a long story about a cat
Jul. 9th, 2022 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bapilliSO I TOOK MY CAT OUT on a leash and?? it was not what i expected.
Okay so when i moved before 5 years ago, one of the first things i did was put my cat on a leash and walk him around the new apartment. And there were a TON of stray cats out there and we actually got kind of face to face with a few of them but my cat just looked at them like o__o he didn't get worked up, he wasn't bothered, he was fine. even though it was a totally new space. A year or so into living in that apartment, i even brought one of the stray cats in from outside and he was FINE with it, curious but not at all agitated, i blocked him with my arm from getting too close and he just sat right down.
So that's what i was expecting this time, i moved in about 2 months ago. i took him out on a leash last week around 4am, because i figured there'd be 0 people out there, and it went well at first, we walked down the steps and he sniffed around my neighbors doors a bit, then just laid down on the sidewalk and rolled. but then he spotted a stray cat that was walking toward us and he was PISSED, he did this really low warning yowl thing. The stray cat was not deterred, it kept coming right for us and so i picked up my cat and quickly ran back up the steps, but that made him flip out and he bit my leg HARD. I ended up dropping him on the landing outside my front door and he sat there making warning noises, glaring down at the stray cat down on the sidewalk and that guy!!!!!!!! started walking TOWARD the apartment door!!! which obviously pissed off my cat, the stray cat ended up at the bottom of the steps, and like TO MY EYES it just seemed unafraid and curious but i believe my cat saw it as aggressive and perhaps it was aggressive. Eventually I was able to coax my cat inside but he was not happy. i have four very deep teeth marks on my calf from his bite. I did clean them thoroughly, and they seem to be healing well. But all week he was really anxious and keyed up, he kept fixating on the front door.
SO, i decided to take him out again last night.
I decided 1am would have less human activity, but still enough that stray cats wouldn't be confidently strutting around, and hopefully my cat would feel more confident if i managed to give him a stray cat-free experience outside. So it went well at first, again, we spent a pretty long time poking around and smelling plants and whatnot, he was interested in the bushes and cars and we made it all the way to the side of the building. the plants outside of the windows are SUPER SUPER noisy to walk in lol, they totally sound like movie footsteps, they're all crunchy and brittle, and i noticed one of my neighbor's lights go on, I think they heard him outside their window and got freaked out, but they shut off a little bit later, I hope they saw me with the leash.
ANYWAY after a while, my cat pretty abruptly started walking back to the apartment and he actually hissed at me a few times which is very very out of character for him. I kept my distance and let him led the way back to the stairs. once he got to the first little landing on the stairs, he stopped and settled down, and after a little bit, actually rolled onto his back, and i was starting to think like "fuck" because he was just agitated enough that i did not want to walk OVER him, because i felt like that would trigger another attack on my person. so until he decided to get up and go up the rest of the stairs himself we were basically stuck, but like, that was fine, i didn't have anywhere else to be. BUT THEN HE SAW another stray cat and this was a DIFFERENT stray cat, it was way way way more skittish, as soon as my cat bolted toward it, it ran away. I held my cat's leash and didn't let him get much ground but now he was hissing at EVERYTHING, he was so pissed. i did not know what to do, i thought about hooking the leash on my car's side mirror but i was like "ugh that would give him enough slack to sneak under one of the other cars" and i did NOT like the idea of having to drag him out from under a car.
Also it was very humid, i was sweating like crazy, and kept getting worried that was getting bit my mosquitos (but the bites i got turned out to be minimal, in the end). I was like sticky gross miserable and connected to a pissed off, defensive cat at 1am glkjdafg. In the end I tied my cat's leash to the railing of the stairs, ran inside and got cat treats and a towel, then ran back down. man he was so mad, when he saw me coming back down again he just started yowling again, and why??? i tried throwing him some cat treats but he had 0 interest in it, he looked up at the noise of me opening the container but when i tossed them toward him like i usually do when feeding him these, he didn't even look to see where they landed. he was just fixated on the last spot he saw the stray cat. I did want to wait, because i wanted him to calm down before grabbing him, so that he wouldn't remember this as a wholly traumatizing experience. like i wanted him to see that the scared stray cat did not come back, he had defended his space? but i knew if i waited too long, the worst could happen, the OTHER stray cat who was so bold from before could appear!!!!!! uighfgafg i decided to wait just a little bit, and eventually he did lay down again. I tossed him some treats again, and he didn't chase after them but he did watch where they landed. I figured that was the best i was going to get, so i threw the towel over him and ran inside with him and HE MADE THE WORST NOISES I HAVE EVER HEARD! IN MY LIFE!!!!!!!!! omfsdglhkjsedrg cats sound like they are opening a portal to hell when they are fighting and that is the exact noise that was happening under the towel the SECOND i threw it over his head, and it got louder as I was carrying him up the steps. He was SUPER SUPER stiff in my hold at first, but he wasn't really trying to get away until I was on the top steps, and then he started doing that jerky/twisting/contorting thing, but the towel was good and he did not get through. I got him to the bedroom, rolled him inside there with him getting LOUDER AND LOUDER, then ran back down to get the cat treats.
