My Promise is getting more and more skittish and I'm wondering if anyone can offer suggestions.
I got Promise as a kitten, and with the exception of maybe the first 6 months of her life, she has always been pretty skittish. My mother has never seen anything other than her (extremely large) eyes peering out from under the bed when she has come over. My friend Susan has been dropping by my apartment pretty much every night for the past 5 years, and she's only been able to pet Promise a handful of times during all of those visits. Promise also runs and hides whenever I pull out the vacuum cleaner, and typically she won't come back out for a good 4-6 hours even after I put it away. She's never been skittish with me though. She frequents my lap, runs over to be petted when I walk by, sleeps on the bed most every night, etc.
So that's been the normal state of affairs for the last 6+ years, but lately she has been getting worse. The first sign of trouble manifested sometime shortly after Christmas. I noticed that she had a bare patch of fur on her right hip. I took her in to the vet and the doctor didn't detect any sign of parasites. She recommended that I try an antihistamine in case it was some type of allergic reaction and apply a topical flea medication, just in case. The treatments didn't help, but with Tre's sudden death, I neglected the problem for a while.
Now, the bare patch is getting larger and I'm starting to see other behavioral problems. Whenever Susan knocks on the door, she'll instantly go flying under the bed and she won't come back out for some time. She used to at least wait until someone walked in the room before running away. This is especially problematic when I'm feeding the cats because I can only put the food out for half an hour at any time since I have to lock Tiny and Thufir away for their diet. She's also pretty neurotic about the food bowl. Her typical routine is that she'll eat 3 or 4 bites and then follow me to where ever I'm going and hang out. When I walk towards the kitchen to put the food away, she'll rush past me and take a few more bites, then walk away, and repeat over and over again. She has always done that to some extent, but again, she seems to be getting worse about it. There are some meals where we'll spend 10 minutes going back and forth in this manner before she'll finally let me put the bowl away.
Maybe one of the worst problems that I have seen developing is with her toys. She has always loved the wand-type toys. When I walk through the den, she'll jump up on the table where I store those toys and beg me to pull them out and play with her. Lately, as soon as I actually pick the toy up and start swinging it around, she takes off running. She still jumps up and begs me to get the toys out, but she doesn't actually play with them since she runs away.
I picked up a Feliway plug-in yesterday and I'm hoping that that will help calm her down a little bit. I'm going to schedule another appointment at the vet to see if she can offer any other help. I've heard of cats being prescribed the equivalent of valium, but that seems pretty radical and I'd like to see if I can solve the problem with something a bit more gentle. Can anyone recommend anything else that I might try to help Promise out?
I got Promise as a kitten, and with the exception of maybe the first 6 months of her life, she has always been pretty skittish. My mother has never seen anything other than her (extremely large) eyes peering out from under the bed when she has come over. My friend Susan has been dropping by my apartment pretty much every night for the past 5 years, and she's only been able to pet Promise a handful of times during all of those visits. Promise also runs and hides whenever I pull out the vacuum cleaner, and typically she won't come back out for a good 4-6 hours even after I put it away. She's never been skittish with me though. She frequents my lap, runs over to be petted when I walk by, sleeps on the bed most every night, etc.
So that's been the normal state of affairs for the last 6+ years, but lately she has been getting worse. The first sign of trouble manifested sometime shortly after Christmas. I noticed that she had a bare patch of fur on her right hip. I took her in to the vet and the doctor didn't detect any sign of parasites. She recommended that I try an antihistamine in case it was some type of allergic reaction and apply a topical flea medication, just in case. The treatments didn't help, but with Tre's sudden death, I neglected the problem for a while.
Now, the bare patch is getting larger and I'm starting to see other behavioral problems. Whenever Susan knocks on the door, she'll instantly go flying under the bed and she won't come back out for some time. She used to at least wait until someone walked in the room before running away. This is especially problematic when I'm feeding the cats because I can only put the food out for half an hour at any time since I have to lock Tiny and Thufir away for their diet. She's also pretty neurotic about the food bowl. Her typical routine is that she'll eat 3 or 4 bites and then follow me to where ever I'm going and hang out. When I walk towards the kitchen to put the food away, she'll rush past me and take a few more bites, then walk away, and repeat over and over again. She has always done that to some extent, but again, she seems to be getting worse about it. There are some meals where we'll spend 10 minutes going back and forth in this manner before she'll finally let me put the bowl away.
Maybe one of the worst problems that I have seen developing is with her toys. She has always loved the wand-type toys. When I walk through the den, she'll jump up on the table where I store those toys and beg me to pull them out and play with her. Lately, as soon as I actually pick the toy up and start swinging it around, she takes off running. She still jumps up and begs me to get the toys out, but she doesn't actually play with them since she runs away.
I picked up a Feliway plug-in yesterday and I'm hoping that that will help calm her down a little bit. I'm going to schedule another appointment at the vet to see if she can offer any other help. I've heard of cats being prescribed the equivalent of valium, but that seems pretty radical and I'd like to see if I can solve the problem with something a bit more gentle. Can anyone recommend anything else that I might try to help Promise out?
