u/Popular-Literature85

My five-year-old cat has had extreme anxiety since her kitten days. This manifests in her becoming distressed.

With any visitors to our flat, she will often hiss at them. If she decides to approach visitors when they sit down she wjll on occassion smell them and can scratch/punch.

When she has to go to the vets. As soon as the box comes out she knows she is going and will run around the flat hissing. Once in the box she will make noises in distress. Once at the vets, it’s a whole other level of distress and will not let them near her. The vets have prescribed gabapentin to be administered prior to visiting but it never works.

She had cystitis last month (anxiety induced?) and we had to take her to the emergency vets which caused much distress. They prescribed some medication which definitely helped as she was not in the litter tray every five minutes. Since then she had developed a large bald patch around her genital area which we think is from over-grooming. When she was spayed she developed a bald patch on her body which was from over-grooming and biting the hair from her skin so my thinking is that the visit to the vets and the cystitis has caused a level of stress where she is over-grooming again?

With us, her owners, she will often seek comfort and love. This week she has been heavily grooming my own head by licking it. She will sleep at the bottom of our bed. She will present her belly to us when we come in the house. She can however become over stimulated very quickly when being pet and her go-to is to bite and scratch us.

I am looking for help on where to go with this. Myself and my partner usually go on holiday for 2 weeks a year and it’s generally ruined by us knowing that our cat is at home very distressed due to our house-sitter (my brother who has grown up with cats and understand them and my cat well). On one occasion we came home and she had not groomed herself properly - her hair was tacky and she had an odour. Very distressing for her and us.

We have been advised to use Zylkene Calming Capsules and I have recently plugged in a Feliway Optimum diffuser (tried before with little obvious impact).

Can anyone advise how we can make her life (and ours) a little easier?

My five-year-old cat has had extreme anxiety since her kitten days. This manifests in her becoming distressed.

With any visitors to our flat, she will often hiss at them. If she decides to approach visitors when they sit down she wjll on occassion smell them and can scratch/punch.

When she has to go to the vets. As soon as the box comes out she knows she is going and will run around the flat hissing. Once in the box she will make noises in distress. Once at the vets, it’s a whole other level of distress and will not let them near her. The vets have prescribed gabapentin to be administered prior to visiting but it never works.

She had cystitis last month (anxiety induced?) and we had to take her to the emergency vets which caused much distress. They prescribed some medication which definitely helped as she was not in the litter tray every five minutes. Since then she had developed a large bald patch around her genital area which we think is from over-grooming. When she was spayed she developed a bald patch on her body which was from over-grooming and biting the hair from her skin so my thinking is that the visit to the vets and the cystitis has caused a level of stress where she is over-grooming again?

With us, her owners, she will often seek comfort and love. This week she has been heavily grooming my own head by licking it. She will sleep at the bottom of our bed. She will present her belly to us when we come in the house. She can however become over stimulated very quickly when being pet and her go-to is to bite and scratch us.

I am looking for help on where to go with this. Myself and my partner usually go on holiday for 2 weeks a year and it’s generally ruined by us knowing that our cat is at home very distressed due to our house-sitter (my brother who has grown up with cats and understand them and my cat well). On one occasion we came home and she had not groomed herself properly - her hair was tacky and she had an odour. Very distressing for her and us.

We have been advised to use Zylkene Calming Capsules and I have recently plugged in a Feliway Optimum diffuser (tried before with little obvious impact).

Can anyone advise how we can make her life (and ours) a little easier?

Massive fan of Wishbone + Deluxe and just managed to get tickets for the Glasgow gig (decent seats after I read the standing debacle). Can’t wait. See you there guys 😉