My little lady is having a terrible time adjusting to her new siblings. She already didn't care much for her brother (husband's cat, also around 7 years old), but they've lived together for 2 years and they just kept their distance and we thought it was fine.

Then we made the decision to bring home a 2 month old kitten and a 2 month old golden retriever about two months ago. My girl has a history of spraying when she's mad so we pretty quickly deduced that it was her spraying around the house. We counted maybe 8 different sprays and decided to keep her in the garage to give her some space. Our car is not parked in there and she's got food, water, climbing surfaces and toys to keep her busy. Now she's back to her sweet silly self and I also got her on 5mg fluoxetine to help with her anxiety around the new pets.

It's been about a month on the meds and we do scent swaps, Feliway plugins, open-door sniffs with the other cats, and I decided to let her back in to get some indoor time. All the other pets were either sleeping or not in her business so I let her roam unsupervised for a few minutes. Lo and behold she goes upstairs and sprays in a spot that she's marked a handful of times already.

She's got a decent enough setup in the garage but this can't be a permanent solution, especially now it's getting colder and we can't afford to run the garage heater 24/7.

I feel like we've tried everything and my husband is ready to call it quits, but she's been with me through so much and I'd hate to have to surrender her. Our other adult cat and the kitten get along so well, so it breaks my heart to see my girl all alone cooped up in the garage because she loves hanging out with people, just not other animals.

Any advice on how to reintegrate her into the house would be appreciated. I'm trying to figure out the best room to keep as her "home base" that none of the other animals could access. it might be tricky but willing to try anything at this point

So we got a kitten, turned out to be female. Now they both play a lot but sometimes the male Pins her to the ground by grabbing her throat, neck or cheek. Are we still in the Phase of him correcting her behavior if he doesnt let go after she starts squeaking? Male is neuered, youngling is gonna be in January.

I dont known if breaking things up id the correct decision but im not sure at which point i need to intervene. We also have an adult female but he doesnt interact like this with her and never has.

Male is 4, kitten about 16 weeks.

Tldr: is my male orange cat still diciplining or overstepping.

Edit: vet visit is in two days, and we always break them up if he does this. I just wanted reassurance that it is the correct decision.

after a full summer of my cat sleeping on my bed, i accidentally kicked her while trying to sleep. it’s been a full month and she’s been sleeping in the office, and immediately sprinting back to the office when i take her to my bedroom. am i cooked and how do i get my cat comfortable again?

I recently purchased a new shampoo that was recommended to me by my hairdresser. I was stupid and didn’t fully register that there was a little bit of lily extract in it. I want to be really clear here that my cats have NOT been exposed to this shampoo or lily extract, I have not used it. Would that this shampoo used in my hair (washed out of course) may be ok for me to be around my cats? Based on information I’ve gathered about it, it’s less than 0.5% of the product. I cannot return it but honestly, if there’s a chance it could hurt my cats I would really much rather just lose out on the shampoo than my cats. (26, USA, can afford my vet and emergency vet, 2 cats, 6F and 4M)

This came out of his eye, he gets them quite frequently but never with blood. Should I be worried?

I’m not a minor, I’m from Australia, vet accessible but not yet contacted. Onyx is 2, he’s a lil man and he is neutered. Yes i can afford vet care

I just adopted an 8-week-old kitten ,roughly around that age, to be a companion for my other 4 month old kitten. She's very tiny. She's only been here for a few days. And she pees and poops outside of the litter box sometimes. Her stool is very liquidy. It's not as solid as my 4-month-old kitten's, its similar to diarrhea. I haven't taken her to the vet yet because I was waiting to see if they'd get along before spend hundreds on vaccines. Is there something serious wrong, or is this normal for kittens to poop and pee outside of their box in a relatively new envirobment? I was thinking of taking her back to the shelter because I'm given a 90 day return period and adopting a kitten closer to the resident's age to avoid some of the issues I should've taken into consideration before adopting a kitten so young. My ressident kitten didnt go through any litter issues, so I might've gotten lucky.

