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Anxious
I'm feeling slightly nervous about moving Jasmine to Kerino, and read Vicky Hall's book Cat Confidential in an attempt to reassure myself. What a mistake that was.
Ms. Hall's book is no doubt very wise: filled with snapshots of her own cats, it's a testament to someone who has spent her career trying to patch up the relationship between cats and humans. And I'm left wondering whether cats EVER get anything from the relationship?
Apparently, crap diarist that I am, I didn't blog this at the time, so I will now. Jazzy moved here just fine. A night in a hotel, nine hours in a cat carrier, not a problem. Until we'd been here about a month when, looking out of the kitchen window, she came face to face with Evil Blackie from down the road. My window got smeared with cat spit on both sides, but eventually Blackie ran off. And my beautiful little Jazzy turned into the Cat From Hell.
I'd always been slightly mystified by people who said they were afraid of being attacked by their cats. But now I knew exactly what they meant, and the scars on my arms and legs looked more like self-harm damage than the work of a furry cute thing. Nothing worked: time out shut in another room, talking to her, ignoring her, yelling at her, crying... Anything I did made it worse.
After talking to some cat loving friends, however, I came to the conclusion that she was bored. The gite is much smaller than the flat was, and she doesn't have a balcony. There is much less going on outside the windows here: no people or cars, or dogs which appear to fascinate her. The fight with Blackie was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a month, and she wanted to recreate it.
I'd resisted letting her outside because we're only going to be here three months in total, and I didn't think it was worth it. How wrong I was. I let her into the garden, and she instantly became calmer. She will now let herself be petted, she sleeps on our bed again (from having been shut out because she attacked both of us at the same time), she plays String, and Chase, and Roll You In The Bathmat. While I work on the computer, she sits on the windowsill, surveying her territory, and as she only does that while I'm there, I thought that I made her feel more secure. I was harbouring a smug belief that my cat was happy.
But after reading Cat Confidential, I'm not so sure. What on earth can she be getting from this relationship? Food and warmth, sure. But now I'm moving her to a new house where she might encounter the beast pictured above, and I can't help wondering if this is all too much for her. Is Kerino big enough for two cats? At over an acre footprint, I would have assumed so: now I'm not so sure. How can human habitation ever be right for cats? How can I force my whims on her living space? Should I let her outside to stare it out with other agressive cats, or keep her in to go stir crazy? I appear to have turned from Happy Cat Owner into Anxious Cat Mummy. And I don't like it, not one little bit.
Posted by Somewhat under Cats on 2006.04.23 @ 14.24.
You have the conch:
bran
read this post.
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2006.-0.4- @ 24. 1
NiC
read this post.
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2006.-0.4- @ 28. 1
cal
said:
how's it going?
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2006.-0.5- @ 20. 0
Schwarzenbek
said:
Nice cat
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2006.-0.8- @ 25. 0
Schwarzenbek
read this post.
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2006.-0.8- @ 25. 0
Schwarzenbek
said:
Nice cat picture.greetings to germany
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2006.-0.8- @ 25. 0
Michael
said:
How did it end?
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2007.-0.7- @ 21. 1
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