I’m taking it as Hell-cat doesn’t want to go back to the well house, or anywhere besides inside terrorizing the family. She’s sitting on the porch trying to get back in when anyone opens the door.
StG
You’re alright, StGermain. And you, too, Bubba, for worrying about an unlovable creature. 
Darn it, I just signed in to volunteer to transport for a couple hours on the relo effort, but looks like neither of you needs to be near my end of the state. If either of you find a reason to veer onto 81 or 77, I can help anywhere between Saltville or Abingdon, VA to Knoxville/Maryville, TN.
FIV/FeLV screens for your inside cats, stat.
If you call the 80’s and borrow a super soaker, selective squirting may deter LuciCat from your yard.
Wasn’t the stray cat tested before Beelzebubba allowed it to move into the house?
Beelzebubba, you mentioned that the devilcat attacked you. Did it bite you? When did it happen? If it was less than 10 days ago, you need to make sure it isn’t rabid.
Rabies is 100% fatal.
See the post above. The cat has been spayed, tested and vaccinated.
StG
Wait just a gol-darned minute. Where in the OP did you mention that you had taken the devil-cat to the vet and had it spayed and vaccinated already? Or found out that it was already spayed? And if it was already spayed then it lived in a home at some time and so perhaps isn’t completely feral. And if you had managed to cage it and get it to a vet why didn’t you ask for it to be put down then if it was already terrorizing your family?
on edit:I swear, i re-read three times before I posted and didn’t see that line. Need shorter paragraphs!
This sounds like it’s going to have a happy ending!
Awesome solution, St. Germain. Way to go!
What a great solution all around! I really hope you can make it work.
I can’t believe some of the* sick* things suggested here.
A few drops of clove oil will allow a fish to go to sleep painlessly, and then once it’s asleep you can give it an overdose (kind of like giving a person an overdose of anesthetic). That’s the method that most of the fishkeepers seem to prefer nowadays.
Clove oil is also useful as temporary pain relief for a toothache, so might as well have it on hand.
I would get a pet carrier because psycho cat is going to piss in your car and you’ll never get the smell out.
:dubious:
I wouldn’t ride with my beloved pet cats in an open car, let alone a she-beast.
StG
As a general rule, driving with a cat running loose in the car is NOT a good idea! But my sweet little girl cat (Anna, who I had to put to sleep about three months ago) was the only exception. I got her when she was about two years old and the first time we went to the vet, it was sheer Hell trying to get her into the carrier. It was like trying to get toothpaste back into the tube! It totally traumatized her and she was so pitiful all the way to the vet and I didn’t have the heart or the energy to fight her back into it.
So I wrapped her up in the towel that was lining the carrier and headed back home driving with her in my lap. To my amazement, she started purring like crazy and curled up and went to sleep in my lap! After that, I bought a leash to clip to her collar just to be safe when we were getting in or out of the car at home and at the vet’s. Eventually, I put her down on the sidewalk with the leash on and, almost immediately, I had a leash-trained cat! For the 10 years that I had her, she never had to go into a carrier again and she rode in my lap or (when I had my Ford Explorer with lots of room under the back seat) she would curl up in the back floorboard. She tried to lay down in the front seat a few times, but I had to slam on the brakes and she went flying into into the dashboard before landing in the floorboard! She only weighed about seven pounds and my car had leather seats, so she just slid right off with nothing to grip…not that she didn’t try, taking a little chunk of the leather seat with her. But I was just thankful that she wasn’t hurt, luckily we were headed for the vet at the time. She never tried to get in that seat again!
It took me a long time to put it all together, but I finally figured out why she was so comfortable riding in my lap. I got her from a truck driver who had found her looking for food around the dumpster at a truck stop in Indiana and she was almost starved to death. He only planned to feed her, but it was starting to snow so he decided to ‘try’ taking her with him in his truck. She stayed in his lap all the way back to Georgia, sleeping most of the time and raising up to look out the window (Cat TV) for a few minutes every once in a while.
