in the room, sometimes for literally hours, and it's grown to the point where she's almost too unnerving to be around. She won't lie down and she won't settle. The only thing that seems to adjust this behaviour is if someone gets her string, or any string-like object moves. Headphones, a power cable, a shoelace. If anything like that twitches she'll leap up and instantly seek to play, leading me to believe that she's sitting and staring because she's waiting for us to get up and play string. She won't sit with us on the couch and cuddle anymore, and won't sit by herself in a relaxed manner. It's like she's a brand new cat with a new singular focus.
We're still playing with her, because it's the only nice and interesting thing we can do with her now, and we initially had hoped that 'playing her out' would settle her into relaxing, but we have no luck. She's like the Energiser bunny and even if I play string for 30 minutes she just returns to her spot and starts eyeballing you again. It's like she's constantly in predator mode, and all the calming acclimation of the past year has just vanished.
It's been this way for about a fortnight now and things are now uncomfortable and she's actively annoying us. We really enjoyed that she had settled and became loving because we'd had such challenges with initial nervousness that we thought she'd constantly be unhappy in our home. Now we seem to have wrecked it and we're just getting glared at. We're starting to feel like we've broken her, or shaken a screw loose in her brain just by introducing a new game that everyone liked.
There are no known underlying medical issues (was vet checked and vaxxed in early Dec.) and nothing else we know of has changed (no poor treatment or known shocks)
Does anyone have any advice? I've had conflicting advice so far of "Play more" to "Take the string away for good and wait for her to get over it" but I just have no good idea as to what I should do.
1st post so if I've done something wrong here let me know.
Our cat's behaviour has recently changed and it's very unnerving. When we first got her when she was a skittish and standoffish cat who didn't like us at all, constantly bolting and hiding under the couch. Over the course of about a year she settled into a sweet but still timid friend who would sit on the couch with us, play, and generally be sweet and calm. Recently we think we might have inadvertently interfered with this as there's only one thing that has changed that we know of, and we're not sure how to proceed.
Over Christmas we discovered that she liked to play with a piece of string that we'd taken off a present. Her reaction to the string is about 40000% more enthusiastic than any of her other toys and because she liked it so much we went along with it, because she was enjoying it and it was fun and we didn't think we could cause harm introducing a game. Problem is it looks like we might have.
Her regular behaviour is now just sitting on her haunches in the living room about 6 feet from the couch, eyeballing whoever is in the room, sometimes for literally hours, and it's grown to the point where she's almost too unnerving to be around. She won't lie down and she won't settle. The only thing that seems to adjust this behaviour is if someone gets her string, or any string-like object moves. Headphones, a power cable, a shoelace. If anything like that twitches she'll leap up and instantly seek to play, leading me to believe that she's sitting and staring because she's waiting for us to get up and play string. She won't sit with us on the couch and cuddle anymore, and won't sit by herself in a relaxed manner. It's like she's a brand new cat with a new singular focus.
We're still playing with her, because it's the only nice and interesting thing we can do with her now, and we initially had hoped that 'playing her out' would settle her into relaxing, but we have no luck. She's like the Energiser bunny and even if I play string for 30 minutes she just returns to her spot and starts eyeballing you again. It's like she's constantly in predator mode, and all the calming acclimation of the past year has just vanished.
It's been this way for about a fortnight now and things are now uncomfortable and she's actively annoying us. We really enjoyed that she had settled and became loving because we'd had such challenges with initial nervousness that we thought she'd constantly be unhappy in our home. Now we seem to have wrecked it and we're just getting glared at. We're starting to feel like we've broken her, or shaken a screw loose in her brain just by introducing a new game that everyone liked.
There are no known underlying medical issues (was vet checked and vaxxed in early Dec.) and nothing else we know of has changed (no poor treatment or known shocks)
Does anyone have any advice? I've had conflicting advice so far of "Play more" to "Take the string away for good and wait for her to get over it" but I just have no good idea as to what I should do.
1st post so if I've done something wrong here let me know.
