Just yesterday I mentioned that I post by 9:00 AM or not at all and here I am posting FCB at almost one o'clock in the afternoon! I made my usual visit to my mother's yesterday. While there, it wasn't too stressful, but I was awake until Kevin left to catch his train this morning. Thinking about all the work that needs to be done on her house, the day to day stuff with which she needs help (but is stubborn about), the baggage this brother and that brother share, accusations of ulterior motives and, last but not least, my mother continuing to sleep on the couch when she's got a perfectly good, brand spanking new bed in her room, just 15 feet away from the couch. Mind you, she just turned 82 years old, so it's not like she's one of the uber-fit, 60-is-the-new-30 types. I wasn't really in the mindset to post about cats.
But I've slept for a few hours and am now ready to proclaim Edison's Clomicalm a wonder drug!
Edison started marking throughout almost the entire house earlier this year. The linked post talks about Prozac and Elavil, two drugs we tried previously. At the time of that post, I did not know about Clomicalm yet, but oh what a wonderful day it was when we started him on that!
He went off Elavil for a week to clear it out of his system. Prozac and Elavil produced little to not change in Edison's tightly wound, overly-aggressive-to-poor-Clara-and-Dolly behavior and no reduction in marking. The drugs are supposed to take 4-6 weeks to work at full efficacy. He started Clomicalm on a Friday morning. Kevin usually gave him his anti-pee pills at night, but I couldn't wait until Friday night to get Edison on a new drug. Within hours - hours! - he started calming down. And I don't believe he's marked anywhere since that day forward!
He doesn't jump on Dolly's head nearly as much and she seems more relaxed around him. His attitude toward Clara is toned down. He rarely goes after her, although sometimes he just watches her. Not as intently as he used to, when he was apparently prepping to attack her. And sometimes he just ignores her completely and she walks right by him. Clara, for her part, doesn't trust the new and improved Edison yet and is still quite wary when she goes for a walkabout around the house. I don't blame her; that cat was a nut.
Kevin and I haven't had kittens as adults. Edison was our first kitten. I don't think we realized just how tightly wound he was until we got Lizzie and Miles. Miles, of course, is a world class slacker cat. I stepped on his tail in the middle of the night recently and he didn't do anything beyond crane his neck around to see what was going on back there. He and Lizzie were recently microchipped. It's a fair sized chip they put in at the neck (I can feel Miles's through his skin; it's like a huge piece of rice). The vets take them to a backroom to do it bc the cats are not anesthesized (it takes two seconds) and the cats often react to the pain. The vet and techs tell me Miles sat through it without any reaction. Clearly, Miles is on some natural Clomicalm of his own...and I want some of it!
It was such a relief when this stuff worked for Eddie. I don't think I realized how concerned I was. What would we do if this last chance drug didn't work? Kevin would not even consider giving up Edison...and I certainly didn't want to give him up. I love that little guy. Plus, there's that whole adoption-is-for-life thing I'm always on about. We're committed to these cats, but I just didn't know what we would do if Clomicalm didn't work. I said I would diaper him. Kevin laughed; said that would be even more stressful for Edison. Yeah, well, it's pretty stressful for me when I sit down in my Comfy Chair and end up sitting in a puddle of cat urine.
Fortunately, all's well that ends well and all that jazz, so we are again a happy home of 2 peeps and 6 cats. Nosey's still aggressive towards Clara occasionally. He never involved himself in the affairs of the cats bc a) I don't think he considered himself a cat and b) he was not aggressive. After Edison and Clara started getting into it, Nosey started running to gang up on Clara whenever he heard a kerfuffle. There's a sort of detente between Clara and Edison now; negotiations continue between Clara and Nosey.
But hey! This is FCB...let's have another picture of The Man of the Hour, Edison!
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