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I took the above photo of Willy last Sunday so it’s a timely excuse to write about the state of cat politics in the household. Willy is sporting his new collar and tag as he recently lost the old one somewhere or other. The other two cats are not tagged as they generally stay close to home and don’t wander about like Willy who is tagged due to his tendency to climb into open cars. As you can see his ears are still unmarked as he’s not brawler and runs away from fights.
Nothing much has changed as regards the Timmy vs Willy antagonism. Willy makes sure that he and Timmy do not cross paths. Timmy is still aggressive towards Willy and either lurks in doorways waiting to pounce on him or chases him if he can get away with it. When we are around he knows he can’t – we’ve reinforced the message with loud vocal remonstrance which actually works, or by shooing him aggressively away. He’ll never learn I suppose. He and Lizzie generally coexist fairly peacefully with an occasional boxing match when Timmy gets above himself and tries to bully Lizzie. You mess with old lady cats at your peril as Timmy has found out - the hard way.
During winter it became obvious that Timmy was suffering from arthritis – his movements were restricted and he was hopping around on three legs. He’s now on a drug called Metacam, which has had a remarkable effect. It worked first up. One day Timmy was hobbling round like an old man, the next he was swinging from trees. Perhaps we should have left him half crippled to reduce the aggression between the two male cats, but in all conscience you can’t really let an animal suffer, even if that animal is a recalcitrant curmudgeon of a beast.
Nothing much has changed as regards the Timmy vs Willy antagonism. Willy makes sure that he and Timmy do not cross paths. Timmy is still aggressive towards Willy and either lurks in doorways waiting to pounce on him or chases him if he can get away with it. When we are around he knows he can’t – we’ve reinforced the message with loud vocal remonstrance which actually works, or by shooing him aggressively away. He’ll never learn I suppose. He and Lizzie generally coexist fairly peacefully with an occasional boxing match when Timmy gets above himself and tries to bully Lizzie. You mess with old lady cats at your peril as Timmy has found out - the hard way.
During winter it became obvious that Timmy was suffering from arthritis – his movements were restricted and he was hopping around on three legs. He’s now on a drug called Metacam, which has had a remarkable effect. It worked first up. One day Timmy was hobbling round like an old man, the next he was swinging from trees. Perhaps we should have left him half crippled to reduce the aggression between the two male cats, but in all conscience you can’t really let an animal suffer, even if that animal is a recalcitrant curmudgeon of a beast.
3 comments:
One of my cats, yrs ago,climbed into a furniture van and travelled over 40 miles into Wales( deepest darkest WAles) but we realised what had happened and drove over there ( nearly midnight) and after shaking a pkt of cat biscs, she came running....
Ever since, she's been ultra affectionate and needless to say, doest stray far...
That reminds me...
Years ago I adopted a cat from my brother - they couldn't handle his wild and vagrant ways. Not surprisingly, he was another Tonkinese cat (like Willy), a beautiful cat.
He arrived collared and tagged and promptly ran away, trying to make his way back to where he came from.
He was found by various people and we got him back several times.
He ended up one time in the nurses home of a hospital several miles away, and my friend who went to collect him found him curled up on a woollen cardigan being pampered by nurses.
After that incident I removed his collar and told him that the next time was the last time. He hung around after that and never ran away again.
The look on that cat's face says it all! I enjoyed reading about your catantics!
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