- Joined
- Dec 8, 2015
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- 2
- Purraise
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Before I get into the situation at hand, here is a little background information:
July of this year, I found a tiny black and white kitten on the edge of our property. She was skin and bones, filthy, covered in fleas, very dehydrated in the 90 degree southern summer, and had a very irritated and swollen anus (and had actually lost all of the hair surrounding her rectum and under her tail) due to sitting in her own mess for so long. I immediately took her inside and bathed her in some mild dish soap (took 4 baths to get all of the fecal matter and urine that was matted in her fur out) and called my vet. They had closed for the day, but the vet tech I spoke to instructed me to clean her as best I could, give her wet food and water and bring her in first thing the next day, or to the local emergency clinic if she took a turn for the worse. That night, I spent 3 hours removing fleas by hand with a fine tooth comb and tweezers to try and give her some relief from the itching, as she was obviously too little to use flea shampoo on. She made it through the night and I took her to the vet as soon as they opened. She weighed in at only 12 ounces, and my vet estimated that she was only 2 or 3 weeks old at most. They de-wormed her, gave her all of her shots except for her rabies/distemper vaccination because they wanted her to be at least a pound before it and to not overwhelm her tiny body with too much in one trip, tested her for feline AIDS and Leukemia in which she came back negative, and set her up with a follow up appointment for 2 weeks later.
Over those next two weeks, I introduced her to our cats Juliet (5 year old female) and Finn (1 year old male) who embraced her as part of their little house cat pride and have had a ball co-parenting her ever since. She got the rest of her shots on her next vet visit and weighed in at just over a pound after two weeks of chowing down on 2 cans of wet kitten food a day and high quality (and high priced!) dry food to graze on. Though her bottom's swelling went down and healed, for the next two months my fiance and I were a constant clean up crew for this little kitten we named Pandora. Due to the trauma her rectum went through and the extreme dehydration, it took quite a while for her to gain full control over her bowels. Her feces were always runny, and try as she might to get to one of the the litter boxes in time, she nearly always ended up with it running down her legs and dribbling across the carpet. When she got to be about 4 to 4 1/2 months old, the accidents stopped and we started planning to get her fixed. When we took her in for her check up and to set up her spay appointment, the vet was hesitant to go ahead with the procedure. She was concerned that Pandora was still very small for her age, and considered underweight for her age as well by several pounds despite her healthy appetite and regular feedings. She advised that we give her another month or so to put on some more weight and get a little bigger, and to start giving her a vitamin supplement and extra protein to help her growth. Although she is likely to be a small cat even when she is fully grown, our vet believed that being so malnourished and experiencing such severe dehydration at such a young age had more than likely delayed her growth a bit, and she wanted for Pandora to be as healthy as possible before her spay. Obviously, we only want what is best for Pandora, so we agreed to hold off on the spay and bring her back to the vet 6 weeks later for another check up.
The current situation:
We took Panda (Pandora's nickname) to the vet for her appointment this past Friday (December 4th). She is somewhere between 5 and 6 months old at this point. The vet was super pleased with her progress and that the vitamin supplements do indeed seem to be helping to stimulate her growth some. She's gained about a pound a week since her last visit, and is finally starting to look like a kitten her age should. We scheduled her spay for right after the first of the year, as this month is a very hectic time for our household with family and friends coming in and out of town to stay with us and I want to be able to schedule the procedure for when I or my fiance will still be home to look after her for at least the first few days after. Panda is a sociable little kitty once she's used to you, but she gets quite nervous around strangers, and I don't want to put her under any extra stress while she's healing.
So, this past Sunday night, Pandora started acting very strangely. She kept wandering into the bathroom off of our bedroom (which faces the neighbor's house and the side of our property where I first found her, and the stray cats in the area have been known to live under the neighbor's shed, which is more than likely where she herself was born) and yowling/warbling at the top of her lungs. I cleaned the litter box in that bathroom again, thinking maybe she was being picky about it's condition as she is finicky about which litter box and when she wants to use, but the calls continued. Once it got to be about 11 at night and time for bed, I kenneled (we have a small, partially enclosed kennel we call the cat cave; for the record, all our cats see the kennel as a safe place and it is NEVER used for punishment) her in our room and she calmed right down and snuggled up on her blankie for the night. The next morning, I opened up the kennel and fed them all breakfast as usual. She ate normally and behaved like herself, so I brushed the previous nights meowfest off as her more than likely chasing a bug or something that I didn't see myself and went to work.
My fiance called me on my lunch break to tell me that she was doing the yowling thing in the bathroom on and off, was being super affectionate to him (like he could hardly sit down for more than a minute before she was desperately trying to crawl into his lap or weaving herself around his feet while purring like crazy), and chirping at Finn and rolling around at his feet, much to his confusion. (Finn was adopted from the local shelter at 4 months old; he and our other female are both fixed) At this point, I kinda started to get the feeling that she was more than likely going into her first heat. Growing up, I often spent a weekend a month with my aunt who breeds show quality Persians, so I am pretty familiar with what cats in heat look (and sound) like. When I got home that evening, I got down in the floor with her and gave her lots of pets and attention. I scratched her back around her tail, as my aunt taught me to do when I was younger, and did notice that she moved her tail up and aside and curled her rear upwards, but she wasn't lowering her chest to the floor with her butt in the air or doing the walk out motion with her hind legs. She was quiet all evening, though more playful and restless than usual for sure, but I've kept and eye and ear out none the less.
