Buddha’s Blessings – Trips to the Vet
This is the story of my trip to the veterinarian on November 30, 2023. I share it with you and your pawrents so that you can learn from my misfortune. That’s me on the right, and my brother Cortado on the left. We are litter mates, indoor only cats, and best buddies for the last four years.
We had a busy Thanksgiving in the house. My spare human’s kids were in town. Then the local family came for Thanksgiving dinner. It was hectic. Cortado wasn’t fully himself either, but alas on November 24th, they cleared out and the house was quiet again.
I don’t know what got into me but on the 29th, I started drooling quite a bit. On the 30th, my primary human, mom, thought I needed to go to a vet, but our regular vet wasn’t available. She ended up taking me, and just me, to a new vet.
They put me in a room, took my blood, touched me and poked me and sent me home. My spare human (dad) was the one to bring me in the from the car. I was in the carrier that I always use. He brought me into the living room, set my carrier down, and opened the door. We all know us felines don’t love trips to the vet, but wow I never expected what came next. My litter mate, brother, best buddy for four years, DIDN’T RECOGNIZE ME. I am like what the hell is going on, I am the same loving litter mate you have always known.
The next week and the next four and half months would be hell. My brother and I would fight like two males Leopards in Africa seeking the same territory. Hair would fly, my mom would cry. My pawrents had to zip tie both sides of the lever handles on the doors to their bedroom to keep us apart from each other. To get to the bedroom, they would have to have to leave through the sliders, walk along the back the house, and enter the kitchen sliders. My spare human would have to do the same from the coffee bar/office. He built a barrier in the arch doorway to that room, but the first one wasn’t strong enough and Cortado broke in once and out once, each time to attack me.
Over the next 144 days life in the house was hell. Dad had to sleep on the couch with Cortado more than half of December. My pawrents have a beautiful relationship and the December holidays were shot to hell. This whole door thing made for unusual sleep patterns and disrupted our normal routine, likely extending the time it took for Cortado and me to work things out. Plus we are now both on Prozac which alters our personalities.
My pawrents spent a lot of money trying to fix us. Over $900 at the behavioral vet, over $850 for medications, $760 for supplies to make additional safe spaces for us, and $450 for enrichment activities so we would focus on those and not each other. Plus, they had trips planned, and our medications were complex, so they spent $3,700 on extended cat care while they were away. That’s over $6600. Cortado and I don’t want this to happen to you. So, you need to understand what happened to me.
After the vet I smelled different
We felines rely heavily on our sense of smell. Our pawrents are visual, but we felines aren’t. My body chemistry could have change changed which caused Cortado to perceive me as a stranger. Maybe I smelled like the vet’s exam room. But I was only there about an hour. How could this be? Maybe my fear at the vet caused me to release fear pheromones. My new smell may have reminded Cortado of a previously stressful trip to the vet, and we know most of us felines aren’t keen on the vet. Maybe my behaviors had changed too due to stress, medications, pain, or sickness.
The irony of all of this is that most vets don’t tell pawrents that their precious pets smell is going to change and that their behavior may change. All of this is called Feline Nonrecognition Aggression. Once you know about it, there are steps that can be taken to prevent it.
My goal is to change all that by making it easy for your pawrents to learn what to do before you go to the vet’s office and before you return home. We hope to make it easy for vets to provide this information via email and text and thereby prevent terrible cases of feline nonrecognition aggression like I experienced.
All the loving licks,
BUDDHA
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