So it’s been almost a month since I first ratted out Princess Pheona’s bad behavior. All had been going well — bed covered, ground void of all soft items, litter box scooped 4839 times a day and completely cleaned out every week. All had been going well until last Monday when the Princess was busted marking the wall in the hallway!! x-( Now this was previously the location of one of our three litter boxes, but why in the hell did she have to reaffirm that this was one of the places that she deems as hers to pee?! There are no windows in the hall through which she could have been showing a neighbour cat that this wall is hers, her box was totally clean not more than 20 feet away, and there hadn’t even been any fights yet that morning to stress her out (thank you Penny and Sophie for waiting until after 6 am to have the first big blow out of the day). With all of these non-issues considered, why the hell Pheona?!
That was the last straw! I had enough! I grabbed Princess stupid Pheona by scruff of the neck, opened the door and tossed her furry ass outside to pee wherever the hell she wants!
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Just kidding!! 😀
Come on! Even I’m not that much of an ass hole. Close, but not quite.
I did however decide that it is finally/definitely time to go to the vet. Like now. Like today.
We made an appointment and went (that Monday night) at a kitty clinic that is awesome because it’s a) less than 2 miles away, b) opens at 6 am and stays open until 11 pm on some nights of the week, and c) is run by an adorable woman that is 3-4 inches shorter (never mind that she also looks about 5 years younger) than me. We went over our list of life transitions that we’ve made over the last 7 months, the very bad behaviors that have developed since making said transitions and what we’ve tried to do stop said bad behaviors. Overall Dr. Adorable said it sounded like the problems was stress related (although Princess did make a blood donation to check for a previously-undetected medical issue — which has since come back normal — and she still needs to make a urine donation — ironic that her blader was too empty to do this on Monday night, eh? — to totally rule out any medical cause of the problem) and that I was doing the right things to try to alleviate the situation. Great, thank you. But, she did recommend a few things that I hadn’t thought of/didn’t know about before to add to our arsenal over the next few weeks–
- Add more shelves/perches where she can sit up high and safely keep watch over her surroundings
- Add more boxes/nooks/crannies where she can burrow in to safely watch over her surroundings
Pheona the Princess bush-dweller
- Burn citrus candles or spray citrus in areas/rooms that she has been peeing because they do not like citrus (I had no idea!!) and wipe down places where she has peed with citrus instead of vinegar — unless I have developed a fondness for the scent of vinegar of course…
- Feliway. Apparently mama cats secrete a “comfort” pheromone after having kittens that comforts and calms the kittens. This pheromone is also secreted when a cat happily rubs against, furniture, legs, etc… Thanks to the wonderful fields of biological and chemical engineering, for $25 (+ shipping and handling for 2-day delivery) we can purchase the plug-in version of this happy pheromone. The plug-in is designed to controlled-release the pheromone to diffuse throughout the apartment and sooth the Prima donas
What? All of your pet products aren’t French? Weirdo.
Ready…set…
…go time!
Our fingers are crossed (but our bed is still covered) that over the next 1-2 months (Really? Really? It really takes that long? what size apartments/houses do these people think we all live in? Never mind the grades on my transcript, but if I remember anything that Cussler tought me the Princess and I would literally have to be living in a castle for it to take that long. I think I smell a money racket — since it can’t be pheromone yet of course…) and we’ll keep you posted on how things go.
DrTrot 