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- Jan 3, 2010
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A short background - we have three cats (Meowzers, ~4 year old declawed siamese, Lloyd, ~2 year old feral bottle baby DSH, and Moww, ~9 former stray DSH) and three dogs (Sadie, ~7 year old miniature dachshund, Fynn, ~5 year old standard dachshund, and Bruce, ~1.5 year old king shepherd). Lloyd and Bruce are very close, they play together and will sleep together. Meowzers and Lloyd are off an on as to whether they like each other, but most of the time they will sleep together. Moww tolerates everyone unless they come too close to him but he will crawl up and cuddle with the dogs. Sadie doesn't chase the cats at all, but will bark at them when they growl and hiss at each other. Fynn and Lloyd play, but Fynn will chase Meowzers if Bruce starts. Meowzers hates Bruce, he chases her at times but listens when we say "Leave it".
Everyone got along pretty well from the time Moww came home (Aprilish of this year), but after Moww's PU surgery the fighting has been almost daily. About 2 months ago now, we noticed Meowzers had been overgrooming her belly. We never actually saw her doing it up until about a month ago. She now has extremely short hair there. We put Feliway diffusers all over the house but it only made things worse - the fighting increased over the first week, so I unplugged the ones upstairs and left the downstairs ones plugged in. Unplugging the upstairs ones helped a bit, Meowzers spends most of the time up there (it's blocked off so the dogs can't go up there unless we're up there). When the downstairs ones ran out, we just didn't bother refilling them. No difference in the behaviour.
We know why Meowzers is overgrooming herself, Bruce chasing her. They are pretty much never in the same room anymore and we stepped up Bruce's OB so when they are in the same room, he's laying on his bed. Currently, we've been locking Meowzers in the bedroom when we leave - we cannot crate Bruce or lock him in a room - he destroys them (he destroyed 2 heavy duty wire crates, escaping from them and almost seriously injuring himself, when we locked him in a room he ripped up all of the flooring and destroyed the door. He does not try to get into the bedroom when we're gone.
So we have eliminated the source of stress for Meowzers, but things haven't gotten any better for her - she continues to overgroom. When Bruce was actively chasing her (before we realized he was doing that), we noticed that all of the cats were fighting a lot more. So we decided to keep them all separated at night. One of them comes in the bedroom with us, one is kept in a large dog crate downstairs and the other has free roam of the house - it rotates which cat is where but Meowzers is never the one in the crate. The two small dogs are crated in our bedroom and Bruce is also kept in the bedroom (he stays on his bed). When Meowzers is in the bedroom at night, she sleeps under the covers between us.
We are down to our last two options - medicating her or trying a medical food. I think we may try the food first, we've had success with it at the clinic and at this point I'm willing to try anything. I really don't want to have to medicate her, I think it would cause her a lot more stress.
She has been to the vet, nothing is physically wrong with her, bloodwork is great, xrays normal, her belly is not infected from the overgrooming.
I'm here looking for any suggestions to try before resorting to medication.
We have tried:
- reintroducing them over the period of a week
- feliway
- keeping the completely separated (only lasted two days because they kept escaping)
- adding more cat trees
- feeding them separately
- feeding them together (worked best, they all have their own bowls)
- keeping them separated from the dogs
- putting a cone on Meowzers to break the habit, she just went right back to it after
Right now we have/are:
- multiple cat trees on the main floor and a couple upstairs
- a baby gate blocking the stairs so the dogs can't go upstairs
- separating the cats at night
Everyone got along pretty well from the time Moww came home (Aprilish of this year), but after Moww's PU surgery the fighting has been almost daily. About 2 months ago now, we noticed Meowzers had been overgrooming her belly. We never actually saw her doing it up until about a month ago. She now has extremely short hair there. We put Feliway diffusers all over the house but it only made things worse - the fighting increased over the first week, so I unplugged the ones upstairs and left the downstairs ones plugged in. Unplugging the upstairs ones helped a bit, Meowzers spends most of the time up there (it's blocked off so the dogs can't go up there unless we're up there). When the downstairs ones ran out, we just didn't bother refilling them. No difference in the behaviour.
We know why Meowzers is overgrooming herself, Bruce chasing her. They are pretty much never in the same room anymore and we stepped up Bruce's OB so when they are in the same room, he's laying on his bed. Currently, we've been locking Meowzers in the bedroom when we leave - we cannot crate Bruce or lock him in a room - he destroys them (he destroyed 2 heavy duty wire crates, escaping from them and almost seriously injuring himself, when we locked him in a room he ripped up all of the flooring and destroyed the door. He does not try to get into the bedroom when we're gone.
So we have eliminated the source of stress for Meowzers, but things haven't gotten any better for her - she continues to overgroom. When Bruce was actively chasing her (before we realized he was doing that), we noticed that all of the cats were fighting a lot more. So we decided to keep them all separated at night. One of them comes in the bedroom with us, one is kept in a large dog crate downstairs and the other has free roam of the house - it rotates which cat is where but Meowzers is never the one in the crate. The two small dogs are crated in our bedroom and Bruce is also kept in the bedroom (he stays on his bed). When Meowzers is in the bedroom at night, she sleeps under the covers between us.
We are down to our last two options - medicating her or trying a medical food. I think we may try the food first, we've had success with it at the clinic and at this point I'm willing to try anything. I really don't want to have to medicate her, I think it would cause her a lot more stress.
She has been to the vet, nothing is physically wrong with her, bloodwork is great, xrays normal, her belly is not infected from the overgrooming.
I'm here looking for any suggestions to try before resorting to medication.
We have tried:
- reintroducing them over the period of a week
- feliway
- keeping the completely separated (only lasted two days because they kept escaping)
- adding more cat trees
- feeding them separately
- feeding them together (worked best, they all have their own bowls)
- keeping them separated from the dogs
- putting a cone on Meowzers to break the habit, she just went right back to it after
Right now we have/are:
- multiple cat trees on the main floor and a couple upstairs
- a baby gate blocking the stairs so the dogs can't go upstairs
- separating the cats at night
