r/catquestions

Hi. I’ve had my cat for the past 4 years she’s around 9 years old now and she’s always been an aloof independent cat.

She spends most of the day sleeping and isn’t big on affection. She’s scratched and bit me a few times before as i’m sure many cats have with their owners, but we never had any major issues until now.

About 3 months ago I was coming home from a night out and wasn’t watching where I was going and accidentally stepped on her:( She was obviously frightened and panicked. She latched onto my ankle with her nails and teeth and when I tried to shake her off she crawled up my leg and clinged to my neck. I ended up going to urgent care to get it cleaned out because it was pretty nasty cut coming in chunks from my ankle to my neck and left an ugly scar. I’d add a picture but it’s a bit gnarly.

She has been very aggressive with me since then. She doesn’t hide from me or anything but literally whenever I see her she hisses and will even swipe at me if I get too close. I try to keep my distance from her but we obviously still have to see each other. I took her to the vet about a week after the accident to make sure it wasn’t an injury that was causing her to act like this, but she’s totally healthy. I’m not sure what I can do, I figured trying to get her to associate me with more positive things like food and play would help her calm down around me but she hisses and shows defensive/aggressive body language every time she sees me and it’s impossible to get around my place with her being aggressive like this.

If she is going to be like this forever I might have to give her to my friend, she is only like this around me and is very calm around other guests. It’s frustrating because it was the only time i’ve ever hurt her (obviously an accident) and it’s like she forgot the past 4 years. Has this happened to anyone else?

This is my family cat Tux. I wish you could add more than one video but he is 4 years old and fixed. One day we noticed he couldn’t jump, he loves being in his cat tower but was climbing up it and not jumping like he usually does. It went on for a few days and my family brought him the a vet where they told us he just pulled a muscle and sent us home.

Later that same night his back leg stopped working and we realized he was losing the ability to walk. I tried feeding him and he would barely eat. For days he would just lay there and we’d have to wipe him down and lay out pee pads because he wasn’t moving to pee. The ER vet took all we had saved up for him and they referred us to a neurologist an hour away that we can’t afford since our insurance doesn’t cover that.

The vet gave us steroids but they don’t seem to be helping and my parents are talking about having vet come over tomorrow to put him to sleep but I don’t know what happened to him. I hate seeing him like this and I don’t know what to do. He’s only four and has never had any health issues, he hasn’t gotten into anything bad either. We have another cat but we sent her away because we don’t know if what Tux has in contagious and he misses her and just cries out all night. It’s so hard to watch and the medicine isn’t helping. His X-ray and bloodwork is all normal too.

Hi! This is my first post and i’m on mobile so I’m sorry in advance for any bad formatting!

I have 3 cats, 2 sphynx cats and 1 bengal cat. I have had my sphynxs for 3 years now and our bengal will be 1 this July. I came home from the store and my baby’s back was all scratched up :( Our bengal can be a very harsh player and has been aggressive with the sphynxs in the past but nothing but terrible.

I was able to clean her and put cream on her scratches but I feel so bad! Our benagl has been hissing at her and is being kept in a separate room but is being an absolute menace with his howling and banging at the door. So it can only be a temporary solution. I don’t like to leave clothes on them when I am gone because they’ve gotten stuck before. My baby is so sweet and I just feel awful!

(cat tax included)

Hi. A few months ago we had to put down our family cat after she was diagnosed with cancer. She was 11 and all the medication and chemotherapy costs would have been too expensive for us to pay for, and we weren’t in a position to take out loans. It was around 5k for the treatment but if she was younger and had a better chance for recovery we might have done it.

What is the most that you’d be able to spend on your cats vet treatment. Everything is so expensive now. Obviously the answer is different for everyone depending on their financial situation but i’ve heard of people going thousands in debt for their cats and it makes me feel guilty for not trying to do the same. She was my parents cat but I grew up with her.

My (29m) girlfriend (25m) and I are at a total loss. Our cat, Fish (confusing, i’m aware) got out of our back door on Thursday morning and has been stuck in our crawl space ever since. We have gotten under the house multiple times and can confirm that he doesn’t look frantic or scared at all - he slow blinks at us and doesn’t appear to be all that concerned about his situation. Unfortunately, the part of the crawl he’s in is very narrow, less than 1 foot of clearance top-to-bottom so nearly impossible for a standard sized adult to navigate. We have tried many things to coax him out so far. We’ve sat by the exits calling his name, no dice. Since night 1, we have had two animal traps set up in the easier to access parts of the crawl space - both traps are baited (one with wet food, one with his standard dry food) and have had no luck in either. We actually put a litter box near one of the traps the other night and our cat had the audacity to use the box, but still didn’t get in the trap! We also have a little bowl of water by the same trap and he has possibly drank a bit of that water as well. We’ve also started putting stinky smelling sardines by the part or the crawl space he entered through. We called the non emergency fire department line and they basically just suggested we leave the part of the crawl space he got in through open as a possible way for him to exit. They said they wouldn’t come help unless he actually seemed stuck or hurt, and that it would unfortunately involve a lot of damage to the house. We are renting the house so obviously we would prefer to avoid taking extreme measures, but I’m not gonna lie we are getting pretty desperate.