Last night, I was woken up at 4am to the sound of Panda incessantly mewing and chirping at Finn, rolling all around him and driving him nuts. He was nipping her ears and neck, would wrestle with her for a few seconds, then walk away a few feet to lay down and try to go back to sleep, only to have her literally drag and wiggle her way across the carpet again to continue her cooing and submissive displays. He was getting quite annoyed with her and was responding to her "advances" for lack of a better words with what I call corrective play; he wasn't trying to hurt her, but his demeanor was sending the message of "stop bothering me." Considering he is more than twice her size, I decided to kennel her for the remainder of the night. I didn't want to run the risk of him hurting her by accident if she kept persisting. Again, she settled down once in the kennel and seemed to finally rest.
Today, it's been more of the same type of behavior and has escalated to her going into the frog pose, butt in the air and trying her darnedest to get Finn to mount her. She's only gone into the bathroom to yowl twice today though, which I imagine might be the result of a local tom catching her scent somehow and spaying around our house, which would explain why the calling has been exclusive to that bathroom. The strange thing I'm noticing is that, unlike my prior experiences with queens in heat, what Pandora is going through seems to be very mild in comparison. She'll have an hour or so where she is just crawling out of her skin trying to get Finn's attention, rubbing her butt all over him and making pitiful little mews, and then have several hours where she's just curling up to sleep or bringing me a toy to play fetch with and generally acting like her normal self. It's almost as if she's slipping into heat a few times a day, and then out of it the majority, which isn't something I've witnessed before.
I am curious whether she might not be in full heat yet and this is all just a precursor, or if the first heat is typically more mild inherently, or if perhaps her body is trying to go into heat but isn't entirely capable yet due to her small size or some underlying factor. If anyone has any information or experience to impart to me, I would appreciate it greatly. I tend to be an easily panicked animal mom, so a part of me thinks that this is all completely normal and the other part of me is freaking out that something could be wrong. Whatever the case, if she's still slipping in and out of this sort of behavior or if it becomes more intense come Friday, I'm going to see if I can bring her back to the vet just in case something is up or to get conformation about what exactly is going on. Any comments or advice to soothe my worried mind in the mean time?
July of this year, I found a tiny black and white kitten on the edge of our property. She was skin and bones, filthy, covered in fleas, very dehydrated in the 90 degree southern summer, and had a very irritated and swollen anus (and had actually lost all of the hair surrounding her rectum and under her tail) due to sitting in her own mess for so long. I immediately took her inside and bathed her in some mild dish soap (took 4 baths to get all of the fecal matter and urine that was matted in her fur out) and called my vet. They had closed for the day, but the vet tech I spoke to instructed me to clean her as best I could, give her wet food and water and bring her in first thing the next day, or to the local emergency clinic if she took a turn for the worse. That night, I spent 3 hours removing fleas by hand with a fine tooth comb and tweezers to try and give her some relief from the itching, as she was obviously too little to use flea shampoo on. She made it through the night and I took her to the vet as soon as they opened. She weighed in at only 12 ounces, and my vet estimated that she was only 2 or 3 weeks old at most. They de-wormed her, gave her all of her shots except for her rabies/distemper vaccination because they wanted her to be at least a pound before it and to not overwhelm her tiny body with too much in one trip, tested her for feline AIDS and Leukemia in which she came back negative, and set her up with a follow up appointment for 2 weeks later.
Over those next two weeks, I introduced her to our cats Juliet (5 year old female) and Finn (1 year old male) who embraced her as part of their little house cat pride and have had a ball co-parenting her ever since. She got the rest of her shots on her next vet visit and weighed in at just over a pound after two weeks of chowing down on 2 cans of wet kitten food a day and high quality (and high priced!) dry food to graze on. Though her bottom's swelling went down and healed, for the next two months my fiance and I were a constant clean up crew for this little kitten we named Pandora. Due to the trauma her rectum went through and the extreme dehydration, it took quite a while for her to gain full control over her bowels. Her feces were always runny, and try as she might to get to one of the the litter boxes in time, she nearly always ended up with it running down her legs and dribbling across the carpet. When she got to be about 4 to 4 1/2 months old, the accidents stopped and we started planning to get her fixed. When we took her in for her check up and to set up her spay appointment, the vet was hesitant to go ahead with the procedure. She was concerned that Pandora was still very small for her age, and considered underweight for her age as well by several pounds despite her healthy appetite and regular feedings. She advised that we give her another month or so to put on some more weight and get a little bigger, and to start giving her a vitamin supplement and extra protein to help her growth. Although she is likely to be a small cat even when she is fully grown, our vet believed that being so malnourished and experiencing such severe dehydration at such a young age had more than likely delayed her growth a bit, and she wanted for Pandora to be as healthy as possible before her spay. Obviously, we only want what is best for Pandora, so we agreed to hold off on the spay and bring her back to the vet 6 weeks later for another check up.