I'm 29, from Europe, been to the vet but looking for different opinions/similar experiences

we suspect my cat has herpes and the vet suggested an antibiotic cream to apply on her eyes. we started on Friday, twice a day, and since then she's been squinting constantly and her eyes have gotten red and irritated

she's 2 and has had reoccurring problems with her eyes since birth, they looked pretty normal up until we started with this treatment

I don't know whether to stop or continue for the whole 10 days since it's antibiotics but I'm worried it's causing more damage than benefits

So, I had forgotten to scoop my cat’s box for a handful of days (an oversight since I’m really sick right now) and noticed plastic pieces of clear packing tape embedded in there. She tore two chunks off of the seam of my a/c unit and swallowed them. She always does crap like this, but I have some serious anxiety this week for other reasons, so I want to double check. They were about an inch long and wide each. It was thick tape, but not in a strip or string or anything. I don’t know when she passed it, but she’s been behaving normally all week. I am currently going to remove any accessible tape now, but am I okay now that it passed and she has no symptoms?

Update: spoke to the emergency vet office over the phone and she said she’s likely fine. She gave me symptoms to watch out for. My cat was about to throw up a couple days ago and I rubbed her throat softly to stop her. I hope that wasn’t it. Either way, she seems good now.

Hello everyone! I know this varies so much based on where you live but- is pet insurance worth it in the US? I’m not talking about emergencies, which in that case I’m sure it is. But just for a yearly basic checkup/shots. How much do you guys pay out of pocket for that? Is it a big enough difference to make insurance worth it? Any advice would be appreciated.

So i have a 5 month old kitten and she has an appointment tomorrow for spaying surgery… The issue is i am having second thoughts and feeling really bad for spaying her 😭

I'm in Australia, have booked in a vet visit.

I've always felt his end of tail feels really pointy but I've never pulled back his hair until today. It really looks like his tailbone is exposed? He doesn't flinch or react when I touch the end of it at all.

He is 1 and a half years old Maine Coon.

He's male and desexed.

Image of his tail is the last slide as it looks a bit grim :(

Hi, i just adopted another kitten to keep my resident kitten ( ~ 4 month old calico) and at first they had a verg rough introduction and the calico would hiss and go out of her way to hit her, but now its been a few days they calmed down. Is this normal plah behavior and noises? The little one makes the craziest shrieks / growls.

Sasha in the 4th pic and Notch in the last

So I’ll try giving as much context as I can, I have a female(almost 3 years old) , male(about 1.5-2 years old) and a male kitten (4 months old) the issue is with the older male cat.

I have my female cat (Jinx) first and after about a year we adopted the male (Notch)

He was always much more energetic and playful than her and would always pick on her while she wanted nothing to do with him. At some point every time she tried to use the litter (we had 2 boxes) he would jump on her and just not let her use it. We started holding him just so she can go to the litter box peacefully.

Then we moved to a new apartment and things settled down more, he would stop interrupting her and we had a better location to the litter boxes (in the laundry room with a kitty door they go through, you can see in the picture) she still doesn’t like him and he occasionally chases her (it seems playful but she hates it and hisses at him) we always stop him from bullying her 🫠 we also have a catio now and when he sees she out in the catio he chases her into the house. I feel like he’s very territorial but I don’t know how to fix it. (She was here first!!)

Now on Saturday night we found a kitten and on Sunday we took him to the vet and brought him in, we called him Sasha.

Currently he’s in the laundry room where their litter boxes are usually and we put out their boxes and got another one for him.

We do not let them interact and they can only see each other through the kitty door. At first Jinx hissed when she saw him there but she’s more scared than aggressive.

Notch on the other hand… he’s completely fixated on the laundry room ever since we brought Sasha and shows a lot of aggression, literally slams himself against the door.

For a bit I put a cover so he won’t see him and then took it off because I thought he should get used to him?

Fast forward this morning, I went out for 5 minutes to get something from my car and when I returned I saw Notch inside the laundry room. I opened the door and saw food and water spilled, Sasha’s fur everywhere and poop (he soiled himself)

I’m not sure if Notch managed to open the kitty door (we locked it from both sides) or maybe we forgot to lock it last night 🫤

Now Sasha is hiding behind the washing machine and too scared to get out. I cleaned everything up and left him water and wet food but he looked terrified (I managed to sneak a peek from the side)

I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid Notch will keep being this aggressive. Please help.

Is there any chance they’ll get along after this?

