And Then There Was Four…

I feel really bad today, as we’ve resigned ourselves to giving Charlotte away. It’s the end result of a period of time where things have just become unbearable, and even though it’s probably for the best for everyone, I’m still upset at letting her go.

When we first got her she was given to us by a friend of a friend of one of Robyn’s old co-workers daughter (yeah, I know) and we knew she was a stray when found. We were led to believe she was only a couple of months old, but the vet who inspected her the day we got her believed her to be around 6 months old. 6 months of living on the streets and, we believe, a young child tormenting her in her old temporary home must have left a lasting impression on her as she flat out feared us from day one. To help matters the first thing we had to do when we brought her home was give her ear drops for mites. She didn’t like that one bit.

So there we were, living in a small one bedroom condo, 2 people and 3 cats and we rarely saw her, she would always run and hide if we so much as looked at her. It got so bad we even had to force feed her as it looked like she wasn’t eating anything. After a few more months she also looked like she shedded her entire coat away. She went from fluffy to buzz cut over the early summer time, and we wondered if it was stress-related. In time, however, it all came back. We thought that when we moved she would get better, because she would have more room to roam. She was getting slightly better, but she was still extremely fearful of us. She wouldn’t run if we looked at her and she would occasionally lay down on the ground close to us, but if we moved a muscle, she would bolt out of the room.

About two months ago, we decided to groom all of the cats because they were overdue for a brushing and nail-trimming. We decided to use Soft Claws with Charlotte, since her nails get extremely sharp and we caught her scratching our brand new couch. She was very uncooperative with the brushing, but the Soft Claws didn’t seem to bother her too much.

However, about a week later we noticed a smell from the guest bedroom (where she spends most of her time) and unfortunately she had urinated on the bed. So we stripped it, washed it, steamed it, sprayed it and tried everything we could to get rid of the smell. To deter her from wetting the bed again, we put a plastic tarp on top of the mattress. But when we got home from our trip to Pennsylvania, we noticed she had taken a liking to going on the tarp, since there were several puddles of urine on it. In frustration, we moved the mattress off the bed so she couldn’t get on it at all.

Things were quiet for a few weeks and a few weekends ago we noticed that several of her Soft Claws had fallen off. So we figured it was a good time for another brushing and nail-trimming. She was extremely agitated, going as far as lashing out and swatting at us. And a day later we found our bed was urinated on. Clearly this wasn’t going to work out…

Well, this was the beginning of the end. We caught her and shut her in the guest bathroom to prevent further damage (and in the process, she clawed Robyn’s face). We gave her food and water in addition to the existing litter tray in the guest bathroom and at night we opened the door to the guest bedroom to give her a little more space to roam. Since we no longer trusted her, we kept a very close eye on her and even slept in the guest bedroom at night.

In the meantime, we took her to the vet to make sure it wasn’t an infection or whatever that was making her pee outside of her litterbox, though we pretty much knew that it was a behavioural problem. The vet kept her for the day and the entire time she was there she was refusing food and water and stayed backed up into the cage corner… shaking. They ended up having to force urine out of her to get a sample. The results confirmed our suspicions, she was infection-free.

So we decided she was probably better suited as an outdoor cat. She’s obviously petrified of humans and not happy in the confines of our house. We thought about letting her be an outdoor cat here but there is a fair bit of traffic in our neighbourhood and we’d need to stop Felix and Sally going outside also. So, in the end, we decided we needed to find someone with a good bit of land who would take her and allow her to be an outdoor cat. Turns out, a co-worker of Robyn said his dad has a horse farm outside of Winston-Salem and he’d be happy to let her run on his land as a barn cat. I just hope she’s ok as a barn cat, I’m afraid if anything happens to her we’ll never know and she wont seek help from anyone but that’s the way it goes unfortunately.

I’m sure it’s for the best, and as much as I want her to stay with us, I know she’s not happy. So today we’ll be driving up to Winston-Salem and let her go. I’m not looking forward to it…

Charlotte (set)

Originally uploaded by FLC.