Now I know cats are really sensitive, stuff like this can like, seriously alter their behavior, like if he decided i was an enemy, if he started guarding the front door and attacking every time i tried to leave/return, i was worried about all this, i was also thinking about what if he starts spraying around the apartment because of this??????? and i was like "God why didn't you wait longer, until he was more settled, to take him out on the leash??" but then i was like "wait though he was fine with this before??" but i guess that was 5 years ago and he seems to have changed.
ANY. WAY. i wanted to make it clear i was still his friend so first thing i did was open a can of wet catfood. I was going to just put it in his bowl and leave him in the bedroom to cool off as long as he needed, but when i opened the door to push it inside, he seemed pretty calm already. i gave him another moment with the food then decided to chance opening the bedroom door and letting him out again. and so, he walked out of the bedroom with the towel still covering his body, and the leash, and the harness. The harness connects under his neck, and under his belly. i did NOOOOOOOT want to reach under his belly, right then. but it is a pretty uncomfortable harness to just be wearing. my cat was just walking around the apartment acting totally normal, so i tried the cat treats again, and he acted like he normally does - he chased after the treats and ate them. I did it with a handful, then decided to try pulling off his harness. it is velcro. the neck piece rips off easily but i ALWAYS fumble with the belly piece. I was so fucking nervous lolol, but i tried to talk totally normal as i told him what i was doing, i bent down and got the neck piece off, then reached under his stomach - and he was totally fine. I fumbled like i usually do, and again he was fine. no reaction as i ripped it off.
I did not realize just hoooow nervous i was about this until i got it off him, like IMMEDIATELY the sides of my forehead started throbbing , like once it was over i suddenly felt all the tension that had been coiling up in me. God. I got out a string toy and played with him about 20 minutes but he lost interest and started camping out by the front door again. But this morning i was able to coax him away from the front door by playing with him again and he seems pretty normal now. No spraying, not fixating on the front door.
i am not going to try this again at least for a couple months lol. goddamn.
Okay so when i moved before 5 years ago, one of the first things i did was put my cat on a leash and walk him around the new apartment. And there were a TON of stray cats out there and we actually got kind of face to face with a few of them but my cat just looked at them like o__o he didn't get worked up, he wasn't bothered, he was fine. even though it was a totally new space. A year or so into living in that apartment, i even brought one of the stray cats in from outside and he was FINE with it, curious but not at all agitated, i blocked him with my arm from getting too close and he just sat right down.
So that's what i was expecting this time, i moved in about 2 months ago. i took him out on a leash last week around 4am, because i figured there'd be 0 people out there, and it went well at first, we walked down the steps and he sniffed around my neighbors doors a bit, then just laid down on the sidewalk and rolled. but then he spotted a stray cat that was walking toward us and he was PISSED, he did this really low warning yowl thing. The stray cat was not deterred, it kept coming right for us and so i picked up my cat and quickly ran back up the steps, but that made him flip out and he bit my leg HARD. I ended up dropping him on the landing outside my front door and he sat there making warning noises, glaring down at the stray cat down on the sidewalk and that guy!!!!!!!! started walking TOWARD the apartment door!!! which obviously pissed off my cat, the stray cat ended up at the bottom of the steps, and like TO MY EYES it just seemed unafraid and curious but i believe my cat saw it as aggressive and perhaps it was aggressive. Eventually I was able to coax my cat inside but he was not happy. i have four very deep teeth marks on my calf from his bite. I did clean them thoroughly, and they seem to be healing well. But all week he was really anxious and keyed up, he kept fixating on the front door.
SO, i decided to take him out again last night.
I decided 1am would have less human activity, but still enough that stray cats wouldn't be confidently strutting around, and hopefully my cat would feel more confident if i managed to give him a stray cat-free experience outside. So it went well at first, again, we spent a pretty long time poking around and smelling plants and whatnot, he was interested in the bushes and cars and we made it all the way to the side of the building. the plants outside of the windows are SUPER SUPER noisy to walk in lol, they totally sound like movie footsteps, they're all crunchy and brittle, and i noticed one of my neighbor's lights go on, I think they heard him outside their window and got freaked out, but they shut off a little bit later, I hope they saw me with the leash.
