Spank him? Send Him Packing?

We love our pets like little people in furry suits but if they bite, chew, bark, or relieve themselves indoors they need to stop that @#%& right now, don’t they? Even if you’re not a violent person you could be tempted, but please don’t spank him.

Way back in the day, I was an undergraduate student – a pre-veterinary major, at Michigan State University. Getting accepted to veterinary school someday in the future, required having math, physics, biology, and inorganic and organic chemistry blasted into my brain by fire hose. We also swallowed livestock sciences plus English and humanities. It was during this challenging time that I became fast friends with Connie and her significant other Lloyd.

Connie and I, each aspiring veterinarians, shared an almost identical class schedule. We often studied together during the week and, well, we were college students, so there was some minor weekend partying which always included Lloyd.

I sit today on Lloyd’s and Connie’s front porch in Philadelphia, ready for school again. The annual presentation of scientific papers, held by the college of veterinary behaviorists, will start soon, followed by the internal medicine forum. Connie is a veterinary cardiologist. My residency training was a deep dive into the brains of animals but I’m still trying to stuff my brain with everything I can.

Lloyd’s and Connie’s grey tabby cat Astro is sitting next to my laptop, carefully watching me type. He may already know that he is the main character in an unfolding drama.

The brain is considered the most complex organ in the body. Astro’s is special because he’s making bad choices. His people love him but he’s using their gorgeous house (believe me, it’s magnificent) as a blank canvas to communicate and relieve his stress. This otherwise placid pet has been an indoor urine graffiti artist. Nobody, including Astro and his feline housemate Daisy, nor their people, are happy.

Soiling one’s own domicile is considered aberrant behavior for any species. Connie and Lloyd had done their best to get Asto’s noxious habit under control. By the time they asked for my help they thought “they’d tried everything.” What they missed was the underlying reason for Astro’s self-soothing. It’s OK though; his brain is in my wheelhouse.

Feeling Better Through Artistic Expression?

Have you noticed how the unhealthy behavior of others can derail an otherwise excellent relationship? Lloyd and Connie really love Astro and Daisy but they’re also rather fond of their antique furniture. They know who’s responsible for the desecration of their Queen Anne sofa and chairs because they’ve busted Astro in the act. And of course, they’ve done their best to convince the little devil to stop.

The most common reason for people to surrender their cats to shelters isn’t aggression, internal disease, or expense. It’s house soiling. Cats may void their bladders on horizontal surfaces like rugs, sinks, bathtubs, kitchen counters, and laundry piles. Sprayers like Astro, on the other hand, back their rear ends up to walls, drapes, their person (eeww!!), or really nice home furnishings. The poopers are something else.

My friends provided big, clean, uncovered litter pans and located plastic spikey scat mats on their favorite, although now plastic covered, furniture. They applied an enzymatic cleaner (Anti Icky Poo ®) and then sat Astro down for a heart-to-heart. Being a genuinely sweet kitty, he just gazed at them and purred.

As I observed the household and inspected the crime scenes, the perpetrator hung out like any relaxed, well-adjusted cat. His non-spraying feline roomie, black and white Daisy? Not so much.

None of us lives in a vacuum; everybody does their best to adapt to their environment. Daisy sometimes rests, but not often enough. She fidgets and moves about, often stopping to lick her coat. Her skin twitches slightly. Worst of all, while a lot smaller than Astro, she ambushes him and pounces. Daisy is itchy and irritable; aggression is her coping mechanism.

Some bullied cats hide, others fight back but like many who get by in a stressful environment, Astro sprays urine. He engages in this odious behavior to feel better. If his quality of life improves, on the other hand, his behavior should too. All eyes are now on Daisy and the reasons for her shabby treatment of poor, long-suffering Astro.

Feline Family Dysfunction

Violence is frowned upon in most civilizations. Lloyd and Connie love Daisy, their bully cat, as much as they do Astro, the victim. Can’t everybody just get along? Thankfully, Astro never fought back. That’s good because feline fisticuffs wouldn’t have improved anybody’s behavior.

Our heroes, Connie and Lloyd, faced a chicken and egg conundrum. Daisy often licked her itchy, twitchy skin. All the while, her stress about an outdoor lurking creature worsened her anxiety disorder, a problem she very likely carried from birth. Elliot took the brunt of her agitation, leading him to hose his home.

Cats are genetically wired to hunt, stalk, and defend their territory. Daisy was strictly indoors by her choice, but she struggled with her confinement nonetheless. She watched that nasty racoon as it skulked in her yard, frustrating the #$%* out of her! If she were free-living, by golly, she might have chased that alien into the next county. She just couldn’t do it. Arrgh!

