Persian cat Archives

If you have been following this blog for long you know that I am a Cat Lady. At one point I had 3 cats but old age, cancer and illness have been picking off my furry family. Rocky is 16 this year and he is the only one left.

Rockykitten

Since I’ve been Rocky’s pet parent I’ve lost Little Joe, a Black and White Persian tuxedo kitty.

little joe

Then there was Smokey; a fluffy, sweet natured gray kitty. He passed away from a fast moving cancer in his mouth.

Smoke 001e copy

Before Smokey passed away our family grew again to include Buddy, another Black & White kitty. He was huge, tipping the scale at 17 lbs he was a gentle giant. Then as suddenly as he joined us he was gone, just a couple of years after we lost Smokey. Again it was cancer although tests didn’t find the actual tumor the abnormal cells seemed to be everywhere and my poor boy couldn’t breathe.

Buddy2014 005a copy

That leaves only Rocky. My concern was that Rocky had never been an only kitty. He has always been surrounded by a fur family. But here we are 6+ months since Buddy passed and all seems well. Rocky has become a cuddly lap kitty, something he never did before. He seems happy. Of course he has the run of the house now.

Rockyandme 018a copy

For years I worked a sort of 2nd shift, I left for work between 10-12 and got home between 7 – 9 pm. Now that I’m working a normal 9-5 shift I have difficulty getting “Lazy Bones” to get up for breakfast. On the weekends if I let him sleep in he doesn’t come around to eat until 10 am or so.

dsc_4135-copy

As you can tell, he gets grumpy if you wake him up!

dsc_4134-copy

I guess if that’s the worse problem we have then I’m very lucky.

Or maybe I should say the mystery of one cat, Buddy.

I’ve lived with a long line of cats from childhood to my current advanced age. I really don’t recall being catless for any length of time.

My friends think of me as something of a cat whisperer, I may not be in the same league as Jackson Galaxy, but I come close. I watch his show all the time. I love trying to figure out how he is going to solve the behavior problems.

Little Joe, my rescued Persian cat gave me my biggest challenge. He had the number one reason cats get surrendered, litter box issues. One day I’ll have to write about the trials and travails of that cat adventure. But when I tell you I tried all of Jackson’s solutions and even some he hasn’t suggested it would be an understatement. It finally ended well but it took years of trial and error.

But Buddy is something else. Sometime I think he is schizophrenic. Sometimes I think he has a physical problem. You can be petting him, he’ll be purring and relaxed and then suddenly he’ll let out a yowl like he is in pain and go into vicious kitty mode.

He doesn’t like to jump. Rocky will jump anywhere,

the higher the better but Buddy will search and test until he finds a way to climb to where he wants to go. Minimal jumping required.

When he sharpens his claws he lies down to do it. Yup, I have never seen such a thing. Same with playing. He might do a little running around but mostly he flops down on the floor and only plays with what he can reach from his central position.

The vet said he’s just fat so he may be developing some arthritis.

I am feeding him about 1/2 the recommended amount of cat food and feeding Rocky on the counter so Buddy can’t steal food but it doesn’t seem to be working. ( I fully sympathize)

He can go from mellow sweet kitty to crazy, fixated kitty in 0 – 60 in a blink. I have many scratches and bites to prove it but I have noticed that his pupils get wide and he seems to become fixated when that happens. I’m not sure he’s even still in there!

I used to get out of Dodge until he calmed down but I recently took a fuzzy glove (made for cats to kick and bite) and to my surprise instead of attacking he calms down immediately! He lets me sit and pet him with that silly glove and all the wildness goes right out of him.

I don’t know his history and other than his weight problem I feel we are making progress. He bites less often than when I first got him . And he’s started giving affection more often. I love it when he comes for a cuddle at night when I go to bed or climbs up on my computer when I’m working and gives me kitty kisses.