ANYWAY after a while, my cat pretty abruptly started walking back to the apartment and he actually hissed at me a few times which is very very out of character for him. I kept my distance and let him led the way back to the stairs. once he got to the first little landing on the stairs, he stopped and settled down, and after a little bit, actually rolled onto his back, and i was starting to think like "fuck" because he was just agitated enough that i did not want to walk OVER him, because i felt like that would trigger another attack on my person. so until he decided to get up and go up the rest of the stairs himself we were basically stuck, but like, that was fine, i didn't have anywhere else to be. BUT THEN HE SAW another stray cat and this was a DIFFERENT stray cat, it was way way way more skittish, as soon as my cat bolted toward it, it ran away. I held my cat's leash and didn't let him get much ground but now he was hissing at EVERYTHING, he was so pissed. i did not know what to do, i thought about hooking the leash on my car's side mirror but i was like "ugh that would give him enough slack to sneak under one of the other cars" and i did NOT like the idea of having to drag him out from under a car.
Also it was very humid, i was sweating like crazy, and kept getting worried that was getting bit my mosquitos (but the bites i got turned out to be minimal, in the end). I was like sticky gross miserable and connected to a pissed off, defensive cat at 1am glkjdafg. In the end I tied my cat's leash to the railing of the stairs, ran inside and got cat treats and a towel, then ran back down. man he was so mad, when he saw me coming back down again he just started yowling again, and why??? i tried throwing him some cat treats but he had 0 interest in it, he looked up at the noise of me opening the container but when i tossed them toward him like i usually do when feeding him these, he didn't even look to see where they landed. he was just fixated on the last spot he saw the stray cat. I did want to wait, because i wanted him to calm down before grabbing him, so that he wouldn't remember this as a wholly traumatizing experience. like i wanted him to see that the scared stray cat did not come back, he had defended his space? but i knew if i waited too long, the worst could happen, the OTHER stray cat who was so bold from before could appear!!!!!! uighfgafg i decided to wait just a little bit, and eventually he did lay down again. I tossed him some treats again, and he didn't chase after them but he did watch where they landed. I figured that was the best i was going to get, so i threw the towel over him and ran inside with him and HE MADE THE WORST NOISES I HAVE EVER HEARD! IN MY LIFE!!!!!!!!! omfsdglhkjsedrg cats sound like they are opening a portal to hell when they are fighting and that is the exact noise that was happening under the towel the SECOND i threw it over his head, and it got louder as I was carrying him up the steps. He was SUPER SUPER stiff in my hold at first, but he wasn't really trying to get away until I was on the top steps, and then he started doing that jerky/twisting/contorting thing, but the towel was good and he did not get through. I got him to the bedroom, rolled him inside there with him getting LOUDER AND LOUDER, then ran back down to get the cat treats.
Now I know cats are really sensitive, stuff like this can like, seriously alter their behavior, like if he decided i was an enemy, if he started guarding the front door and attacking every time i tried to leave/return, i was worried about all this, i was also thinking about what if he starts spraying around the apartment because of this??????? and i was like "God why didn't you wait longer, until he was more settled, to take him out on the leash??" but then i was like "wait though he was fine with this before??" but i guess that was 5 years ago and he seems to have changed.
ANY. WAY. i wanted to make it clear i was still his friend so first thing i did was open a can of wet catfood. I was going to just put it in his bowl and leave him in the bedroom to cool off as long as he needed, but when i opened the door to push it inside, he seemed pretty calm already. i gave him another moment with the food then decided to chance opening the bedroom door and letting him out again. and so, he walked out of the bedroom with the towel still covering his body, and the leash, and the harness. The harness connects under his neck, and under his belly. i did NOOOOOOOT want to reach under his belly, right then. but it is a pretty uncomfortable harness to just be wearing. my cat was just walking around the apartment acting totally normal, so i tried the cat treats again, and he acted like he normally does - he chased after the treats and ate them. I did it with a handful, then decided to try pulling off his harness. it is velcro. the neck piece rips off easily but i ALWAYS fumble with the belly piece. I was so fucking nervous lolol, but i tried to talk totally normal as i told him what i was doing, i bent down and got the neck piece off, then reached under his stomach - and he was totally fine. I fumbled like i usually do, and again he was fine. no reaction as i ripped it off.
I did not realize just hoooow nervous i was about this until i got it off him, like IMMEDIATELY the sides of my forehead started throbbing , like once it was over i suddenly felt all the tension that had been coiling up in me. God. I got out a string toy and played with him about 20 minutes but he lost interest and started camping out by the front door again. But this morning i was able to coax him away from the front door by playing with him again and he seems pretty normal now. No spraying, not fixating on the front door.
i am not going to try this again at least for a couple months lol. goddamn.
