Feliway-experiences and opinions?

[Bluesheep8]

Hello, following on from my pooing in the bath thread, on which I've received some great advice, I'm wondering if a feliway plug in could help my stressed cat in the short term until I can look into having a microchip cat flap fitted. Just wondered if you'd used it and what your experience was? Thanks

I tried the diffuser with my exceptionally nervous rescue cat & it made no difference.
A friend has recommended the spray which I haven't tried.

However she loves strong smelling catnip toys which really chill her out. Apparently catnip is effective in 50% of cats.

Here's a pic of Ebony looking scared!!

Ps she refuses to go outside too

I'm totally on the fence about it, not convinced it makes any difference. Pet Remedy which is a similar plug-in seems to work better but that may just be me thinking it because I can actually smell it too...

You could also try Zylkene capsules sprinkled on food, they help with calming in stressful situations/times of change etc.

My experience with Feliway is that it makes absolutely no difference.

One of mine is very nervous, started marking everywhere. So I have trawled the internet and have tried

Feliway - no
Zylkene - for some not when very nervous
Kalm for cats - same as Zylkene, a little better
Colostrum - some have very good experiences with this (it is said to be an ingredient in Zylkene) worked a little for us, but not ground breaking
Bach Rescue remedy animal - better than all mentioned above, but

It got so bad that we ended up finding a vet who gave our dcat ads (very, very hard here, they will only give ads to dogs). It was our ultimate go and it worked wonders 😀.

I don't know your story and how bad things are, but this is my experience, a very costly one, so I hope I save you some money. Whatever is bugging your dcat needs removing, otherwise nothing works.
I would try Bachs at first (not in water, on a little bit of food), good luck.

Oh forgot, we use this food absolutely gold for nervous cats 😀.
Royal canin has their own version, a lot more expensive.

Background is that he's pooing in the bath, his routine has changed suddenly as DP worked from home all the time the cat has been with us and started a new job last week so the cat is alone all day for the first time and is upset about it

I found pet remedy more effective than Felixstowe. Zyklene also helped. My parents very highly strung cat is is much better on zyklene.

Feliway no use at all here. Had them pugged in every room, cost a fortune
Cat still pees where she shouldn't

We found there was a marked improvement when we installed a Feliway Friends after we lost our oldest cat. The other two will never be actual friends but they tolerate each other and the pooing in the house stopped virtually overnight.

Feliway, zyljebe etc do work - there’s clinical evidence for them, however they are not a magic anti-anxiety treatment. Whether they work in your situation or not will depend on:
How stressed your cat is
What the trigger is
Whether you’re addressing the root cause of the stress

E.g if you have a cat who is urinating outside the litter tray because there are inadequate trays/she doesn’t like the litter/the tray is in a busy location, then feliway is unlikely to ‘fix’ that. You need to address the underlying triggers.

However if you have a cat who is spraying due to anxiety over a change in the scent profile of the house (redecorating/visitors/new cat in the area) then feliway is a much more appropriate therapy as it works by normalising the scent profile

I found Feliway useful to settle my very nervous rescue cats, and Zylkene for a couple of days before and after their MoT at the vets. But like all drugs/supplements, they work better or worse depending on the individual.

Slightly surprised at the pp saying she found it hard to get ADs from the vet for her cat. DBro had 3 cats at one stage, 2 young siblings and an elderly girl. All was fine until the old one died, then the boy got more & more agressive with the remaining girl. The vet put him onto ADs pretty quickly, though it didn't have enough effect & they ended up having to rehome him as an only cat.

allergic not uk, Scandinavia. My dd is a vet. student, ads for cats is not a thing here. Hope it gets better, even though vets don't have much experience in ads, surely they could study cases from the US where it is not a new thing .

Meant to say dd is not being taught about ads.