And no need to shame me because I feel horrible. I covered the kitty door again so they won’t see each other and made sure it’s locked /:

He doesnt seem to be in pain, very playful as always, and pees normally. Hes an indoor cat and never had any urinary issues.

I noticed this just today, and google is not helpful at all.

I wont be able to read comments for the nest 8 hours, but after that i will respond to anyone who has any questions, if its serious then im gonna take him to the vet asap

Hi everyone. I don’t know if this is the right sub for this but I need help with my cats. I am 4 months postpartum with the most amazing baby girl. About half way through my pregnancy, I unfortunately developed a pet aversion towards both of my cats. I love my cats dearly and care about them like they’re my own children. However, because of this, I did not give them as much attention as I was previously because I was just so tired and overwhelmed with pregnancy. When I wanted to rest, they would come and try to walk all over my chest, which was sore, and my belly, which obviously had a baby in it that I had to protect from the weight of my cats. So, I would remove them from doing so and shut the door because they were so persistent to just walk over me. Typical cat things. During pregnancy, and sitting up the nursery and bassinet, they would often scratch all the furniture and the bassinet, lay in her crib, etc which really stressed me out for how they would potentially continue this behavior in the future. Also, due to the lack of my attention, they would get bored in the night and cause a bunch of ruckus while my husband and I were trying to sleep. I was so exhausted because it would cause me to lose sleep on top of the tiredness I’d feel due to pregnancy.

Fast forward to now, none of this behavior has stopped. My cats don’t mind my daughter at all but they still cause so much noise in our room when we try to sleep. They still try to scratch her bassinet, they scratch any wooden surface in the house (which is worth mentioning that our house is built in 1910 so we are trying so hard to preserve the original wood), at night they just go crazy.

The other day they were literally ripping wallpaper off of the wall in our hallway. I had a breakdown because I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep (interrupted). My cats woke up my daughter twice in the night: once by trying to sharpen their claws on her bassinet, and another time, 30 minutes after I had just put her back to bed, by meowing loudly and scratching the door I closed to keep them out of the room while we both tried to sleep. I ended up locking both of them with their food, water, and litter box in our half-bathroom downstairs for 4 hours just so my daughter and I could get some sleep. It made me feel horrible but it was the only option. They do not tolerate the doors being closed to our room, they think any form of discipline is a fun game, and I am at my wits end. Some nights they are completely fine. Others it’s chaos. I tried talking to my husband months ago about the anxiety I had surrounding the cats behavior when our daughter is born and he said we should wait and see what happens once she’s here. Well now she is here, and honestly it’s just gotten worse. I have so much anxiety about the cats potentially waking up my daughter every single night it causes me to lose sleep. It takes forever for me to get to bed because I am anxious that the smallest noise will wake her up. Every stir in her bed causes the anxiety pit in my stomach to get worse.

I try to give my cats attention throughout the day, I pet them, respond to them meowing, etc but sometimes they are just too much still and I am still experiencing pet aversion. I am a stay at home mom who exclusively breastfeeds and I take care of my baby every day all day; that alone is hard. They have so many toys and things to play with. I try to do what I can but it’s still not enough for them. They are still bored. I don’t know what to do.

If anyone could give some advice I’d really appreciate it.

I am so concerned for my female cat she is 1.5 years old I have already been to the vet once this year for her ears because she could not stop itching them and it costed me a fortune. I don’t have money to take her to the vet at all right now and she’s acting super weird so I’m really concerned. Please someone that knows what this is please help me out. She is meowing a ton, she was running and jumping across everything for like 60 seconds a few minutes ago. Just acting super weird. Won’t stop itching her ears either. Going to try and attach a picture of inside of her ear still new to this. I would love to try and clean her ears I don’t have solution but I have pads and q tips but I read online you’re not supposed to clean it if it’s infected. I’m afraid this might be mites which I definitely don’t have the money to fix right now, she is also not fixed yet.

