Lady Jane Grey: Marking Time

[lydy]

Days since I adopted Lady Jane Grey: 367 (more or less, I forget if there was a leap year. Maybe 368. Any gate, Sept. 7th of last year. I didn't know I was adopting her at the time.)

Days since Lady Jane Grey has bit anyone: not sure, but many, many months.

Days since Lady Jane has pissed on my boyfriend's head: 8

Days since Lady has pissed on my bed: 3

So, um, a work in progress.

I had to buy a new comforter. I loved my old comforter, a very well-constructed, 100% down-filled, Calvin Klein comforter with a really high fill factor. Which needs to be dry-cleaned. At $40 a pop, I just can't do it anymore. So, I bought a down-alternative comforter which can be washed and dried at home. It's not as fluffy, it's not as much like cuddling into a cloud as the other, and it isn't as cool in the summer as my other, but it's launderable. Haven't decided what to do with the nice comforter. It's badly stained (coffee, fountain pen ink, sweat), and in a plastic bag after the last incident. I should probably just throw it out. But, you know, if you put a duvet cover on it, you don't seen the stains, and it's ever so nice... yeah. Well. Should just toss it.

I don't really know how to resolve what ever issue there is. LJG spends most of her time hiding in the kitchen under the dishwasher door. She really likes being petted, but doesn't come out from her cave very often unless there's a person, right there. I'm annoyed with Nuit about this, but don't have a good answer. I wish I could afford a good cat psychologist.

Still, LJG is a lovely, funny, friendly, fluffy cat. And when she's not pissing on my bed, she's a marvel. I love her a lot. I just wish we could resolve her issues with Nuit so that they were both happier.

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

did you try the feliway? i've had some luck with those.

i also had a cat who preferred to pee on a puppy pad, over a pillow, in a separate open-top litter box. sometimes they are just peculiarly picky...

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I did get a Feliway diffuser, and it seemed to be helping. When it was almost out, I ordered more from Amazon, because I can get a refill for about $10 per, if I buy in bulk, rather than $30 per, if I go to Petco. Alas, I waited too long, and the dispenser ran out and the bad behavior began again. I'm not certain that the two are connected, of course, but they may be. I went to Petco, shelled out the $30 for a refill, but she's pissed on the bed three times since then (once on my David's head). So, well, there you go.

I did mention at my coffee shop that my cat had pissed on my boyfriend's head. My barista's eyes got very wide, and she said, "What did he do?" "Oh, he woke me up, said, 'Lady Jane's been bad again,' and took a shower." She said, "What a nice guy!" Which, you know, he is. Anybody who knows David is unsurprised by this reaction. But apparently people expect a more explosive response.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

hmm, is the diffuser near the bed? might be worthwhile to place one there....

getting mad at a pet is as silly as yelling at the weather, and much more cruel.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

The diffuser is plugged into the power bar which is attached to the frame of the waterbed. Couldn't really be any closer. The fact that I have a water bed is really good, since I don't have to worry about the mattress...

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

ha! i have a waterbed too, only mine is the newfangled sort with tubes and a soft top. i've de-catted it a number of times, poor old thing :)

do they make cat-proof duvet covers??

[naomikritzer]

Lyda has a cat that pees outside the litterbox and has had EXCELLENT results by dosing her with prozac (prescribed by their vet). Inky gets very anxious about the litterbox if it's even the tiniest bit not-pristine, but on the prozac can live with normal litterbox hygeine. It sounds like some of the stuff with Nuit is anxiety, and so prozac might help LJ a fair amount. (Maybe. A vet could give you a better answer.)

I had a peeing cat and omg, I just about lost my mind over the years. I did not know about prozac. We did try Feliway at some point but it did nothing. Fred deeply disliked litterboxes but would, if she was behaving herself, restrict herself to eliminating next to the litterbox (which was fine; we kept the litterbox in the basement, on a crappy basement floor, and provided her with a fluffy but badly worn comforter to pee on, and laundered it periodically). We could tolerate her peeing in the box of newspaper recycling, even though that was in the main part of the house. Peeing on rugs, jackets left on the floor, library books in the box waiting to go back to the library, backpacks and purses, etc., that was a whole lot less tolerable. She never peed on our bed, interestingly, but literally anything on the floor was fair game as far as she was concerned. I wish I'd known about the prozac option; a few times we tried the thing where you confine the cat to a tiny room with nowhere to pee but the litterbox and successfully got her to use it. Once she was out, she'd use it for maybe a week and then go back to her old habits. When we moved houses, our new house had this odd little tiled-floor room right off the master bedroom, which the former owner used as a greenhouse; we would confine her there every day and let her out to sleep with us at night. I felt bad about it, because she was a very social, affectionate cat, but I was so, so, SO sick of her peeing on our stuff by then.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Alex-the-cat was an anxious stray who we adopted who peed on Rose's bed so often we covered it in plastic tarp below the sheets and mattress pad. Eventually we tried prozac on him and he has yet to pee on anything since, so sometimes it is a wonder drug. Not for everyone, but for us, yes.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

The best alternative I can suggest to a cat psychologist is watching a lot of My Cat From Hell (starring Jackson Galaxy, cat behaviorist, a mixture of name and profession that will never cease to delight me) and seeing whether they focus on any cats with similar issues. This worked well for us, as Lucien absolutely refused to use the litter box, preferring right beside it; since we knew he had intestinal pain, we had cut the side of the litter box that he was supposed to enter down to a quarter inch off the floor, which seemed as low as we could get it without getting litter everywhere. Jackson Galaxy saw a cat who was doing this, complete with quarter-inch-off-the-floor box entrance, and said, nope, put the box on a kennel tray and remove that last quarter inch. And I would never have thought of doing that, myself, because it was a frickin' quarter inch, but we did, and like magic he started using the box again (well, he doesn't now, but this is for Other Medical Reasons; we got a good few months of consistent box usage). So I can vouch for Jackson Galaxy's advice, and he's also good at giving you an idea of what might be going on in the kitty heads.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Re the fluffy comforter: I would pop for one more dry cleaning, then pack it away in hopes of using it again someday if when LJG's behavior changes. Good down comforters are worth keeping!