We’ve called several wildlife removal companies and none of them deal with pets. Animal control refuses to enter peoples houses for liability reasons. We have no idea who else to call other than the fire department..I am basically willing to do anything to get him out soon. If anyone has any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions, please let me know.

Our current plan of action is to close him up in the crawl space and hope that the smelly food and water inside the traps eventually gets him trapped. However, we are very anxious to get him out as soon as possible and are open to any other ideas. Thank you everyone.

For context our cat is just over one year old. He seems to be a very resilient boy. We miss him so much

errr my mom says he might be but he also used to be like kinda chubby hes literally js 2 years old and he wont sit still for me to take a pic

Sigh. I lost my little girl this morning after nearly 4 incredible years. She was a “replacement cat” given to me by my breeder after her brother tested positive for HCM. Though obviously my breeder wanted me to keep her brother as well. She was the sweetest most snuggly cat ever. I loved her more than anything and it’s all darkness without her. I’m trying to hold it out for the sake of her big brother, but as he’s in end stage heart failure…I really don’t know what i’ll do when they’re both gone. I’ll have lost 4 cats within two years.

I want to know if it’s worth it to have an autopsy done. My two previous babies both passed very suddenly from HCM. But I know it was HCM since both were positive for it. However my Lola had a perfectly healthy echocardiogram just a month again. A day before her passing she began to wheeze and cough so I scooped her to the emergency vet where they gave her an X-Ray and ran a blood test that I’m still waiting for the result of. She passed very early in the morning and I found her on the stairs. After viewing the footage from my security cameras I could see she spent about an hour trying to get up the stairs to my room. I will never forgive myself for that…I didn’t even know she left the room last night, I should have closed the door…she seemed to be very wheezy snd coughy and weakened I just keep racking my brain on what could have happened.

I want an autopsy but I don’t know if it’s worth it. It’s around $5,000 dollars around me and i’m already nearly 10K in debt for all vet trips her and her brother needed. Is it worth it? If you had one doke for your baby did it give you peace of mind?

Update: Thank you for everyone who was kind and didn’t turn this to a debate about breeding but FYI two of sphynx were rescues and still died of HCM… I have decided not to do the autopsy and save the money for her funeral service and to bury her with her siblings.

I’ll be real, he is my first male cat since I was really little. He is fixed and has only started doing this recently when I take him for supervised outdoor time. He is NOT an indoor/outdoor cat. Is this supposed to be him spraying??? He’s about 4 years old in August

I finally got her to hold still enough to take a good photo. Is this normal?

We called the vet they said earliest opening is monday. I tried the ringworm black light trick and he glows all over? Ringworm or more?

pls help me i am very scared for my cats health

I said hi to her once and ever sense she won’t leave me alone. Every day I come home and she is there . Either in my parking spot or at my door just waiting and is SUPER affectionate . I noticed she was round ? And assumed she was pregnant but it’s been about 4 weeks and she was already like that when I first saw her. Sources say usually cats don’t “show” until about 5 weeks and a full term is about 9-10 weeks . So that means it’s been about 9 so she should be going into labor now or any day now IF she is pregnant . She lets me rub her belly which I find odd because my 2 boys would attack me if I tried that (out of playfullness) but I’m a stranger to her so I’m not sure why she lets me . I’ve noticed some strange stomach movements I’ve thought were maybe contractions or caused by discomfort of kittens but I may just be overthinking it and assuming and she could just be a fat stray. My main reasoning for thinking maybe she ISNT , is that her nipples seem to not be turning pink or becoming large ? And only 2 are hairless at the moment which wouldn’t be normal for a pregnant cat about to go into labor from what I’ve read . Still I wanted to ask.

Hi this is CC (Cumulus Cloud) I adopted her almost 3 months ago and she keeps attacking me.

I will be playing with her-and I don’t use my hands to play with her, I use wand toys mainly- and she’ll randomly jump and start going at it on my arm. I don’t pet her as the first time I tried she attacked me :( I don’t really approach her but sometimes she’ll walk up to me and just be angry for no reason. When she went to her first vet appointment she was healthy and fine and she is spayed.

I took her again to get her nails clipped since obviously I can’t do it myself and to get claw caps put on, but they weren’t able to do so she still has her nails.

I don’t know what to do she’s only getting worse and I try to just be calm around her but i’m getting scared of her. I can still play with her for a few minutes and she has independent toys but all our interactions end with her scratching or biting me and I don’t know what i’m doing wrong.

I try to get her to like me with treats but she’ll grab them and run off and she won’t even eat around me. I’d say she’s scared of me but she’s the one approaching me 99% of the time. I’ve tried churus but she won’t eat them.

