Thank God/dess For Feliaway Spray!

You’ve heard of Boomerang Kids?  You fling them out and they keep coming back. And Back. They’re like velcro, you can’t get rid of them?  It’s usually some stupid sh*t, like they can’t keep a job and they hate their room-mates.  I know, sometimes it’s legit.  20-somethings seem to have a nagging propenisty for boomeranging!

We now have a case (yet again) of Boomerang Cats.  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Dink and Envy FINALLY left to be with their mother-owner, as they should.  They’d been here for five years, leaving briefly in July 2009, or was it 2010….time is blurred.

Now D&E are basically pretty nice cats.  Dink is the little one and she is the best cat with little kids I’ve ever encountered, barring the kittens I raised.

Envy is her much larger, (by about 10-12 pounds) easy-going, full litter brother. He and my Rufus got along as well as 2 cats can.

Rufus and Dink? Well, let’s just say it was a stand-off. He’d stand and she’d back off.

Through an almost surreal series of “I Can’t Make This Sh*t Up If I Tried” they are back.  Hopefully, temporarily.

Plus One.

That would be Lilith the B*tch.

I came home from rehearsal Thursday night to utter chaos in the basement.  The S.U. is frantically (for him, of course, so that’s a casual-frantic, if you can picture such a thing)  spraying Feliaway

everywhere.  Envy has his dopey, “Duh, WTH?” look and it trying to find someplace to hide.  Dink is pacing like a new father in the waiting room. The Step Kid (SK) is somewhere, loudly yapping on her phone.  There’s a quiet stranger (female) somewhere on the first floor of my house.  Lilith is yowling on the landing of the basement steps as only a Siamese can yowl and when she isn’t waking the dead, she’s hissing, spitting and swatting at anything that moves. And Rufus is at the midway up the basement stairs, staring at Lilith from his meatloaf position doing his best Robert DeNiro impression, “You talkin’ to me?”

OK.  And there is only ONE cat crate.  The SK stuffed 3 cats into one crate.  Wow.  No wonder there’s just a LITTLE bit of stress vibe going on here.

Yesterday, after I recovered from the total shock of finding the crawl space door open, which almost gave me a coronary, I spent a good portion of the day, rearranging the basement and fixing Comfy Places For Cats To Sleep here and there. I also had to come up with a quick Bungie Cord Fix for the recalcitrant crawl space door. I did laundry, which didn’t send Lilith into the rafters.  She had chosen the SU’s desk chair as a place worthy of Her Highness’ arse. I put a dog mat on it. She deemed this also worthy.

Last night she deemed that the SU’s lap was worthy of her….but he’d better not pet her.

To answer those FB questions:

Lilith is one my my SK’s cats, Lilith, who yes, was not among the others you’ve met, Wonderful Trainer Person! We are plying her with treats, all of which she snubs… But still, we give her lots of vocal praise and positive reinforcement for neutral behavior and we’ve told her that, in this house, we don’t hiss at other cats.

Yes, we actually look at her and say, “We don’t do that here.  You’re a guest here and that’s not how we behave!”  Don’t ask me why but for some odd reason this seems oddly calming to both B*tchy Cat and Humans.

NO, Dearest Friend she and her siblings better not be staying.  They are supposed to leave by next weekend.  I will, of course, believe this when I see it.  If anything about the last 5 years has taught me is I now have an unhealthy dose of skepticism. Call it The Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. My innocence is pretty well shot.

More importantly, I will believe their departure has stuck when they do not (yet again) appear on my door step in some circumstance of High Drama & Angst.

For now, Rufus is upstairs and they are downstairs in the basement.

Lilith is Not Nice To Other Kitties.  She has Dink and Envy cowed (which is amazing because Envy outweighs her by about 12 pounds!  Ah, but Rufus….he’s another story.  She hisses, spits, swats, growls and Rufus’ reaction is, “Yeah.  Sure. Whatever. WTF, I’m not moving.”  I figured, for his stress levels, to let him have the run of the upstairs so he can sleep with us etc.

Lilth is also one of those uber-annoying cats that does the rubbing-marking-flirting-against-your-leg thing, jumps on your lap, talking the whole time and curls up on you as cute as a bug in a rug.  BUT if you even put your hand near to her, she does the hiss-swat-bite-snap maneuver.

I HATE cats like that.  It’s so bipolar.  It’s like “Regular Crappy Cat Crap X 12” stuff and I HATE it.  The good news is she’s getting less stressed hour by hour.  We don’t allow catnip in our house as it encourages crazy-ass behavior in D&E. (The Catnip Crazies seems to amuse the hell out of the SK but we are NOT amused. Use a damn laser pointer; they have fun with that too!)

They’re in a safe place here and our home (for the most part) is pretty calming and she’s probably picking up that Dink & Envy are totally cool in the basement.  I made about 5 places for them to sleep and snuggle, 2 food and water combos and clean the litter box twice a day.  It’ll be fine. It’s just annoying as hell because we can’t have the basement door open.

Thank GOD for Feliaway spray!  

I never believed in that stuff and now I’m a total convert!