Background, Pt. 2

(Keep in mind that while I'm trying to give a chronologically correct background here, there is definitely some 20/20 hindsight peeking through. Some of what I write about are realizations that I had not yet come to at the time these events happened.)

I'm a little fuzzy on all the specific dates and details, but sometime around Thanksgiving, Big Acoustic Kitty started to pee on the floor. He's elderly and we've been dealing with arthritis issues for a while, so we thought it was just him having problems climbing into his cat box in a timely fashion. But it kept happening. Then it happened multiple times a day. Then it was happening even if he'd managed to use his box recently. We started realizing the sheer volume of the pee that was coming out of him. The we began to notice the volume of water that was going in to him and the drastic reduction in his food intake. Cutting to the chase - we panicked, the vet was consulted and diabetes with a side of pancreatitis was the diagnosis.

Details of the medical stuff can be found over on KittyChair if you go back to late 2009/early 2010 posts. More importantly in regard to this blog's focus is the fact that suddenly we had a male (neutered, but still) cat peeing all over the upstairs. This was the cat that the newbies really didn't have much exposure to, because he was "upstairs kitty" and he was old and blind and cranky and so they didn't spend much time with him. The peeing issues with the downstairs kitties hadn't started at this point, but I still think there was probably a link in there somewhere.

So let's look at what else was going on - finals and end-of-semester stuff with me (which always makes me a super-fun person), Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, then a nice long break after the new year when I got to stay home all day and relax with the kitties ... followed by a sudden change when school started and I was out of the house all day, three or more days a week. The kitties were looking at it like this:

1. Shelter stress
2. New home stress
3. New cat introduction stress
4. Mama's in a pissy mood all the time, is it us? stress.
5. Moving out of our sanctuary room because it's the guest room and strange new people are coming to stay with us for the holidays stress.
6. Cranky cat upstairs peeing on everything stress.
7. Another holiday and those strange people are back again stress.
8. And by the way, what's this fake plastic tree in the living room and what do you mean we can't eat the stuff on it? stress.
9. Ah, Mama's home all the time and the strange people are gone and the pee smell from upstairs is fading. We like this.
10. Where's Mama? Why are we being left alone all day? stress.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, then I got a supposed-to-be-part-time-but-turned-out-to-be-full-time-all-summer-long summer job in March and was home even less. And The Amazing Husbandini found himself working increasingly long hours on a building project at work.

By late winter/early spring, there were some problems developing. Electric Mayhem, who had been the psycho alpha cat when it was just her and Big Acoustic Kitty all those years, and who had tried to be alpha with Ziggy (except that Ziggy, God love him, just opted out of the whole alpha cat drama**) was most definitely NOT the alpha in this new feline group. As a matter of fact, she was heading straight for omega status.

Admittedly, when we first noticed that LGK would stalk and chase EM, we thought it was kind of funny. EM had quickly discovered that she couldn't buffalo BYHM, but she had started hissing and waving paws at LGK to keep him away from her. When he started standing up to her, we were happy that he was coming out of his shell and feeling more at home with everybody. And when the chasing got to be a regular occurrence (usually as part of "the night crazies" that we got to watch every evening after supper) I'm a little ashamed to admit that we told her more than once, "Karma's a bitch, ain't it, little one?" After all those years when she was so mean to BAK, we looked at what was happening as being somewhat justified.

Yeah ... in hindsight, totally the wrong attitude to take.

You know how you "suddenly" notice something? And if you sit down and think about it, you realize that it's been going on for some time? Well, we "suddenly" noticed that if LGK was up and about, EM was hiding out in the basement. Granted, she'd found herself a warm and cozy spot up high, nested in an afghan, but she was indeed hiding out. She'd come upstairs to eat and drink only when the house was quiet and BYHM and LGK was asleep in their kitty trees. Then the stalking moved downstairs.

We had cats laying in wait for one another around corners. We had cats sneaking up on one another. We had cats engaging in not-quite-so-friendly-as-they-used-to-be wrestling matches. We had cats who jumped on their "sister" because the other kitty didn't feel like playing.

Then there were a couple of noisy catfights - low growling that we could hear even upstairs, followed by screaming and the sound of two or more cats tearing around the basement. By the time we got there, everybody had separated and we couldn't tell who had been directly involved and who was just an upset bystander.

It all boils down to the fact that things were going downhill, and we either weren't around enough to notice, were to busy with other things to pay the proper attention, or were too tired to do much about it. I am not happy to admit it, but we were lousy, rotten kitty parents for too long, and by the time we realized just how serious of a problem we had on our hands, it was way past the time for an easy intervention.

But we did start searching for a solution. "All the cat boxes are in the basement", we said. "Let's find a spot for one on the main floor, and hopefully that will help." (Not a bad idea in a multi-cat household, but under the circumstances, this was like spitting in the ocean.) So The Amazing Husbandini went out and bought a super-duper electric cat box and it came to rest in the living room, right next to the couch. (God, I know... ) It did help some, but not enough. And anyway, by that time we had another problem brewing.

Spring had sprung! The weather was turning warm! Life was good! We have a lean-to greenhouse/sunroom thing off the back of the dining room, and ever since BYHM and LGK had first come downstairs, this had been the feline equivalent of Switzerland (neutral territory, not holding chocolate and fine watches). Even if everybody was fighting in the basement, the sunroom was still a peaceful(ish) haven. But as I said, the weather was turning warm. And the neighborhood kitties were starting to roam. Thus began what we simply refer to around here as, "The Incidents".

To be continued...


**Recently, our vet made mention that there are such things as "weak" and "strong" alpha cats. She also said that she though BYHM was a weak alpha. Upon reflection, I think Ziggy was the alpha, but he was such a strong alpha cat that he simply didn't need to throw his (considerable) weight around. He was top cat and he knew it and if EM wanted to be whiny and pissy, that was fine with him.