Henriettas Family

by Henriettas Family
(UK)

Welcome home Henrietta

Welcome home Henrietta

We took in a cat from a rescue centre 3 weeks ago, the cat had the same owner from being a kitten and came to us straight from her owner, so she never spent any time at the rescue centre. Her owner was reluctant to give her up (along with several other cats she has) but due to circumstances and responsibilities she had for a very sick family member she had no real choice.

We were told Henrietta was around 3 years old, we have found her to be (as the owner promised) a most lovely, gentle and affectionate cat and it is obvious that she has been very well loved and given affection in abundance.
However, when she came to us she was sneezing quite a lot and despite being treated had fleas, we brought to our vets a couple of days after bringing her home and was told that she has ear mites, tonsillis and was underweight, she also has a lump on her gum which the vet is going to monitor. The vet gave us antibiotics and ear cream which Henrietta has become very distressed during the administration of these, to the point where she breaks out in a sweat. A couple of days after the start of the antibiotics she developed diarroah which we thought would clear up after the antibiotics had been in her system for a few days. This was not the case so we returned to our vets who advised stopping the antibiotics and prescribed diarsanyl x2 daily for 3 days and advised once the diarroah had settled we would try a different type of antibiotic.
Anyway, I know thats a bit long winded but i wanted to fill you in on the background prior to
asking my question - which is MY CAT HAS RECENTLY TAKEN TO LYING DOWN IN HER LITTER TRAY EVEN WHEN THE LITTER IS SOILED WITH DIARRAOH I ASSUME THAT IT IS ANXIETY RELATED AND I WONDERED IF ANYONE ELSE HAS HEARD OF ANYTHING SIMILIAR? I have not been able to find anything specific on the internet, mostly it has been general information in regards to litter training.

Hope you can help

Answer by Kate
Oh poor kitty she is going through a lot. Apart from her various physical illnesses i am suspecting that she is very stressed in herself what will leaving her familar surroundins and poeple that she new. SO i would say that the unual behavior is probably due to her trying feel more secure in her home. Now her litter tray nad her poo will smell of her completely and this probably make her feel secure and that is why is is sitting in it as this is where she feels most secure (strange i know but cats are lead more by smell than much else).
You will have to give her lots of time to get used to her new surroundings and to get over her various illnesses. I would suggest confining her to one room with her bed and litter tray and only letting her out to eat. This will help her come to terms with a much smaller area, once she is used to this after a week or so you can start to let her into other areas of the house. See my page here about bonding with your cat and moving with your cat on the behavior, cat care and training pages for more info.

Best wishes and thankyou for submitting such a lovely picture.:)

Comments for Henriettas Family

Click here to add your own comments

Update on Henrietta
by: Henriettas Family

Hi Kate,

I wanted to thank you for your advice and to update you with how Henrietta is doing.

Your advice was really helpful, some of it I was already doing - such as when I brought her home with us I kept her litter tray in one corner of the room in an alcove, I placed her food and water bowl at the opposite side and end of the room and her bed was placed on top of a small table on the opposite side to her food and we kept Henrietta in this room only for the first few weeks allowing her to roam into additional rooms every few days as you would do with a kitten.
I had pretty much left Henrietta alone as did the children under my instructions as I wanted her to adapt to her new surroundings in her own time, however after reading your article about bonding it occurred to me that perhaps Henrietta needed more of my attention in order to settle in. So I made a concious decision to make sure that I spent quality time playing with Henrietta until she grew bored (before i would play for 5 mins then stop when I had enough), I also decided to stop the treatment from the vets as her ears appeared much clearer and no antibiotics will make a difference if the body is in extreme stress - my opinion anyway. So the end result is Henrietta is now a very content, healthy happy cat. As you pointed out she was stressed and in trying to help her medically I feel we exasparated her stress and she must have been unbelievably distressed and insecure with everything. Henriettas diarroah has now completely gone, although I have noticed that it returns whenever I have been too busy to give her quality one to one attention and playtime (the other four members of our family play do play with her whenever I am too busy. So now no matter how busy I am I try to fit in a few minutes of quality play (even resorting to tieing a piece of string to the back of my jeans belt loop so that it trails behind me whilst I tidy up!) combined with talking to her this seems to work well!!!!
In the nar future I hope to upload a short video of Henrietta playing in the indoor play centre I have created for her to ensure she is getting enough exercise (she is an indoor cat) in the meantime thank you once more.
If you have a top tips page I would like you to consider adding the following tip (which occurred to me whilst Henrietta was sick)
# TIP trust your insticts - seek a second opinion from this site and use the advice given along with your instincts to change your behaviour/lifestyle according to your pets needs.

Kind Regards Henriettas Family UK

Thank you so much for the update. It is good to hear that she is a happier cat now. let me know when you add your video of henrietta to you tube. i will link to it from this site. Thanmks again Kate

Click here to add your own comments

Return to Cat Questions Archive One.


I'd love to hear what you think of this page or my site. Let me know if you like what you have read or if it has helped you with a problem.

It's easy to do just leave a comment in the box below and click the like / share or +1 to let others know about my site. Thank You It really is most appreciated.

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.