I love that book! In it, Dodman describes a cat in a recovery cage after having been declawed - if that doesn't do it, I don't know what will! Natalie
-----Original Message----- From: felvtalk-boun...@felineleukemia.org [mailto:felvtalk-boun...@felineleukemia.org] On Behalf Of POTT, BEVERLY Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 4:47 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] FW: Keep Cats Indoors Dr. Nicholas Dodman wrote an awesome book about cat personalities and problems, including aggression towards housemates and people. It's called "The Cat Who Cried For Help", and addresses situations like yours. -----Original Message----- From: Diane Rosenfeldt [mailto:drosenfe...@wi.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2011 6:46 PM To: felvtalk@felineleukemia.org Subject: Re: [Felvtalk] FW: Keep Cats Indoors My housemate and I were faced with such a decision 10 or 11 years ago, when we moved from our separate apartments to our formerly-two-flat house, and melded our cat families. She had two, an elderly lady named Kitty and a pugnacious orange boy named Tribble. I had 3 -- my laid-back Luc, my introverted fluffy tortie Phoebe, and my mom's black girly, Missy. Tribble had always deferred to Kitty when they lived together, and continued to do so, thank goodness. But as time went on and our cat population changed a little, Tribble showed quite a bit of aggression, and we had to take somebody or other to the vet to have bites treated at least twice. So we were in a real bind, since we are both cats-are-family-for-life people, and we did love Tribble with all his peculiarities. We knew nobody would adopt him anyway. We are both anti-declaw and had the raggedy furniture to prove it, but we decided that for the safety of the other cats we would have him declawed, feeling maybe he would lose some aggressiveness, and also that he might still be able to bite, but he wouldn't be able to dig in and hold on while he did so. We found the one place in town at the time that did the laser technique. We were worried about all the things mentioned -- the pain, the litter problems, the behavioral problems. But he really seemed not to mind, even during the first days. He was fine with the litterbox, and didn't develop any behavioral problems above and beyond the ones he had going in. He was still aggressive, but wasn't able to inflict nearly the damage, which was mission accomplished as far as we were concerned. The upside for him is that to this day he still tries to sharpen those claws on furniture, wicker etc., and he's the only one that doesn't get shooed away. I know we got lucky here, and that most cats suffer more, but if we had it to do again we'd still make the same decision under the same circumstances. It was either that or sentence Tribble to almost certain death. Diane R. _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