Visiting beasts, small or large, are a common trigger for indoor cats. Daisy hated that racoon but it was out of her reach, so she redirected her angst against the nearest warm body – the hapless Astro. It could have been somebody else with a pulse, like Lloyd or Connie. We see that happen in some homes. Fortunately, I have never encountered any human victims of feline violence coping the same way Astro did. At least no one has admitted to it.

I prescribed Reconcile (fluoxetine) to reduce Daisy’s anxiety and aggression but her miserable skin was also a priority. To address the possibility of allergies as the cause of her itching and licking I recommended (1/4) of a 10 mg loratadine (Claritin) tablet once daily. If she didn’t feel better in a few weeks she would need a full dermatologic workup.

Connie felt that since each of her cats was struggling with anxiety, she could treat them both with Reconcile. I urged caution; there is not a medication known to humankind without possible side effects. I advised her and Lloyd to watch for constipation or a failure of either cat to completely void their bladders. Surfing the litter pans was now a daily responsibility.

Better Living through Chemistry and a little Chicanery

Some cats would rather take the life of their loving pet parent than take a pill. The antianxiety medication Reconcile, that I prescribed for “Daisy,” is a beef-flavored tablet. I told Connie that if Daisy refused this tasty morsel it could be crushed and added to her food or mixed in Churo, aka kitty crack.

For this petite black and white hellion to quit whupping on Astro, her urine spraying housemate, her brain and her skin would need to be a lot less agitated. Claritin (loratadine) is often a good first choice antihistamine for itchy, allergic cats; it’s safe and works fast. But it’s a pill, a non-starter for this prickly pussy cat.

A compounding pharmacy can mix medications in tasty liquids but we first needed learn whether Claritin would help. So I counseled Connie and Lloyd on little butter balls. If they were patient, their feline fussbudget would very likely play along.

Step one: Pre-cut the pills into quarters and coat each with a thin layer of butter. Freeze these delicacies on one plate, along with multiple bits of frozen butter, sans pill pieces, on another plate. Step 2: With Daisy sitting contentedly with Lloyd, Connie’s job was to offer one tiny blank butter ball after another for a few minutes. I advised repeating this charade twice daily for a couple of days.

Now the ruse would begin in earnest. Daisy, motivated by a delayed breakfast, would snap up one fatty frozen tidbit after the next, then a coated pill quarter, and then a few more blank butter bits. This delightful event, repeated daily, never led to stress or struggle. Pill time was fun time.

Allergies were not the only possible cause of Daisy’s itching. Hard-to-detect mange mites like demodex, had to be ruled out. Prescription Bravecto is a safe spot-on treatment that would reliably wipe them out.

Urine marking, believe it or not, is a normal feline communication. It’s often associated with conflict between cats. If Daisy felt better, would she stop thrashing Astro? Could this big tabby adapt to a life without harassment? And stop spraying?

Unrelenting Urine Busters

M. Scott Peck began his seminal book, The Road Less Traveled, with “Life is difficult.” Old Scott was right. Daisy, itchy to the point of agitation, felt trapped indoors whenever that arrogant racoon violated her yard, leading her to treat her affable roomie Astro like a feline punching bag. He, in turn, communicated his angst by spraying urine, the feline version of ‘talking it out.’ The humans in this political nightmare had assumed that their sofa soaker was their only problem pet. They finally understood that everybody’s life was difficult.

Claritin reduced Daisy’s urge to crawl out of her skin while the Reconcile improved her anxiety. But that stinking pork-face varmint remained a burr under her saddle. Territorial by nature, she perched on the sill of her screened-in porch, smoldering over the neighborhood’s lax immigration policy.

Sure, racoons have rights, like raiding trash cans for the remains of yesterday’s duck confit, but Lloyd’s and Connie’s attitude about undomesticated vagabonds was NIMBY (not in my backyard). The ungrateful vagrant was summarily shipped off to parts unknown by the local humane critter trapper.

Astro the urine perpetrator had a shot at becoming a better citizen but only if Daisy stopped slapping him around. As her skin and her attitude improved her violent tendencies diminished. She actually became peaceful, almost like a feline Ghandi. Astro, for his part, reacquainted himself with the big clean litter pans.

I cautioned Lloyd and Connie against spiking the ball in celebration. Even the faint scent of old urine could trigger a relapse. I assigned the task of monitoring the nooks and crannies of their home, armed with an ultraviolet light, crawling commando style on their bellies to find every little dried up drop. They purchased the odor eliminator Anti Icky Poo by the gallon, misting the glowing evidence until there was nothing left.

It was the pet parents in this drama who deserve the credit. They were open to learning that members of a different species often don’t think and act the way we humans do. They never scolded, swatted, water sprayed, or surrendered anybody to a shelter. Reaching success was difficult but their empathy and kindness paid off. They also knew when to ask for help.