He and his wife already had two cats, a dog and couple of small kids. They decided to try to find her a good home and, if they couldn’t, they would keep her. His mother-in-law posted a flyer with a photo of her in the break room at my office and I went to meet her that evening and took her home with me! It’s kind of a cool story, at least it is to me. I’m still coping with losing her. She was 12yrs old but in perfect health, the disease that took her life came on suddenly and there’s nothing I could have done to prevent it. The virus that mutates to cause the disease came from her mother and/or litter mates and it is 100% fatal. I chose to end her life before she started suffering and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do…but I couldn’t imagine not doing it just so I could have her a few weeks longer and watch her eventually suffocate from fluid filling her lungs unless her heart gave out first. There was no decision to make, but doing what I had to do hurt like hell and still does sometimes….
I’ve had a few “friends” comment that I seemed more upset over losing my cat than I had earlier last year when my grandmother died. Of course, they were immediately un-friended on Facebook, blocked from texting and emails, phone number blocked and they are dead to me, BUT it also made me think. They said it in a way that implied I should feel shame or guilt and that my feelings were somehow inappropriate and unnatural. But I realized (after reading some books, talking to a pet loss counselor online and having some time to figure out what I was feeling) that I was more upset over my cat’s death than my grandmother’s! Even more profound was the realization that it was OKAY that I felt that way! My Nanny (grandma) was 86, crippled from rheumatoid arthritis and had a cancerous tumor eating away at her stomach. We had several months of warning, we enjoyed our time together and spent every waking moment together sharing memories and stories and looking thru photo albums. She was at peace with dying and we all had said everything we ever wanted or needed to say to one another! I didn’t get any warning about Anna and I expected her to live up to another 6-8 years or more. I couldn’t explain to her what was going on and how much I loved her and would miss her. I lived with a roommate when I got her but moved in my own apartment shortly after I got her. It was the first time I had lived on my own, but I never came home to an empty house because she was there. She was a constant companion even when she did nothing more than curl up at the foot of the and sleep for hours on end…I felt her presence and I only realized that because there’s an empty feeling in my house without her. My mom and sister both commented that my house felt very different knowing she wasn’t there…even with my other cat here. He misses her, too. I’m not sure where I’m going with this….I’ll shut up for now, I suppose
I’ve always known that clove has been used for toothache relief for thousands of years, dating back to Ancient Egypt. Even though it’s totally logical, I never knew it would kill fish. But most anesthetics can be fatal to any living creature if you give them enough of it.
This is a ‘Wow’ moment for me because I happen to be only person my doctor has even known who is allergic to clove!!! Just a quick whiff of clove will make me nauseous, dizzy and gives me a migraine-like headache that lasts 12-24 hours! If I happened to eat it, which hasn’t ever happened because I am hyper-sensitive to the scent and would certainly smell it on my plate, it would cause the same symptoms as smelling it but far more intensified and vomiting would also join the party! I can’t go near a restaurant that uses curry (most curry powder includes clove among other herbs and spices) and, before they banned indoor smoking in restaurants and bars in Atlanta, if someone lit a clove cigarette I had to get up and leave my meal (or drink, although I could usually chug it as I held my breath and headed for the exit).
We discovered my reaction to clove when I got my first temporary dental filling when I was 16. The tooth had been cracked in a car accident and needed a root canal and crown, so they did the root canal then a temporary filling until the crown was ready a few weeks later. I was so sick I couldn’t even stand up and walk into the house just 15 minutes later! My mom ended up taking me to the E/R later that evening and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me either. An allergist from Atlanta (an hour from the small town where I grew up) had been called in to see me the next morning. During the night, I woke up and felt like I was dying and even the mega-doses of anti-nausea meds and I was sweating profusely. The contents of my stomach had long ago came back up and my mouth was dry. I asked for a drink of water and when I sipped it, I remember the slight hint of clove from the new feeling and my headache instantly felt more like an aneurism!
My mom was asleep in the corner of my hospital room, but I grabbed her purse and made my way to the bathroom. I knew there would be something in there that I could use to dig out the temporary filling! I snapped a pair of tweezers in half and used one side like a knife since it had a pointed end. It hardly hurt since I had just had a root canal, so the tooth had no feeling. But in desperation and with a less-than-precise tool for the job, I injured my gums, tongue and inside my cheeks pretty bad…by the time my mom woke up from hearing the various noises I was making and came banging ont the door, I had spit a lot of blood into the sink and onto the floor nearby and it was dribbling down my chin- it scared the hell out of her and, even though we were about 15 rooms away from the nurse’s station, she started yelling for them and they were there in seconds.