How do I get her to stop attacking me? I don’t think I can keep her if this issues persists.

My senior cat Poppy, 14F and spayed, has been giving me squinty eyes on and off for the past few weeks now. She just looks like she’s giving me an evil stare half the time lol.

At first I thought it was from her dental pain as she just had two extractions almost a month ago now. So I thought the squinting would go away. But alas, it has not. Sometimes it’s both eyes, someone’s it’s the left or the right.

She’s eating and drinking normally, and her behaviour has been mostly back to normal since her dental procedure. No discharge from her eyes either.

Not sure if this is related but her nose is dripping clear fluid sometimes.

We just did a full extended panel of bloodwork for her dental and it was completely normal. During her recheck at the vet, I mentioned the eyes and the vet did a quick look and didn’t see anything abnormal. She mentioned I could have her come back and they would put a liquid in her eyes to have a better look.

I just paid an obscene amount of money for her dental procedure, bloodwork, and meds. So I’ve been monitoring her to see if anything changes before I rush her back to the vet since I’m already in the hole financially.

Is this because she’s older now? Is it allergies? Doesn’t look like an ulcer or corneal abrasion but I’m not an expert. And also it’s not a constant thing but enough of a change that it does concern me. Advice and opinions are welcome.

I’ve included two photos of her from today with her squinting (one with the nose dripping) and also a recent one from 2 weeks ago where both eyes are open.

I am taking him to the vet in a few weeks for a general check up but just wanted to see if i could get any insight here. he’s a little over a year and is still slowly gaining weight at the rate he was when he was growing from a kitten to adult (about 1 pound per month). I expected him to stop growing around a year but he’s still gaining weight. I think he may just be a big cat and have a bigger frame, but i’m just a little worried sinew he’s still gaining weight.

Is my cat a shorthair cat or medium hair? I’m leaning towards medium hair but the vet said shorthair. Her coat gets pretty thin/wispy towards the ends so I’m unsure.

Hi, I live in a neighborhood with a lot of stray cats and a few of my neighbors like to feed them so they keep breeding with each other. My family has tried calling rescues but we live in a small area and unfortunately nobody has been able to take them. Last night pretty late we found this cat who is obviously really pregnant, my parents don’t let us feed them but she followed us so they agreed to let her stay in the garage since it’s a bit chilly out. We noticed she was panting and then that there fluid on the towel we gave her to sleep on. We figured she was in labor but we left her to let nature take its course, but by morning when we opened the garage she was still panting, we share the garage so we brought her inside-we haven’t forced her inside or anything and she’s free to go when she wants but we think she’s too tired. I looked up how to make cats go into labour and made her a little nesting box but she wants nothing to do with it, she just laid down and whined all day and now it’s almost a full day of her in labour and still no kittens and I’m not sure what to do to help her. I put some oil on her stomach and laid out the pee pads we have left over from our late dog.

We obviously don’t have the money to take her to vet or I wouldn’t be posting here. I’m not from the US so we don’t have public shelters and rescues that can help, the places we called all said they don’t take stays:(

Update: found a local rescue that can take them in tomorrow!

Found this baby and her brother scratching on my front door in Virginia today and I am not sure how old they are. We have a large feral population in the neighborhood and one of them was being aggressive towards the babies so I’ve brought them inside for the night since all our shelters and rescues are closed. I waited several hours to see if mom came for them, but no sign of her or any additional littermates.

I will start calling in the morning, but want to make sure their needs are met for the night. I’m estimating them at 3-4 weeks but not certain.

Editing to add: looking for a second opinion on whether they’re old enough to be okay on regular wet food to tide them over until I can get in touch with a rescue in the morning.

I recently adopted two cats that are absolutely perfect - except for one thing.
My little orange child does not like me leaving the house and will not let me leave without bolting out the door.

Luckily most of the time I have someone else staying home so they can pick him up while I exit, or place him in a closed room for the exiting duration. The few times we are both leaving it is a real hard task. I had to leave through my back door leaving it unlocked in order to get out which isn’t a safe choice in my area.

Please give me tips as I want him to be safe.
They are indoor only cats, though I adopted them from a rescue where they were given up at 1yr old and I do not have information on their history of treatment.

Hi. I really don’t know what to do . I have never considered giving my cat away ever, but after a vet check up, X-ray, urinalysis and bloodwork that cost almost 5K i can’t think of any solution but rehoming. But my cat just won’t use the litter box. He will only pee on my bedsheets…if they are on my bed. I’ve used open litter boxes, closed liter boxes, both at the same time. 3 litter boxes at at once. Over the past year i’ve tried pine, paper, corn, wheat, tofu, clumping, cat attract, literally everything. He pees on only my bed and my clothes it’s been a year and i’m going to be moving in my my two friends for my sophomore year. My one friends has a normal cat with no issues bonus I can’t sort it by then I will have to look for a new home has anyone dealt with this? Fixed cat no other health issues sorry for typos i did not spell check.