Hello everyone. I'm new on this site and I'm also a first-time cat owner. You all probably get lots of questions regarding odd cat behavior but I feel mine takes the cake. In a nutshell, I adopted a feral kitten I found meowing outside my window one Saturday morning. I named her "Bebe" (Spanish for "baby" pronounced with short e, NOT "bee bee"). She has always been a more nervous and anxious-than normal kitten but had been making good progress when she suddenly changed for the worst.
There is not a word in the English language to explain the extremity of her scared behavior these days. She is also very aggressive but in a very creepy, total unacceptable way; she basically gets so incredibly scared, she kind of goes nuts with this wild look in her eyes. She plays frantically and manically with her toys (like having a seizure) and finally it progresses to constant stalking and pouncing aggression with a look so terrified, it's distracting. NOBODY could live with that look and constant hyper paranoid behavior. It's just too much.
She has yet to actually attack me but she's getting bolder every day. Recently, she got so aggressive, she had me locked out of my own office. I spent over three hours trying to calm her down but nothing worked. I lost my patience and rushed in with gloves and violently grabbed her and placed her into her carrier. I also screamed at her very loudly twice. Most animals get over stuff like this. She does not.
If her behavior was over-the-top scared before, it's just nutty now. If I'm in a room with her and she can't get out, she literally scratches the walls violently in a desperate attempt to escape and she won't stop.
I regret yelling at her. It seems to have been the thing that caused all this extreme fear in her. And the aggression before the extreme fear was actually the fear itself causing the aggression. I had done absolutely nothing to cause her to fear me until I yelled at her. Now she won't even look at me. She looks above or to the side of me when I look at her then runs away in terror, spending the next day frantically jumping randomly and scratching walls and wailing in agony. I will admit this is greatly offensive and very depressing to me. I love her so much and now I feel I've lost her. I don't feel there's any hope. I've tried everything and I've concluded it was basically out of my hands as well, meaning she has to be mentally ill. The fighting for her life-like behavior is just way over the top. So much so, I've been forced to keep her in an enclosure where she is actually able to relax a bit and eat. However she hasn't slept a wink in over 3 days because she is anticipating my presence and lays there trembling with her eyes half closed and ears twitching.
What happened? It's as if she's a different cat. I want my Bebe back. I love her and miss her so. I've wept hard the last 48 hours because she now hates me and am a walking terror to her. Are there any techniques out there that have been proven effective for extremely sensitive, very frightened and traumatized, possibly mentally ill cats? The behavior has to be seen to be believed. Everyone I've told is at first incredulous and they say the behavior I describe is common. Then they see what I'm taking about and they tell me, "she's insane. Good luck with that."
There is not a word in the English language to explain the extremity of her scared behavior these days. She is also very aggressive but in a very creepy, total unacceptable way; she basically gets so incredibly scared, she kind of goes nuts with this wild look in her eyes. She plays frantically and manically with her toys (like having a seizure) and finally it progresses to constant stalking and pouncing aggression with a look so terrified, it's distracting. NOBODY could live with that look and constant hyper paranoid behavior. It's just too much.
She has yet to actually attack me but she's getting bolder every day. Recently, she got so aggressive, she had me locked out of my own office. I spent over three hours trying to calm her down but nothing worked. I lost my patience and rushed in with gloves and violently grabbed her and placed her into her carrier. I also screamed at her very loudly twice. Most animals get over stuff like this. She does not.
If her behavior was over-the-top scared before, it's just nutty now. If I'm in a room with her and she can't get out, she literally scratches the walls violently in a desperate attempt to escape and she won't stop.
I regret yelling at her. It seems to have been the thing that caused all this extreme fear in her. And the aggression before the extreme fear was actually the fear itself causing the aggression. I had done absolutely nothing to cause her to fear me until I yelled at her. Now she won't even look at me. She looks above or to the side of me when I look at her then runs away in terror, spending the next day frantically jumping randomly and scratching walls and wailing in agony. I will admit this is greatly offensive and very depressing to me. I love her so much and now I feel I've lost her. I don't feel there's any hope. I've tried everything and I've concluded it was basically out of my hands as well, meaning she has to be mentally ill. The fighting for her life-like behavior is just way over the top. So much so, I've been forced to keep her in an enclosure where she is actually able to relax a bit and eat. However she hasn't slept a wink in over 3 days because she is anticipating my presence and lays there trembling with her eyes half closed and ears twitching.
What happened? It's as if she's a different cat. I want my Bebe back. I love her and miss her so. I've wept hard the last 48 hours because she now hates me and am a walking terror to her. Are there any techniques out there that have been proven effective for extremely sensitive, very frightened and traumatized, possibly mentally ill cats? The behavior has to be seen to be believed. Everyone I've told is at first incredulous and they say the behavior I describe is common. Then they see what I'm taking about and they tell me, "she's insane. Good luck with that."