Is it possible to literally scare the s**t out of a cat?

[mollyblue]

We have two resident cats, a stray cat and her kitten.  The kitten gets along with everyone and spends her time going between mom and the resident cats.  Stray cat gets confined to the back half of the apartment, but she gets to come out twice a day while the other cats are confined either to the bedroom or the balcony.  She has been indoors with us for several months now.  She has come a long way - but she is still very anxious about our other cats.  We have tried slow introductions, but since she was pregnant when we first brought her indoors, and we couldn't have her fully vetted until after her kitten was born, we didn't really try mixing them together for the first six weeks or so.  During her initial confinement, she escaped her enclosure once and went after our ragdoll with the intent to kill.  Luckily we were home when it happened and the physical damage was minimal, but the Ragdoll has never forgotten, and has not forgiven.

Now that kitten is weaned, and momma is fully vetted... and since we are not able to find anyone interested in adopting momma (and haven't really tried to hard on baby), I am wanting to step up progress on introductions.  Its been a mixture of one step up and two steps back.  One resident cat and stray cat have an uneasy truce, but add either of the other two cats into the equation and its pandamonium.  Last night, stray cat escaped her enclosure again and went after the ragdoll who escaped up into my matress.  I put stray cat back in solitary confinement, but Ragdoll wouldn't come out of hiding so I went back to bed.  She woke me up a few hours later and she had loose stinky stool on her tail and bottom... and had pooped on the floor beside her litter box.  Later in the morning, she did use the litter box again.

Was this poop a reaction to being scared?  Another time when she was on the balcony and stray cat was in the living room I was holding her and she smelled really bad like bad gas. Is the runny poo on the floor an escalation of this fear or maybe she has a bug and its not related to the incident with stray cat getting out again?  Sometimes we will put stray cat in the carrier and leave her in the living room with the other cats and Ragdoll will go up and hiss at her.  Othertimes if we are trying to have all of them in the same room, Ragdoll will go hide under the couch and watch her, but she usually comes out pretty quickly once the other cat is locked up again.  

After kitten has been locked up with mom for a few hours, Ragdoll will hiss at her, but quickly resumes playing with her after a few minutes.

 

[pusheen]

Could be fear, although my main experience with cats + extreme fear is pee. There was a case of redirected aggression between two of my cats, and one attacked the other. The cat being attacked wet himself from fear and stress, poor dear. I am inclined to say, yes, it was probably fear/stress that upset her stomach and made her poop outside of the box. 

 

[jmarkitell]

In a nutshell, YES. I have had several of my cats either just let it go wherever they are, or it gets very loose. It is similar to people whenever they get nervous and it affects some people (and cats) more than others. I had a large gray male who was a great cat but if I put him in the car, he would take a poop within 15 minutes. I have also seen it happen when two cats were first introduced without the slow introduction...both cats became "loose" within an hour or so. I have had more of an issue with the cats taking a poop than peeing when stressed, but I think either one could happen when cats are stressed or scared.

   Of course, this is only my "scoop" on the question!

Jim - Master of very bad puns

 

[mollyblue]

My baby ragdoll... I hate it that she is so stressed out by the other cat.  and I hate that the stray cat is so mean.  I mean sometimes she is really nice... I can tell that she is trying, but not hard enough gosh darn it!  Letting her out to build her confidence is in some ways good... but it is also bad because now she tries harder than ever to break out and she is such a wily little thing.  I had her in the carrier one day and she was trying to get out by butting her head against the gate.  when that didn't work, she turned around and was ramming it rear first.  She does the same thing when we have the door shut and she manages to pop it open several times now.