The Very Eventful Lives of the Excellent Cats

[TheShellBeach]

Calling all cats and their overworked slaves - join us as we grudgingly accept that every day is National Cat Day as far as our moggies are concerned.

@SequentialAnalyst both dogs and cats can be trained, but cats tend to be less motivated by praise and food. I like your idea though, but perhaps a slight shift of emphasis? Maybe extravagant praise and treats for both Matt and the dog, respectively for Matt tolerating the dog and for the dog keeping his distance from Matt. A dog would be much more likely to respond positively to a “good boy” for lying down across the room than a cat, which might also be helpful.

A friend of mine has tracker collars on her 2 cats, and she has trained them to come home when she activates the beep on the trackers!

I was v impressed with this, but I think my Siamese would come close enough to give me the fingers and then feck off if I tried that 😸

Ahaha @LilacpointMummy having had a lilac Siamese in the past, you are entirely correct!

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau I take your point, and indeed I do actually think that cats can be trained. However, praise doesn't work on a cat as a reward, whereas it usually does on a dog. Self interest is what works on a cat

Matt is, as we know, Top Cat, however he perhaps needs to feel he is Top Cat (which is, of course, the same as Top Resident) so I think that may have to be demonstrated spatially, as it were, and by order of precedence. And DDog has to learn to know his place relative to Matt, so Matt doesn't have to be bothered by him. (It's a shame Matt doesn't want to play, but at least DDog is trying to be friendly). He is still DDog, still Top Dog, but in a house of cats that doesn't necessarily count as much...

Oh, of course. I think some cats can take praise into account but a “good girl” or “good boy” on its own is never going to do it for a cat. Your dilemma is obviously how to square your dog’s desire for affection with Matt’s stress. I think an additional complicating factor is that cats are much slower to warm up to animals like dogs, who can often chomp them/ squash them soon as look at them if they so please. Your Matt is probably treating the dog with disdain but it’s against a background of the dog outweighing him by several times and being able to hurt him even if he’s exuberantly friendly and means no harm.

Back from the vet.
He doesn't need to see Matt again if all goes ok,but equally admitted we might be back there tomorrow or saturday...
Matt needs to lose weight, which to be honest Iappening happening as he's not keen on the urinary food and actually leaves some in his dish. He was pestering me for his breakfast at 3am though before lying down by me, having ousted Socks from that spot, with the dog on the other side.
I'm also going to redouble efforts to stop the dog teasing him, and yes, dog needs to learn her place and if Matt is by me on the sofa, she'll have to find a different sofa.
There's no one in the family really who could have Matt. One sister is allergic, the other lives at the junction of two busy roads. Nieces and nephew busy with work and young children. Plus I'd still feel I had to pay the vet bills. And it would break my heart. I've already had such a difficult couple of years (family problems and a brain tumour which have both had a massive impact on my mental health, for those who have only joined us recently) that the pets are my life, the only reason to get up some mornings.
If this doesn't work though, and Matt keeps going into spasm, there is the possibility of surgery to remove part of his boy bits, which will cost a couple of grand and with no guarantee of success.

Oh goodness @Papergirl1968, poor you and Matt. Even though it’s difficult for the dog I think the only viable solution is going to be him learning to modify his behaviour. Unfortunately Matt might be still stressed just by the presence of the dog but fingers tightly crossed that you can come to an accommodation.

My first laugh of the morning, thank you!

(Lying in bed with Daisy spread out on my legs.)

I hope the ideas to help Matt feel more secure work, Papergirl1968. I was trying to think back and I'm sure he was more difficult when you first got him. He has shown he can learn things. Hopefully you can find a way to make sure Matt feels in charge. I really really hope things improve.

All my sympathy, @Papergirl1968 - I wish I had some ideas but I have no experience with dogs, let alone dogs and cats together.

I caved. I bought a heated blanket. Toad loves it. I then put it on Frankie's chair but turned off. He still luffs it.

AIUI the thing with DDogs is that, usually, what they really want to do is to please their Person. Even sitting on the other sofa, if Matt's on yours, provided it pleases You. They also like to know what their job is, and prefer to be told what to do, rather than have to take responsibility themselves.

Cats, on the other hand, are natural trainers of other species, and are not afraid to use punishment negative reinforcement if they want to.

