Poorly Cat or Naturally Grumpy?
I have had two black and white cats in my lifetime and both of them have been grumpy cats. The first one I got when I still lived with my parents, called Rosie, and she was the grumpiest cat I have ever met. She didn't want to be fussed, played with, looked at even. I obviously forgot the worst of this behaviour when I left home and got my own cat, a cute little black and white kitten to be named Thumbelina.
After she settled in she turned into a Rosie, grumpy, antisocial and quite erratic, so she was mainly left to get on with it as we only fed and watered her. Because she was a bad tempered cat it was never easy to spot any signs of illness with her, however we did notice an increase in her bad temperament coupled with frequent squatting in the litter tray with little result, blood spots in her urine and almost constant licking of her bits. Therefore we decided to duly take her to the vet.
The vet diagnosed a Urinary Tract Infection and prescribed her with antibiotics and gave us some reading on Lower Urinary Tract Disease in cats. After suffering from a couple of Infections the vet recommended changing her food to Royal Canin Urinary SO, which is a food specially formulated to help manage Urinary Tract Disease. The science behind this type of special cat food is quite complicated but we noticed a huge improvement and fortunately she has not suffered with UTIs since. We therefore highly recommend this cat food as it has made a dramatic difference to her problems.
Though the UTI's were sorted, her behaviour in the house was still erratic and with a new baby on the way we were increasingly worried that her random aggression would be a problem. We knew she wasn't poorly; she was well fed and had plenty of outside exercise so we were unsure of what caused her behaviour. We discussed our concerns with the vet and he recommended using Feliway - a simple plug in product which emits a copy of the scent of feline facial pheromone which is proven to relieve feline stress. Amazingly this worked and she quickly turned into a much sweeter and lovable cat. I am not sure if it is a black and white cat thing but I know that next time I am choosing a tabby cat or a ginger!
