Feliway - explain it to me please [smile]

[tabulahrasa]

I've got a six year old Siamese (Willow) and a five month DSH (Flump), both female

Willow did not take kindly to the kitten invader, lol, we got her at 6 weeks, so what 3 and a 1/2 months ago?

anyway... Flump's settled in fine, Willow has seemed to accept her now, though she still get's the hump when Flump goes into hyper kitten mode

Willow isn't herself though, she's a bit subdued, has had conjunctivitis a couple of times, is losing weight and her coat's dull, she seems to be eating and drinking fine and there's nothing else about her that's odd (that's not usually that is, rofl)

This is all since we got Flump and in that time we also had to have our dog put to sleep - so working on the assumption that it's most likely to be stress related, the vet suggested Feliway (she's having her conjunctivitis treated and has been examined and is having an eye kept on her)

I bought a plug in yesterday... what I want to know is (longest post ever to get to the point? lol) if it gives of artificial face rubbing pheromones - why would that make her less stressed? As they're not her pheromones and she doesn't do face rubbing, not on objects or people - does that not just introduce more strange scent marks or even worse Flump scent marks?

Or am I not understanding something or just overthinking it? lol

Hi

From what I understand feliway is used a lot for cats when there is issues with fireworks etc if there was a potential issue with cats face rubbing pheromones I don't think it would sell as much as the majority of cats are territorial and so wouldn't get on with it. A lot of vets and pet shops reccomend it for issues such as yours so I would assume it would be fine.

I know you have to leave a couple of days for it to totally work.

Does their webiste say anything? Can you phone your local vets and ask. They are normally helpful over the phone.

HTH

I've heard it works well and I'm not actually worried it'll make things worse as such.

Just how it says it works to me makes it sound like it shouldn't work, so I was hoping someone might actually know how it works, lol.

It's one of these things that doesn't matter in the slightest, but it's bugging me because I don't understand it

It produces generic phermones that make nearly all cats happy.

We use it in the clinic in the kennels of nervous cats, I use it at home when beautiful moggy girl gets her stress cystitis.