It’s all very well for the vet to smugly demonstrate how to give a cat a tablet, aided by a nurse and me holding various flailing limbs of said cat firmly.
I am not an octopus and having tried and failed to hide the tablet in his wet food, I gave him in his dry food and success, he ate it!
The plan is for him to move fully on to urinary wet food but at the moment I’m using a combination of urinary and normal
just to get the darned meds into him. Once the meds are finished, he can can turn his nose up at what’s offered and eat it or go hungry. Until then, compromise!

@Papergirl1968 will he be held, or even wrapped? Our old cat (not Velvet, she even hates being picked up at all to the extent that I’m teaching her to stay of the breakfast bar just by lifting her down carefully, not that she’s taking any notice) was VERY touchy-feely and although he would fight against ingesting a pill with terrible rage, he never seemed to develop an aversion to being wrapped up. At least if there’s a towel you only have to deal with a mouth and not four wriggly paws! I also agree with the PP who spoke about the characters of dogs - sorry to be anthropomorphic but they’ve basically described my personality and if I were the dog I’d be happy to sit across the room if my human wanted it. Like I said though, lots of rewards for dog and cat? Or in this case, dog and Matt ;)

Have you ever tried a pill popper, @Papergirl1968 ? For some cats they help, others not.

Daisy and Phoebe aren't too bad about pills. I do the pinch-the-side-of-the-mouth method to get their jaws open then push the pill right into the back of the mouth. Phoebe fights more than Daisy but luckily she's smaller. I think Daisy's got used to hers (two capsules a day since July). She doesn't like it and will disappear off the bed if she realises what I'm about to do, but doesn't make a huge fuss. She's also always asleep when it's time for her evening pill, so it's easy to nab her.

Bless you @Catsmere keeping that up since July! And Daisy for not clawing you to ribbons. You can use a very (very very) light bilateral squeeze on the mouth to get cats to open up, just as you can slip a finger in a horse’s mouth for them to open for the bit, and also coat the tablet with butter, which alleviates some of the bitterness and makes them slip down as well. I’m dreading the day Velvet gets ill and needs meds as she’s so uncomfortable with restraint :( she loves human company but if she goes to sleep on my feet it is a) an accident and b) a massive step, normally she just likes to lean against me over a couple of blankets, though she loves a good stroke - I doubt anything is going to ever be more adorable than her standing on her hind legs and ever so gently guiding my hands to fuss her face. It makes me melt - if she were a horrible cat I’d still love her, but she is just such an adorable little bundle of fur. Not a bad bone in that little body.

Guiding your hand to her face! That's totally adorable! ❤️❤️❤️

I have used a smear of Vegemite on Phoebe's tablet a few times when she's really not wanted it. The things are allegedly chicken flavoured, but she isn't interested in eating them.

Daisy's (which she'll be on all her life, or at least until they don't work and she has to have a subtotal colectomy) are capsules, so at least there's no nasty flavour to counteract.

God I live in fear of having to give Leroy tablets. He's got big teeth and big claws, and they are very, very sharp 😱 He has absolutely no qualms about using them either 🙈

Because we live in sheltered housing, we've got those careline cords you pull for when you fall over.
I mean, we never use them because we never fall over. Well not yet, anyway.

But just to mix things up a little, and wake me up after I'd fallen asleep tonight, Linney got into the bathroom and pulled the cord (while chasing a spider) so I had to get up and reassure the careline staff that we were fine, and not in extremis, suffering from multiple injuries.

It goes without saying that Mr SB slept through the whole debacle.

Linney, you villain! 😆

Wonder how many times the careline staff have had that sort of apologetic call from cat servants?

She actually said that cats pull them quite often!

I'd bet a million pounds though, that if you HAD fallen, and needed your cat to pull the cord for you, they'd just walk off and then go to sleep on your bed, leaving you in agony on the floor with bilateral hip fractures.

But of course they would! Whaddaya think they are, servants?

Midnight and I had an agreement about pills, which involved prawns. It made her very slightly more tolerant. As they were for kidney failure, and she wasn't supposed to have prawns because high protein, it probably balanced out.

A drop of water on the lips when you have managed to insert the pills is likely (though not guaranteed!) to make the cat swallow. Cats have got the art of retaining pills in their mouths down to a fine art. The pill is, of course, spat out - and then found some while later by the human slave who was congratulating herself on getting said pill down said cat

I just read the more recent posts, well done Linney, excellent catting, annoying and amusing in equal parts, I imagine @TheShellBeach?

I just found this, which I've known in print form at least since the 80s. Enjoy!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC372253/