(no subject)
Inspired by the dog horror story from yesterday:
A couple years ago, my fiance and I went on a cruise for a little over a week. We'd just gotten a new little cat, Xena, a couple months prior, and since she knew my mom and my parents have a fairly big house, it was decided that Xena would stay with them and have the run of the master bathroom and bedroom where she wouldn't clash with the other cat.
To our knowledge, we adopted Xena from an abuse/neglect situation where she was kept closed in, in a very small space. So take a normal cat's fear of the carrier+car combination, and take it up a few notches. The first time she went to the vet, she alternated between banshee sounds and the most pitiful meowing you'd think she's dying. I can't really describe it because in writing it sounds like the reactions other cats have to carriers+cars, but I've had a lot of cats in my life, all of whom hated that combo and made it vocally known, but I've never heard anything like Xena's sounds of desperation. She also hyperventilates to an insane degree; the first time I heard it I pulled over because I thought it was something wrong with my car. It sounds like a rapid mechanical ticking.
Anyway, I load her up in her carrier and we start towards my parents' house. It isn't that long of a drive, maybe 15 minutes, but when your little passenger is as distressed as she gets it seems a lot longer. I'm talking to her and singing to her and reaching in to stroke her at stoplights and have put in some goldfish crackers for her but nothing is helping with the screaming and wailing and hyperventilation. But after about eight minutes of nonstop distress noises, she stops. Just stops completely. And an awful smell fills my car.
Oh shit. Except it didn't smell like shit, at least not entirely.
She starts up again after a minute or so, but is decidedly weaker. I'm booking it at this point, I'm less worried about keeping her panic to a minimum and more worried about getting her out of the carrier where she's trapped in with whatever her little terrified body decided to expel. I get to my parents' house and rush her inside. The smell is stronger and is very, very strange. As I'm rushing her upstairs to put her in my parents' bathtub, I'm met by my mom, who I tell that Xena "soiled her carrier" and that I was feeling a panic attack coming on and I couldn't deal with it and I was very very sorry. I feel really bad about leaving her with that job but with a panic attack I'd be useless and make it worse for everybody so my mom just said she'd take care of Xena and the carrier.
Turns out the little dweeb got so scared that every orifice had expelled everything it could all at once in one defining moment of terror. She'd thrown up, peed, and shit in the carrier all at once. Luckily we'd used my fiance's stepmother's hard carrier instead of her new soft cloth one so not only was it easy to clean, it didn't leak into my car.
Xena came and saw me after she got cleaned up, she was fine after that, very tumbly and affectionate as usual, and she's never done that again, though she still goes into full-blown banshee mode each time she goes in a car. And my mom is hardcore as fuck.
A couple years ago, my fiance and I went on a cruise for a little over a week. We'd just gotten a new little cat, Xena, a couple months prior, and since she knew my mom and my parents have a fairly big house, it was decided that Xena would stay with them and have the run of the master bathroom and bedroom where she wouldn't clash with the other cat.
To our knowledge, we adopted Xena from an abuse/neglect situation where she was kept closed in, in a very small space. So take a normal cat's fear of the carrier+car combination, and take it up a few notches. The first time she went to the vet, she alternated between banshee sounds and the most pitiful meowing you'd think she's dying. I can't really describe it because in writing it sounds like the reactions other cats have to carriers+cars, but I've had a lot of cats in my life, all of whom hated that combo and made it vocally known, but I've never heard anything like Xena's sounds of desperation. She also hyperventilates to an insane degree; the first time I heard it I pulled over because I thought it was something wrong with my car. It sounds like a rapid mechanical ticking.
Anyway, I load her up in her carrier and we start towards my parents' house. It isn't that long of a drive, maybe 15 minutes, but when your little passenger is as distressed as she gets it seems a lot longer. I'm talking to her and singing to her and reaching in to stroke her at stoplights and have put in some goldfish crackers for her but nothing is helping with the screaming and wailing and hyperventilation. But after about eight minutes of nonstop distress noises, she stops. Just stops completely. And an awful smell fills my car.
Oh shit. Except it didn't smell like shit, at least not entirely.
She starts up again after a minute or so, but is decidedly weaker. I'm booking it at this point, I'm less worried about keeping her panic to a minimum and more worried about getting her out of the carrier where she's trapped in with whatever her little terrified body decided to expel. I get to my parents' house and rush her inside. The smell is stronger and is very, very strange. As I'm rushing her upstairs to put her in my parents' bathtub, I'm met by my mom, who I tell that Xena "soiled her carrier" and that I was feeling a panic attack coming on and I couldn't deal with it and I was very very sorry. I feel really bad about leaving her with that job but with a panic attack I'd be useless and make it worse for everybody so my mom just said she'd take care of Xena and the carrier.
Turns out the little dweeb got so scared that every orifice had expelled everything it could all at once in one defining moment of terror. She'd thrown up, peed, and shit in the carrier all at once. Luckily we'd used my fiance's stepmother's hard carrier instead of her new soft cloth one so not only was it easy to clean, it didn't leak into my car.
Xena came and saw me after she got cleaned up, she was fine after that, very tumbly and affectionate as usual, and she's never done that again, though she still goes into full-blown banshee mode each time she goes in a car. And my mom is hardcore as fuck.