We have a busy household. There's me, the hubby, my mother in law, the dog, the foster dog, three kitties (one of them is nine weeks old and wants to play vigorously with any moving object), the snakes, the hamster, and my sister in law and her boyfriend visit for several hours almost every evening. There's a lot of activity in the home.
Charlie is a high stress cat. She likes her quiet, she likes her privacy. She's up for a cuddle when the house is quiet and almost always comes up to sleep on the bed once everyone is asleep, but when things are busy she hides. She hides most of the time. She's almost always as far from the activity as she can get. She swipes at anyone who walks too near. She growls and hisses at the other animals if they come close, and goes weeks at a time without allowing anyone to touch her. Yesterday I picked her up to get her out of the kitten's path and she lost it at me.
I try to make a point of taking out the laser pointer (the only toy she plays with consistently) and playing with her on a regular basis. We go through a LOT of feliway (which does take the edge off of her stress). I block the access to the upstairs loft for a few hours every evening so the other animals can't come up to harass her.
She seems so unhappy. She's vetted regularly, and aside from recurring cystitis she's in good health. She's only three. Every time I see her she's curled up far away from everyone, or sitting on the stairs glaring down, waiting for someone to come within five feet of her, at which point she shoots back upstairs and goes back to hiding. Every night I hear Sherpa harassing her. I get up and stop him, but he goes back to it. She cries and growls while he tries to mount her. I haven't found an effective way to make him stop.
I'm starting to wonder if it might be in her best interest for me to look for a home where she can be the only pet. I've never re-homed a dog or a cat and I always swore I wouldn't, but it makes me so unhappy to see her looking so unhappy. She's so loving when it's quiet in the house and she's confident that nobody's going to surprise her.
What can I do for her? Does anyone have suggestions for making Sherpa leave her alone? I can make him play for HOURS in the evening, but he still wants to mount her.
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12/02
). But Paizly also hides when we have company, or the dogs bark (which is a LOT). But as she has gotten older she seems to have chilled out more. I can tell because when I had my friends cat (G) here for 4 months you could see the fear in her eyes. I just kept the temporary cat locked in the room, since he couldn't behave himself. But now she fusses and gets pissy with Jax but all the while her tail is playfully wagging and you can just tell she is relaxed. She's just being a little b*&%#.
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