Pets | DrTrot

Tag Archives: Pets

February 9, 2014 · 12:11 pm

An update on the Princess Pheona

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!

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 Princess felines that live there. Said soothed kitty-cats are then less inclined to pee in stupid/irritating places. Supposedly. Our Feliway arrived yesterday and was out of the box and plugged in ~0.0234 seconds of arrival.

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.

Pheona has been seriously pissing me off! HELP!

Since moving in with our new housemates, things have been a little rough. For both of us.

Has a human, I avoid being home, complain to my friends and eventually say nasty things to two particular individuals when living conditions plummet below what I am willing to endure.

As a cat, Pheona pees on things. Lots of things. On the roommates’ couches, laundry, cosmetics and bed. And on my bed. With or without me in it. x-(

As it is, I usually only get between 5 and 6 hrs of sleep a night. It isn’t much, but fine, this is what I signed up for at this point. However, having to sleep on the floor because my mattress is still wet with the vinegar solution I used to scrub it, or being chilly because I’m only covered with some fleece blankets I could scrounge up after she somehow manage to soil not one, but both of my down comforters, or when I’m already putting up with both of the above and I wake up to this blunt tool of an animal pissing ON ME in my crappy (and now pee-y), make-shift nest… Let’s just that I have never before been so close to owning a pair of beautiful grey fur mittens as I was that day.

After both surviving the immediate minutes, hours and few days following we have been taking steps to try to solve this problem.

1. The bed is now covered at all times (aside from when I am sleeping in it) with a most hideous plastic mattress cover from an equally hideous discount store from which I refuse to admit making this purchase…

2. All items are kept off of the floor, bed, desk, chair or anything else that the princess could climb into and pee on and put in the closet or piled on the clothes drying rack…

3. We have come to accept that the cheap down comforter will be washed on a weekly basis with no hopes of it lasting through to next winter.

4. The precious German down comforter will not see the light of day once it returns from the cleaners.

5. Laundry detergent will be purchased on a monthly basis in volumes that I previously would not have been able to use in a year.

6. The litter box is scooped twice a day and the litter is completely changed and box is washed once every 2 weeks

But wait? What? What is that Princess Pheona?… That still isn’t enough?!?!

It is in fact apparently not enough as this morning I again woke up to her peeing in my bed. x-(

SO, tonight a new mission has begun.

So far we have done the following:

1. Cleaned the bathroom.
2. Cleaned the litter box.
3. Sprayed the litter box with some litter-box-freshener spray (the pet product market is seriously something else…but that is for another post…)
4. We have lined the litter box with a fresh sent litter box liner (for easy litter removal and replacement
5. We have changed to a new litter that is more clumping, does “DOUBLE DUTY! ELIMINATES BOTH! Feces odors and urine odors!” and is conveniently sold in value size boxes (typically bought by cat ladies with more cats than she can remember names for)

Hopefully this will finally be enough for the princess. If it isn’t, hopefully she will grow some English language skills (or Spanish or German or Bengali or Russian … I’m not picky) and tells me WTF she needs!

In the mean time, if anyone is interested in consulting for the doctor, I’d love love love any suggestions/recommendations/tips to help put an end to this once and for all!