Edit: wow guys I appreciate all the feedback I really do. There are so many of your suggestions I'll put up here where im at with her. Ive been working on her bathroom problem for around 6 months. She really did have a uti that the vet took care of. I was hoping that she would go right back to using the litter box but she just didn't. I have changed litter boxes and types of litter and placement and so many things. I have 2 boxes one upstairs and one downstairs. There really isn't anywhere for another one to go. The house just isn't that big. Morrows a big girl and I have big litter boxes for her. They are uncovered. I am trying pellets right now. It definitely keeps the litter granuals off the ground. I have taken her to the vet 3 times I the last few months. Im just seeing if anything helps at this point. She was on gabepenton for lingering pain and that seemed to help. Then she was still having problems so we switched to another med. Peracentol I think. I can see the mental changes happening for her but still the potty problems persist. I havr tried 3 versions of diapers for her but she's got a big pooch and she's not small. She just steps out of them. I tried a "inescapable " harness diaper and it just chokes her neck. And she escapes again. My husband is doing his best. We both are. This has been such a long drawn out problem. It's OK for him to reach the bottom of his patience barrel sometimes. I love morrow so much that it is just terrifying when I can't figure out how to silve the problem. Thank you all for the comments and suggestions. I am reading them all and trying to calm down about her

Morrow just isn't getting it. Potty in the literbox. Why can't she do it anymore? Why cant i find a diaper that she can't walk out of every damn time? Why isn't her medication helping her enough? What do i do now?

She had another accident and my husband kind of blew up about it. I appreciate all the patience he's given her but its all gone now. I get where he's coming from but I can't seem to fix her.

I can't give her away with her problems. Frankly I wouldn't want to. Any shelter isn't going to be able to adopt her out. Im sure my husband has his idea but I don't even want to say it.

What do I do. Im in tears about this

Me age 42 usa with a vet. Her 12 years old and spayed

This is breaking my heart. She is under vet care but I feel like things are progressing far too slowly. I just want her to get better.

TL;DR: weird skin issue, how can i help her?

I (25) adopted Jammie (2,FS) on 15th August, she was abandoned a few years ago and was living as a stray before the rescue picked her up.

I brought her home in the cone with a bottle of steroids since she was recovering from flea allergy dermatitis and had been licking her spay wound. She had pretty nasty diarrhea as well which I hadn't been wared about. But that's fine, no problem, probiotics and lots of water.

She finished the course of prednisolone and the spay wound healed, but she would still damage her skin within moments of being out of the cone. It happens so fast like within 60 seconds she's shredded a patch of fur off and has a bright red raw oozing wound on her flank

We've tried another course of prednisolone, two courses of antibiotics, hydrolysed diet, a couple different flea/parasite medications, gabapentin, and seen no improvement. I put her in a surgical suit but she just went for her forelegs instead.

I suspected it's related to tummy pain as she's still not had a single good poo since I brought her home.

Vet says no, steroids would have helped if it was gut inflammation or allergies, antibiotics would have cleared any infection. The diarrhea is probably related to meds and switching to hydrolysed food. Okay that's fair.

GP vet is out of ideas so wanting to refer us to a dermatologist for skin biopsy as a next step. This is taking a long time since they have to arrange it with the rescue (they are funding Jammie's treatment since she was sick when they handed her over)

Psychologically she seems fine, no anxiety or weird behaviour aside from overgrooming, but the cone must be torture for her. Her paws and ears are now getting brown and gunky buildup, she won't let me clean them and can't/won't do it herself. She's itching with her claws now and making some more wounds.

We are in the UK and she's strictly indoor with no other pets. Currently she's getting pro-kolin advanced to help firm her stools. No meds at the moment we're still waiting for the vet to decide what the next steps are.

I'm at a loss. I trust her vet and I'm grateful the rescue is wanting to help instead of taking her back for euthanasia, but this is just awful and I don't know what to do.

Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated

To preface, I’m 23F in the US and Pluto (white/cream) is the first cat I’m taking care of by myself (our family has had cats in the past). I live in an apartment with two other roommates and each of us have a cat. All cats in the apartment are neutered and are 1-2 years old. Sunny,

Cat 1yr F, spayed, vaccinates, white with black patches

Vet checked already yesterday.

Cat developed this sudden ulcer indentation very quickly over 2 days. I noticed some sensitivity and redness around her nose area on Sunday evening and by Monday morning it had become this scabby crusty thing, that looked like it was progessively getting worse.

Took her to the vet the same morning at 11am and the vet ran a blood test, which showed her white blood cell count was only slightly elevated and her temp was just a bit high, maybe from the car ride since we're still in summer here.

