Adjusting… It’s going to be a tough time ahead Posted on 3:35pm Monday 18th Mar 2019
The past two weeks since losing Beany we have had ups and downs a plenty…
It started off with Johnny and I being a little wobbly on our feet not knowing what to do with ourselves as we’d had SO MUCH to do each day with Beany, it was almost as if, with him gone our lives were literally 80% empty.
We knew we had the other cats to look after, feed, clean etc – and we were!
It just didn’t SIT right that we were aimlessly waiting, waiting… waiting…
Don’t get me wrong, neither of us wanted something terrible to happen to any of the others just to prove our being out there in the cat cabin for prolonged periods of time with them but it was like someone had reached into our lives and scooped out the daytime only leaving the gap times… the times we WEREN’T supposed to have been out in the cat cabin with them.
We joked that we felt uneasy that we had no nappy pads to clean up, no comforting to do when it was windy, there was a loud noise suddenly (neighbours mostly!) or those teeny tiny things that completely slip your mind that you’ve even done them repeatedly day in day out when you’re doing them but quickly miss SO MUCH once their necessity for them has vanished.
It’s always been a given that Pumpkin and Chewie aren’t heavy meat/wet food fans….. they prefer dry biscuits, treats occasionally and a wet packed shared between them every once in a while. But suddenly with Beany gone they were all three acting oddly over-calmed and each trying to fill in bits that he would have done himself… It was very odd.
Imagine a children’s drama club where one of the classmates leaves and the others are all jostling to fill the role/scenes played by the missing classmate.
Chewie developed a BIG hunger for wet foods but with her sensitive stomach I had to be “the mean Mummy” and keep restricting her intake. She has always had a male cat with her since she arrived in 2008. Puppycat (Socky) was here obviously when she came, as was Beary – the big bouffon beasty ;-)… but then when Socky passed over, Wolfie came with Pumpkin and the strength in Chewie continued as she was reassured by the male pressence… Of course then while Wolfie was here, we adopted Beany and Eggy thus adding more males* and after a teensy reposition of who’se who when Wolfie Died we were all settled with Beany being the man of the cabin… That has sharply ended and we are now seeing Chewie’s previous anger and anxiety resurface. She knows she shouldn’t hiss, spit, scream and waggle her claws out at anyone but it is as if her brain has reverted to the yearling she was when she arrived – unsocialised and spitty – while her memories of the past 11 years has stayed with her and she is fighting with herself to not hit out because she’s lonely and afraid.
Imagine a huge migraine and the worst case of anxiety you can imagine coupled with deafening loud winds of the recent fortnight making you jumpy while you are jumping at your own shadow thinking you just saw a ghost walking up the house ladder behind you….
*(Eggy was / is a male cat…. according to her flimsy piece of card “vet record book” – but has always growled, hissed and bitten when refering to her as such…. yet call her a Girl/ Princess and she will melt…. Her choice – we are happy if she is happy!)
Eggy, after two years of being “good girl” started using nappy pads again instead of litter boxes but we didn’t tell her off or anything mean because it was “finding her feet” time and she chose to MOVE IN to the big house with Pum and Chewie where she was unfamiliar with their litter boxes.. She stayed there for TWO WEEKS until yesterday (March 17th) when I said it was probably for the best if she went back home into her little house again (right beside them, as it always has been) but to not only give her time to recover from the loss, but also time for everything else to adjust.
Pum was being peculiarly outgoing and clambering over things where she would normally do her utmost to completely stay away from them (microwave unit!) but suddenly at almost a week after Beany had been gone Pum stopped eating quite so eagerly, then just stopped all together. Stopped eating, stopped coming out and exploring… it was as if she had realised finally that he was gone and she just chose to shut down. Her heart couldn’t take the loss (literally of metaphorically) of yet another family member… She’d already lost two+ before coming to us including her mother, then their previous owner had died which resulted in us adopting them…. and the loss of Daddy-Dog (Wolfie) took so so long to sink in and she clung to Beany… Losing him, and so suddenly – shook her and her immune system just plummeted. Read the next post for more news.