Pilling a cat

Hurrah! We've pilled Natalie, only three months til we have to do it again.

If you Google "pilling a cat" you get all these pages saying, "pull your cat's head back, open it's jaws, wedge a finger between the jaws, put the pill as far back as you can, close your cat's mouth, massage the neck and the cat will swallow the pill." Or "put the pill in your cat's food bowl, he'll gobble it up!", "coat the pill in butter and the cat will lick it off your hand!", "crush it up and put in some wet food, he'll gobble it up!", "wrap the pill in some chicken, and the cat will gobble it up!".

These people have seriously fucking stupid cats.

That works if your cat smokes a pound of something soporific every day, has no claws and no brain. It sort of works on Nathan, because a) he's a bit stupid and b) he's had more days of his life being pilled, than not.

His sister is a completely different story. She's clever, coating a pill in butter? That doesn't even work on Nathan! Crushing it up and sprinkling it on the food? she knows the food's been messed with, and she's taken to avoiding the food I put out specially for her with the granules pre-sprinkled. She's not keen on food, and doesn't even like wet food. As I've said, this cat FIGHTS. She growls, she squirms, she scratches, she bites. It's scary, it's upsetting and we don't want to do that to her. But she has to be wormed. So this is what we did.

You will need two people. Get a large floor cushion and lay a blanket/rug/towel over it. Chase the cat around the room and then pick it up. Place cat on blanket and hold it down, paws down so it's in a sphinx position; scruffing helps here. Wrap cat up in the blanket, much as you might swaddle a baby, taking care to cover the front paws. We did it so that the person holding the cat, kind of "sat" on the back of it and pulled the head up, making sure to apply pressure across the front of the cat, cat pinned betwixt the thighs. The cat will be growling, miaowing, and in our case, may jump out of the blanket. This took about six goes before we had a swallow.
Continuing, get the cat's head up, get the jaws open, stick the pill in, clamp the mouth shut and rub the neck.

At this point, you release the cat and it spits the pill out.

Rinse and repeat, realise you should get the mouth open using the blunt teeth at the front, thus avoiding piercing your fingers on the canines and giving the cat a little bloody drink.

Success will finally come, after much sweating, fear of breaking said cat, growling, hissing and some scratching.

No worms here though, phew.

Early morning cat farce

This is Natalie a few weeks ago. I swear she's doubled in size since. Remember I was saying she's a cat of extremes? This illustrates the point perfectly and happened a couple of weekends ago.

5.30am, Sunday morning. The sun is just rising and I am awakened by Rob hawking up a loogie. I am somewhat annoyed, but atttempt to settle back down to sleep. As this sort of time was the Early Morning Rampage time when we first had them, I keep an ear open to see if they were being noisy. I intend to let them out in to the house if they are making a ruckus.

Lo! I hear a cat, probably Her, tapping desperately on the locked catflap. We keep them in at night, in their own room, and only let them out when they've eaten and Nathan's had his medication. It is noisy. I am quite paranoid about noise at unsociable hours because our neighbours are very old and very miserable about noise and I don't want them knocking on the walls. Again.

I get up to let the cats into the house. She will NOT leave me alone, following me around, weaving around my legs, desperate, it would seem for some attention. I pet her a bit and return to bed, pulling the bedroom door "to" behind me. I hear them tearing up the carpet a bit and lie with my eyes open in case they start rampaging.

The bedroom door opens, quite quickly and I half-yell "Oh my God." She has opened the door. She jumps on the bed, rubbing up against both Rob and I but refusing to settle. I think maybe she wants to go out for a number 2. I lock Him in the house and let her out the back. I am glad we have so many doors in the house that allow me to effectively create so many airlocks just to allow a cat out for a shit.

She runs outside, sees the fog and feels the chilly air and runs right back between my legs. Repeat the bed exercise. I FINALLY realise she might be hungry, put some food down, they both trough away and I return to bed, shutting them back in their room. I am now wide awake and this has been going on for a full hour. I suggest to Rob that we pill Nathan and chuck them out. Surprisingly, he agrees. We sleep.

Bloody cats.

Sometimes, they make it hard to love them

Here's Nathan this morning on our bed. With my leg. Looks like I'm developing a bit of a bunion there.

Aww, isn't he cute? Doesn't he look relaxed?

It's a LIE!

