My roommate hates my cat...

[danaekitty]

...and at this point, I can't say I blame her. I've been having problems with Zelda for almost a year now. Here's how they started:

http://www.pets.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=72497

She seemed to calm down throughout the winter, with only a few incidents of pooping on the floor, and those only happened when I spent the night at my boyfriend's or he spent the night at mine, but either way, we were guaranteed a pile if the sleeping situation were anything other than me alone in my bed every night.

My roommate was prepared to deal with the occasional poop on the floor, so no problem there.

Spring rolled around, and she started having more frequent poops, and many were runny and mucousy. The vet diagnosed her with stress-induced colitis, and since it only happens when she gets really stressed, like when I'm not around for a long time or when someone spends the night, the only thing I can do is give her a dose of the probiotic, which helps pretty much immediately.

Currently, she is still pooping on the floor in the same spots about 5x a week, and my roommate informed me last night that she has occasionally peed on the floor in those spots as well, and just last night she peed on my roommate's purse again. She doesn't seem to have the hallucinations anymore.

Last fall when she was having the hallucinations, we started feeding her wet food, and incorporated it into her daily diet. She loved it so much that it seemed to calm her down whenever she was in one of her more stressful states, the food pulled her out of the hallucinations and soothed her for several hours.

I feed her every morning between 9-10am, once again around suppertime, and sometimes again before bed around 11pm. However, she has become obsessed with the wet food now, and anytime one of us even moves from our spot on the couch, Zelda bolts to the fridge and starts screaming for food. She has started jumping all over me and running through the house at top speed and volume, waking us both up every morning at 5am. For awhile, I was getting up to feed her, but this seemed to just encourage her and it got more demanding. I try to lock her out of my bedroom when she gets like this at 5, but Zelda is a bed kitty and obviously has seperation issues, so anytime I lock her out we get a huge pile of poop somewhere in the house.

She is so demanding of her wet food that I'm at my wit's end with her constant vocalizations and her rebellious pooping. The sound of her voice is really irritating me, and although much of the time she is still the sweet and affectionate and hilarious cat that I love, I'm having a real problem liking her these days.

ANY advice will be welcome, please - she is really making our lives miserable and I have no control over her. I have no doubt that her aggressive approach to being fed is totally behavioural, and I have no idea how to handle it.

A few helpful facts:

She is about 6 years old.

I have another cat, Olive, and they've never really gotten along, but they do ok together. Zelda has lately been swatting at Olive for no reason a little more than usual.

I've used the Feliway diffusers in the past, but with summer coming and the windows always open it is not effective.

I tried her on the Amiltriptyline, but she wouldn't take the pills most of the time, and when she did, she just slept for a day straight, and I've heard nothing but the same from others who have gven these meds so I'm not really open to going down that particular road again. Fluoxetine was suggested to me in another thread, but if the problem is behavioural rather than mental, I'd rather try to train her out of it than give her drugs.

I have taken her to the vet 4 times in the last 8 months for these problems, and no physical problem other than a mild UTI that we treated properly when this all first started.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to help me out here. I'm desperate. Getting rid of a cat has never been an option, and still isn't, but I'm not going to deny having these thoughts about poor Zelda. She's making it really hard to live with her right now.

[reanne]

Have you seen more than one vet, for second (third, fourth) opinions on what might be going on, and what to do to help her?

Has her urine been checked again (you didn't do the full treatment the first time, and also even if that cleared up, there is nothign to say that she might not have another one). In geriatric humans, delirium is a VERY common symptom of UTI's, maybe it's one with cats too.

There is another thread on here about a cat defecating all over the house, manic running behaviour, etc, maybe read it to see what she did? It turned out to be behavioural and they started with the cat in a contained area and retrained her.

Not sure what else to say, but ask for more help from your vet. See another vet if you have only seen one. Good luck!

[marko]

This is a tough one, i hope others can help.

A couple of things that come to mind just to get it out of the way...
- How many litterboxes are there? How clean are the litterboxes? are they in trafficky areas? What litter are u using, and have you changed litter recently?

- If the cat is always anxious about the food, and you ALWAYS feed at the same time so that the cat should "know" when it will eat, and does NOT get wet treats that confuse this issue....then I might enquire w/a vet that I trust about the possibility of anti anxiety medication.

- IF the Feliway was helping and you can afford it, a couple of cheap room airconditioners can help w/keeping the windows closed.. (I JUST saw a/c units 5000 BTUs - good enough for a small room for 99 dollars at a few major renovation stores)

- A referred cat behaviourist might be a good idea for a consult.

That's all i got for now, hope it can help - good luck!