Vet made an initial diagnosis and prescribed some oral anti-inflammatories + antibiotics for 1 week and chlorohexidine to clean the wound. Cat is still eating and drinking but I can tell that is not comfortable. Vet wanted to run another panel of test which would double the cost of the treatment that includes a virus and a cancer test + meds. Not an easy pill to swallow financially.

I have 2 six month kittens as well at home, needing neutering + vaccinations. recently introduced about a week back. Cats have not fought and are not aggressive, just the occasional hiss. I'm worried it is contagious, so kittens are isolated in another room for now.

Anyone able to offer some insights?

Turn volume up. He just started coughing randomly this morning and it’s slowly progressed into this currently. To the point he is unable to stop and relax to rest. He’s 1.5yr old

Hi!! Doing another update on this post https://www.reddit.com/r/CATHELP/s/7ZzyPC1Ku9

It's the next day and the baby is doing so well! Last night we got back from the vet and I left him alone in the room no not overwhelm him, and a little later went to give him food and he ate like he had never eating in his life lol. He got out of the carrier and was pacing around but not as freakily as before. They sprayed feromones on his blanket and that calmed him down a lot, apparently it was all anxiety, his vitals, blood pressure, and gums were all fine, he wasn't having trouble breathing either. Right before we left to the vet he wasn't panting anymore and was actually going for cuddles and puring

I left him with his sister during the night so he wouldn't be alone, and they were both very calm and cuddly. Today when I woke up I checked on him first thing and he seems as lively as usual! Still eating like he hadn't seen food in a month hahah he's been very playful overall so I've kept him in the room with his sister while I watch to avoid him injuring himself, she's very gentle when playing anyway and runs away when things get rough.

I also got a crate/cage, as I show in one of the pictures, I put his blanket and left it open so he can go in himself and doesn't learn to be forced in, because since yesterday he was trying to climb everywhere I'm scared he might get too energized and begin to try and escape the room or climb where he shouldn't, so to be safe and able to time him out if he's putting himself at risk.

I have to leave for work in like an hour, and I'm not sure if leave him alone in the room or leave him with sis or leave him in the crate, I tried to prep the room as safe as possible but since it's our office the desks are still there with different stuff (like notebooks, computer and paper stuff, nothing dangerous to him), but I think leaving him in the crate for multiple hours would be cruel idk. And also his other brother gets lonely if he's alone for a long time (last night he slept with me so he wasn't alone)

Right now they're all 3 in the room with him and resting and grooming each other, I'm getting ready for work and less worried about the whole situation, my boyfriend comes back tomorrow afternoon and since he wfh he can take care of him while I'm at work.

Also checked the incision and everything looks good, in general all his health, the surgery area and his mind seem as good as usual.

I got a lot of comments of very polarized comments o the other post, on one side people telling me it's expected due to the anesthetic and to just monitor and on the other side people telling me my cat was about to die. I think that upset me a little since well, I know it was an emergency but I think you shouldn't tell someone who's already worried sick about their cat that it's gonna die soon, without really knowing what's going on. I'm not saying to just let the cat be and the issue solve itself because thats neglectful and cruel, but I came to Reddit because I didn't know if that was a normal reaction to meds/anesthetic before I put kitty through more stress by taking him to emergency care, since other friends and people with cats were telling me that he seemed okay besides emotionally distressed (just like mommy!! /j), and I want to thank everyone who kindly suggested to have him check either way to be sure, and also those who rose different possibilities of what could be going on without straight up telling me my cat has 7 types of cancer and will die the next minute xd

And also something I forgot to mention!! I live in a tropical country (Costa Rica) and it's usually hot/humid. Thankfully not enough to provoke a heat stroke in most people or animals, however I always leave the babies with the fan on when in a room, and Sorbeto specially loves to lay down in front of it! I don't have ac and it's not common to find homes with ac here, so I can't do much about temperature sadly. I added the heated blanket in case he was cold but he refuses to lay in the bed whenever it's on hahah and after turning it off and cooling down he went to lay there

It’s normal? 32 cats have passed through my home, and this is the first one to have two of them.

Stray cat rescued about 4 months ago at around 2 months of age (6 months old in total).