Know Your Cat (for health and happiness)

How Well Do You Know Your Cat?

One of the most important reasons for interacting with your cat regularly, spending time with him and getting to know him well is so you know what is normal for him and when something isn’t right. We learned this quite vividly recently with our indoor/outdoor orange tabby, Bijou. Normally when we come home from the studio we find Bijou lying on the stone patio enjoying the warmth. We pet him and he moans with pleasure, stretching out in luxurious ease.

Recently though, he would moan and there was a complaint in it. He would be stretched out, but as if done in. He was lethargic, listless. A natural jumper and climber, he couldn’t make the fourteen inch leap from the coffee table to the sofa. Something was wrong. He just wasn’t himself.

So we did what you would do. We took him to the vet. She did a blood test. And to bring this tale to a ready end, he had two different tick borne diseases, for which we are now medicating him. The key was ‘he wasn’t himself’, the very words we told the vet. Knowing your cat can be that which saves him and the best way to achieve that is to spend time with him and interact with him. Of course, since you’re reading this you already know all that.

(post script) – This article was first published in September, 2016. It is now Jan., 2017 and I am happy to report that Bijou is totally himself again.