Later on, I sat on our kitchen step-up (I'm too short to reach the high cupboards) and gave him a brush. He gives every appearance of enjoying being brushed. Then I caught the whiff of cat piss, took a look at his bum and it was distinctly oozy. Sorry, this is disgusting, isn't it? So is living with this cat. I encouraged him to eat some food, then put the light on. He'd dropped two droplets of urine on the floor around where I was sitting. WHY DOES HE DO THIS? I'd dearly love to know. The internet tells me it's stress, feeling that he is not secure in his surroundings, but I just don't know what is causing that. Particularly IN the house when his sister isn't around. I've whacked the Feliway on, as I didn't see the point in having it on with all the windows open and it is so expensive. And maybe I'll have to stop brushing him too? HELP!

Natalie

What can I say about Natalie? She's a cat of extremes. When we first met her at the kitty jail, she was extremely, painfully shy, and pretty much hid in a hidey-hole whenever she could. We were told we'd need to do a lot of work to get her confident around people. I was pondering this when she was first out of the carrier when we got home. Then she took to an "igloo" for two days and nights and when she finally came out and ate while we were in the room, it felt like a major breakthrough.

Then came the phase where she'd allow us to stroke her, but only once a day, when she was lying in a certain position and only for about five minutes. It was a frustrating time, particularly as Nathan was so friendly. She was such a scaredy cat, the two times we've had any work done on the house, and had to shut them in the living room, she hid in the grand piano. IN THE PIANO. Poor little thing, she was terrified! And we were a bit worried about the family heirloom.

Fast forward a few more weeks and it's all so different. She's still a bit scaredy, and will run away if she's not in the mood for attention. But when she wants something, she lets you know. Out of the two of them, she's the one that will follow you around, dogging (surely that should be catting?!) your footsteps, jump all over you. If you're lying down she'll rub her face almost the full length of your body to show you who you belong to. It's sort of nice, because she was so afraid of us before. But it's also INTENSE. I call it lovebombing.

She's the brighter of the two, and got the hang of the cat flaps more quickly and is always desperate to go outside, way more than Nathan. I think she's got a stronger "feral" instinct. They were born outdoors to a domesticated mother but didn't come into contact with humans til they were about 12 weeks. They're really well-behaved, all that considered.

The other thing about Natalie is that she's a little fighter. FIGHTER. We pill Nathan with quite easily really, he doesn't fight us, and doesn't even unsheath his claws when he's trying to push our hands away. When it came to worming time, we didn't think we'd have a problem. Three pills later, and a lot of upset on both sides, we've found something to put on her food. I've also caught on to the fact that she won't eat anything if she's not seen it go from container to bowl (clever, like I said) so I've had to resort to cunning tactics.

She likes hunting flying insects, lying on the stairs, being stroked when she feels like it and climbing trees.

She dislikes being held down to be pilled, being brushed, wet food, the television and loud noises.

Stupid Cat Owner

Nathan's rodent ulcers can be an allergic reaction to food and flea bites. I read on the internet that just one or two flea bites can cause an ulcer to flare up. So, I decided, to be a good cat parent, I'd treat the areas in the house they frequent with flea powder. You simply sprinkle it on to the carpet, leave it a while, then vacuum clean it back up. What could be simpler?

Two hours of vacuuming later, I'm sure we'll be finding those little white granules in our shoes and probably our bed, and it's still not done. I've become the grumpiest person ever known to exist on a bank holiday and the fact remains that we didn't even have fleas.

This is what is called going way too far for your cats.

Nathan

This is Nathan, the boy cat. He is the more friendly of the two, but also more insecure. He has a condition called rodent ulcers, or esinophilic granuloma. It's an allergic reaction, usually to fleas or food. His upper lip swells up and I call him Zoidberg. Rob thinks this is mean, but it's funny. He's less than a year old and spent most of his life having a pill or two rammed down his throat twice a day. Poor kitty. So now, during this latest flare up, we've decided that we're going to try an exclusion diet so he's just eating James Wellbeloved fish dry food night and day. Just this morning, he found a piece of half chewed bread my dad dropped and gobbled it up. He loves food and it's a bit sad that he can't have any ham or chocolate treats which he LOVES. But vet's bills are expensive!

He doesn't like having water sprayed in his face, which happens sometimes when we are pilling him. He also doesn't like being pilled, being grabbed before being pilled, and the bit after the pill has been ingested.

He does like pretending to be a badass by chasing his sister round the house, climbing our fugly faux velvet curtains, lying on windowsills and being brushed. He also likes me a bit too much and has been known to do little urine scent mark on me. He doesn't sit on my lap anymore, dirty bugger.

The Witch's Cats

My partner Rob and I have recently acquired two cats. One of them is black and his name is Nathan. His sister is black with white paws and bib and her name is Natalie. We did not name the cats. We adopted them from the lovely people at Holly Hedge and they've now lived with us for about two months. This will be a good place to chronicle how we all get on.

Here's a picture of my lovely kittehz: