Conference misery::feline

841.0. "Bizarre behavior problem" by MSE1::SUTTON (He roams the seas in freedom...) Mon Dec 19 1994 06:44

    I need some help with a frightening incident that occurred over this
    past weekend; I'm at a loss as to how to address the current problem
    and could use some insight from any of you with more experience with
    cat behavior than I have.
    
    About a month ago we brought a new puppy into the house; this made our
    total pack three dogs and one cat. My wife and I were a little
    concerned about how the two older dogs would react to the puppy, and
    just assumed that the cat would ignore her (as she largely does the
    other two dogs). We were surprised and pleased when they became fast
    friends and spent a lot of time playing together.
    
    Last Friday evening, they were playing as usual, but the puppy was
    particularly wound up and there was a good deal of yowling and yipping
    from both sides. I didn't see the event, but I heard my wife exclaim,
    "Oh! The cat just ran right into the wall!" I did hear the thump. A few
    minutes later, the puppy was on our bed, and the cat had hopped up onto
    the bureau and was laying on her side watching things. The cat started
    to vocalize, I'm not sure what to call the sound she was starting to
    make; my wife walked into the room and asked, "Is that the cat?!", when
    suddenly the cat SCREAMED and attacked the puppy. There was no play at
    all involved here. Sheila grabbed for the dog and I tried to get the
    cat, who apparently lost her bladder while this was happening. Sheila
    got the puppy up in her arms while I (and the other two dogs) backed
    the cat out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Every hair on her body
    was erect and she was unrecognizably distraught. I shut the bedroom
    door and we all tried to calm down, but could hear the cat in the hall
    continuing to vocalize abnormally.
    
    After about five minutes, we heard her mewing like her old self, but
    with a note of distress to the sound. We closed the dogs in our
    bathroom and cautiously went out into the hallway. The cat had lost
    bowel control at some point, but was now lying a few feet away from us,
    crying. I approached her slowly with a towel (she has no front claws,
    but I didn't want to risk being bitten or scratched with her rear
    ones), but she got up and ran down the stairs, limping fairly badly on
    one leg. While my wife cleaned the mess in the hallway, I followed the
    cat downstairs, with the intention of putting her into the cellar to
    keep her away from the dogs until we could determine our next step. I
    found the cat in our sitting room, and she allowed me to approach her
    and look her over. I didn't find any open cuts or blood, so I assume
    that her temporarly limp was caused by something during her spasms. I
    put her in the basement for the night and we called our vet the next
    morning.
    
    We left her with the vet for observation that day, and she showed no
    further signs of any abnormality. There was no trauma to her leg, and
    otherwise her behavior appeared normal. I went back yesterday (Sunday)
    and brought her home. I set her carrier down in the kitchen and let the
    dogs approach momentarily, and then let her out. She went right into
    the living room and stayed there, and Sheila put the puppy on her leash
    to keep them separated. But a short while later, the cat was coming up
    from the basement (where her food and litter box are kept), saw the
    puppy, and SCREAMED again as she had done Friday evening. I immediately
    closed the basement door in her face and left her there while we
    discussed what we should do next. None of the options we could think of
    were acceptable: we didn't want to get rid of either animal, and we
    couldn't keep them separated indefinitely.
    
    Our first concern was that, although Rhiannon has been an indoor cat
    for as long as I've had her (about fourteen months), and is up to date
    on all her innoculations, there was still the possibility that she had
    somehow contracted rabies. After examining her, the vet didn't seem to
    think this was likely based on her behaviour, but she did point out
    that there was no definitive test for rabies without destroying the
    animal. It occurred to me that it was possible that she had suffered a
    concussion or more serious head/central nervous system trauma when she
    struck the wall; we're not sure if she was running toward or away from
    the puppy at the time. I have noticed that ever since this happened,
    the cat's pupils have been almost fully dilated, regardless of the
    ambient light present. I haven't thought to check her pupils for
    reactivity to a flashlight, but I may do that tonight. For now, I've
    brought her up from the (cold) basement and isolated her, along with
    her food and litterbox, in a spare bedroom. I'm going to call the vet
    today and discuss the situation.
    
    We've got to decide what to do here, and these are the choices I can
    see:
    
    1. If she has suffered a concussion, then perhaps once she's had a few
       days (a week?) to recover we can slowly, under very controlled
       conditions, reintegrate her into the household. Obviously, further
       interaction with the puppy will have to be more closely supervised.
    
