February 24th was indeed a “Red Letter Day”. The last of the kitties was finally neutered.
However, this was not achieved without stress. Since September 2022 when the kittens reached 6 months of age, I had been trying to catch this kitty. The other three were not easy but this one was truly elusive. Every attempt had met with the utmost failure. The sedative had no effect and when, last week, it did finally have an effect she hid away in the place where they were born which we have never been able to discover.
As time was marching on and cat season was upon us, catching this cat took on a whole new level of urgency: I had a strong suspicion that this was a female. Clearly it was going to be impossible to catch the cat if she had too big an area to move around in, so two days ago we decided that we were going to have to isolate her somehow.
The little family have been having access to a small area of the house with access from the garage, so we set up a “booby trap” attaching a cord to the top of the door to the garage which we brought along the wall using eyebolts. At the end we attached a weight so that, if we saw the opportunity and she was alone, the weight could be lifted and the door would close without having to approach.
During the morning I saw that she was alone – or so I thought – so at one point I lifted the weight BUT the cord snapped and I saw that her mother was also in the enclosure. In a way it was fine because the door did close and the little cat fled into the bathroom whereas her mother stood her ground and I was able to open the door a little and let her through to the garage. So far so good!
For the rest of the day, she hid in the bathroom and did not move. This was the first time that she had ever been alone. This is a very close-knit little family and they always cuddle up together. I decided to put down some neroli essential oil which is one of the major oils for separation and also some lavender as a calming oil. I put them close enough that the aromas would be perceptible but far enough away that she would be able to move away from them if she wanted.
In the evening she came out of her hiding place and lay on the carpet in the hallway. Then her mother began to call from the other side of the door and she began to cry. I spent the evening sitting on the stairs doing pranayama breathing with audible exhales. That seemed to calm her.
I put down three prawns. In one of them I had put a sedative pill. She ate two prawns and the tail of the one with the pill, but the pill remained intact. Before going to bed I put down a little more food with a pill, and in the morning I saw that she had eaten the food, but she was alert and definitely not sedated, so I put down a little more food with a pill and after some time she began to get drowsy. Another step forward …
After a while she went into the bathroom again so we left her for a while. After a couple of hours, we thought she might now be sufficiently sedated to be able to catch her but when I went into the bathroom she was nowhere to be seen. I looked under the sink cabinet, in the shower. No sign. Then I looked in the waste basket and there she was curled up into a tiny ball. She seemed to be asleep.
My husband had taken the precaution of putting on thick leather work gloves and I had a bathrobe to hand to cover her with. The holding cage was ready and waiting. When he bent over the waste basket, the cat reacted like a spring resort. She simply jumped straight up to about 1.5 metres height. I closed the door so she would be confined. Then, in a total frenzy, she began to jump up the walls. She reached the shower head which is about 2m plus from the ground. With the help of the bathrobe, she was caught and put in the holding cage which fortunately has a top opening as well as the side door. This was the first (and I hope the last) time that we had used the holding cage, but it was definitely worth the investment because, otherwise it might not have been possible to get her into a normal transporter. Then I took her to the car and covered the cage with a towel so that she would be able to stay quiet. Mission accomplished! Despite the thick leather work gloves Roberto’s hand were covered in lacerations.
This was surely a full-blown manifestation of how the sympathetic nervous system engages, even when in theory sedation should have dulled responses. If the day before she had shut down when she isolated and hid in the bathroom, this was fight and flight at its most dramatic.
The journey to the clinic was uneventful and she slept all the way. Surgery was successful and I was right: she was a female and about to come into heat.
When I brought her back, I left her in the dark in the bathroom once again until I could see that she was coming around. When she was able, she went off once again to her safe haven, the place where she was born, and did not appear for the rest of the day. Today she was waiting for her breakfast and has eaten well. The most notable thing is that today she is not running away at the sight of a human so that augurs well for the future.
Mission accomplished! I hope that I will never have to go through this experience again!