The current situation:
We took Panda (Pandora's nickname) to the vet for her appointment this past Friday (December 4th). She is somewhere between 5 and 6 months old at this point. The vet was super pleased with her progress and that the vitamin supplements do indeed seem to be helping to stimulate her growth some. She's gained about a pound a week since her last visit, and is finally starting to look like a kitten her age should. We scheduled her spay for right after the first of the year, as this month is a very hectic time for our household with family and friends coming in and out of town to stay with us and I want to be able to schedule the procedure for when I or my fiance will still be home to look after her for at least the first few days after. Panda is a sociable little kitty once she's used to you, but she gets quite nervous around strangers, and I don't want to put her under any extra stress while she's healing.
So, this past Sunday night, Pandora started acting very strangely. She kept wandering into the bathroom off of our bedroom (which faces the neighbor's house and the side of our property where I first found her, and the stray cats in the area have been known to live under the neighbor's shed, which is more than likely where she herself was born) and yowling/warbling at the top of her lungs. I cleaned the litter box in that bathroom again, thinking maybe she was being picky about it's condition as she is finicky about which litter box and when she wants to use, but the calls continued. Once it got to be about 11 at night and time for bed, I kenneled (we have a small, partially enclosed kennel we call the cat cave; for the record, all our cats see the kennel as a safe place and it is NEVER used for punishment) her in our room and she calmed right down and snuggled up on her blankie for the night. The next morning, I opened up the kennel and fed them all breakfast as usual. She ate normally and behaved like herself, so I brushed the previous nights meowfest off as her more than likely chasing a bug or something that I didn't see myself and went to work.
My fiance called me on my lunch break to tell me that she was doing the yowling thing in the bathroom on and off, was being super affectionate to him (like he could hardly sit down for more than a minute before she was desperately trying to crawl into his lap or weaving herself around his feet while purring like crazy), and chirping at Finn and rolling around at his feet, much to his confusion. (Finn was adopted from the local shelter at 4 months old; he and our other female are both fixed) At this point, I kinda started to get the feeling that she was more than likely going into her first heat. Growing up, I often spent a weekend a month with my aunt who breeds show quality Persians, so I am pretty familiar with what cats in heat look (and sound) like. When I got home that evening, I got down in the floor with her and gave her lots of pets and attention. I scratched her back around her tail, as my aunt taught me to do when I was younger, and did notice that she moved her tail up and aside and curled her rear upwards, but she wasn't lowering her chest to the floor with her butt in the air or doing the walk out motion with her hind legs. She was quiet all evening, though more playful and restless than usual for sure, but I've kept and eye and ear out none the less.
Last night, I was woken up at 4am to the sound of Panda incessantly mewing and chirping at Finn, rolling all around him and driving him nuts. He was nipping her ears and neck, would wrestle with her for a few seconds, then walk away a few feet to lay down and try to go back to sleep, only to have her literally drag and wiggle her way across the carpet again to continue her cooing and submissive displays. He was getting quite annoyed with her and was responding to her "advances" for lack of a better words with what I call corrective play; he wasn't trying to hurt her, but his demeanor was sending the message of "stop bothering me." Considering he is more than twice her size, I decided to kennel her for the remainder of the night. I didn't want to run the risk of him hurting her by accident if she kept persisting. Again, she settled down once in the kennel and seemed to finally rest.
Today, it's been more of the same type of behavior and has escalated to her going into the frog pose, butt in the air and trying her darnedest to get Finn to mount her. She's only gone into the bathroom to yowl twice today though, which I imagine might be the result of a local tom catching her scent somehow and spaying around our house, which would explain why the calling has been exclusive to that bathroom. The strange thing I'm noticing is that, unlike my prior experiences with queens in heat, what Pandora is going through seems to be very mild in comparison. She'll have an hour or so where she is just crawling out of her skin trying to get Finn's attention, rubbing her butt all over him and making pitiful little mews, and then have several hours where she's just curling up to sleep or bringing me a toy to play fetch with and generally acting like her normal self. It's almost as if she's slipping into heat a few times a day, and then out of it the majority, which isn't something I've witnessed before.
I am curious whether she might not be in full heat yet and this is all just a precursor, or if the first heat is typically more mild inherently, or if perhaps her body is trying to go into heat but isn't entirely capable yet due to her small size or some underlying factor. If anyone has any information or experience to impart to me, I would appreciate it greatly. I tend to be an easily panicked animal mom, so a part of me thinks that this is all completely normal and the other part of me is freaking out that something could be wrong. Whatever the case, if she's still slipping in and out of this sort of behavior or if it becomes more intense come Friday, I'm going to see if I can bring her back to the vet just in case something is up or to get conformation about what exactly is going on. Any comments or advice to soothe my worried mind in the mean time?