    2. If there's no change in her behavior at this point, we must consider
       whether or not there has been more serious, potentially permanent,
       neurological damage; there is also the remote possibility that she
       has rabies. Either of these options would require euthanization.
    
    Do any of you have any suggestions? I'm going to call the vet shortly,
    and I'll update this with any new information as the situation evolves.
    Right now, I'm distraught - I don't want to give up on Rhiannon, but I
    can't afford the radical, unpredictable and ferociously aggressive
    behavior she has displayed in the past few days. What is particularly
    distressing is that up to this point she had always been a very placid,
    sweet tempered quiet little cat.
    
    Can anyone shed any light on this? Sorry to be so long-winded, but it
    helped me to gather my thoughts as I wrote this.

    I've had several concussions, and I can tell you that confusion is one
    of the symptoms, although I thot that the thing with the pupils was
    that they were of different sizes. I usually bounced back within a
    couple of days of complete, quiet rest, but the last time took a few
    weeks; I didn't make any progress until I just did nothing but rest. I
    guess what I am tryign to say here is that if the cat has a concussion,
    you are going to need to let her rest in a stress free environment. I
    suggest a closed bedroom, with her litterbox, food, water and bed, and
    no puppies comming to visit.
    
    Deb

    Does your cat display aggressive behaviour towards either of the other
    dogs (or yourselves for that matter)?  If she were showing signs of 
    rabies I wouldn't think that it would be selective (ie just the puppy).
    
    Our cat Sammie had dialated pupils one night after a fairly rowdy game
    of "chase the paper ball".  Sammie isn't the most graceful of cats and
    tends to whack her head against the refrigerator and the walls quite 
    often.  I took her to the vet that night because I had never seen her
    eyes doing this.  The vet suspected that she had bumped her head and 
    that was the cause of the dialation.  (He also implied that it *could*
    be a symptom of FIP and to watch her closely for re-occurrences.  So
    far, no re-occurrences.  Also, if you saw Sam play you'd understand why
    we think that it was a bump to the head that caused her eyes to
    dialate.)
    
    Please keep us posted on the outcome.
    
    Sharon

    I think that it's good that you have thought of so many reasons for 
    your cats behaviour.  But I would caution at jumping too quickly at any
    one "diagnosis".  I agree with .1, put her in a darkened quiet room for
    a few days with lots of warmth and love.  It could be very well
    that she has suffered a concussion.  If she had rabies, I think it
    would have shown itself by now.  
    
    If her anxiety level is extremely high, you might ask your vet for a 
    prescription for valium.  A few days could ease everything up and set
    you straight again.
    
    I would tend to thing of head trauma, much more than anything else.

    Thanks for all your replies.
    
    I spoke with the vet earlier today; to my disappointment, she wasn't
    able to confirm my suspicion regarding a concussion. She had examined
    Rhiannon's pupils on Saturday and found them to be equal and reactive.
    She suggested that the problem may be behavioral, but the change was
    just too radical and too sudden for me to subscribe to that theory yet.
    
    I've decided that nobody loses anything by my taking a slow, wait-and-
    see approach to this; the cat is comfortably isolated now and has no
    choice but to rest and recuperate. After a few days, we'll try some
    very controlled and very slow exposure and see what happens. I won't
    accept the ultimate 'solution' to this problem until I'm absolutely
    convinced that I have no other recourse.
    
    I'll keep this note updated with her progress. Thanks again for your
    ideas - having access to all of you through this really helps,
    practically and psychologically.
    
    	/Harry

    There was an artical in either Cat Fancy or Cats magazine this
    month which talked about exactly the type of situation you may
    have.  Basically, the cat may associate the dog with the pain
    of running into the wall.  The article had very good suggestions
    for dealing with the problem.  It might be worth a read.
    
    Mary-Michael

    Just a quick update:
    
    Rhiannon and the dogs (especially Lillie, the new pup) appear to have
    regained a tenuous equilibrium. It's a damned difficult situation to
    keep under control, because the poor cat is such a social creature that
    she wants to be wherever everybody else is, and the puppy is simply
    being a rambunctious, playful puppy. It is getting better, though, and
    so long as we keep a tight rein on Lillie's exuberance around Rhiannon
    I'm confident that things will work out.
    
    We're committed to making this work, and both very relieved that it
    doesn't appear that there was any permanent neurological damage (or
    other similarly lethal harm) done to one of our family/pack....
    
    Thanks to all of you for your concern and replies.
    
    	/Harry