I was pissed because I wasn’t finished yet. I explained it all and talked a nurse into finding someone who would finish getting the temporary filling out or I would finish myself and I was big enough that she’d have a hell of a time stopping me! She and the doctor on duty examined it and saw that they could easily get the rest of the filling material out without doing any more damage than I had already caused. So at 3am, they got it all out and gave me some pain meds and antibiotics for my self-inflicted mouth injuries. By 8am, I still had a headache and felt like living hell, but could tell a huge improvement nonetheless. By 4pm, all symptoms were gone although I was exhausted and my mouth hurt like a sonofabitch! But some follow-up appointments to a few specialists confirmed that I needed to avoid clove at all cost for the rest of my life. My mouth healed pretty quickly, but my tooth wasn’t so lucky. Before the crown was finished, it broke in half and couldn’t be repaired. Luckily it wasn’t visible, so I had the rest of it removed. A few years later, when implants became more common and no longer cost more than my car, I got one to replace the tooth. It still cost $3800 altogether, but luckily mom and step-dad insisted on paying since it was technically something I needed when I was still their responsibility!
I wonder if I could apply that same logic to get my mom and bio-dad to reimburse me for decades of psychological medications, therapy and liquor for the times when the meds and therapy weren’t doing the trick??? I could retire at 38, right now!
Sounds like you have your solution … good!
The cat sounds like a true feral. They are very different from a cat that once had a home and just somehow ended up as a stray. A feral is scared of people. She is scared of you and was terrified in the house. They are also very territorial. Thus, if your house was going to be her territory she wanted you and the other cat gone. The aggression is fear based.
I think the reason she is sitting on your porch is because you quit feeding her. She is looking for you to feed her like you did before. So until you can get the move done could you feed her in the well house and set her back up with her space there? And other than that just leave her alone. A feral can learn to tolerate your presence but they are never going to be a pet … or if it ever happens it will take years of baby steps.
Your cat stories made me tear up … been there, done that too. They wrap their little selves around your heart for sure. Good luck to all humans and felines!
Sorry for the long paragraphs, I tend to write my postings in Word and copy/paste into the posting window to post. Sometimes I tend to type too fast (I have serious ADD, honestly, so I type and talk very quickly so I won’t lose track of the information I want to convey). If I happen to be typing 100wpm and I hit two keys at the same time, my laptop will register that as an ENTER and post and when I try to go back I’ve lost everything that I had types to that point. Hence the reason I type outside of my browser and then copy it over…
But I’m having some formatting issues when I copy from Word to this particular site and it either puts four extra lines between paragraphs or it removes all the space between paragraphs and makes it a real pain in the ass to read!
I need to figure out a solution for that and I will do that as soon as I’m finished here. It’s probably time for me to accept the inevitable and upgrade from Office 2003! I’ve been reading reviews of Office 2013 and I think I’m going to bite the bullet.
When I took the cat to the vet, she had not been inside the house yet. I took her to the vet before I would allow her inside with my other cat. So I was hoping it would work out and euthanizing her was the furthest thing from my mind (then). But even now, I couldn’t bring myself to have her put down and my vet wouldn’t do it anyway. She would take her off my hands and she would live in a kennel cage with the other un-adoptable or undesirable cats that she has collected!
I should have used the term STRAY cat rather than FERAL. She seems to be a former pet and I live way out in the country on dead-end road, which is exactly where I would take an unwanted animal to dump it, if I was the kind of person who would do that. So she was dumped somewhere in my neighborhood and she homed in on one of the two suckers who would feed and shelter her (the other would by my mom who lives next door)!
I caved in and made her a bed out of a laundry basket and an old blanket. It’s a lot closer and easier to feed her in the garage than going way down to the well house, so this is her second night in the garage! And my new Mazda CX-9 is out in the driveway in the cold and snow flurries…but she has been jumped up on cars in the past and I didn’t want to risk it! =)