When I adopted the girls in June 2018, they were 15 months old and they’d spent their entire lives in a shelter.
Trixie was immediately affectionate and desperate for love, but Pixie was much more cautious and while she was happy to be in her forever home and have “her” person, she was a lot more reserved about affection than Trixie was (although she was not nearly as reserved about playtime.)
Slowly over the next few months, Pixie started to ask for little bits of affection, she would lay on my legs in bed at night, and she liked to have “face hugger” while she napped, using my hand as a pillow and covering her face.
Meanwhile she loved playtime, she would leap and run for wand toys, and she had a particular stuffed mouse that she liked to carry around and chase all over the apartment. Eventually I had to block off the space under the stove because she learned her new favorite game, “push mousie under the stove” and every few rounds, she would push the mouse too far to reach, then sit by the stove and cry until I got out a stick and pulled it out.
When we moved to the townhouse, she slowly settled in and appreciated the extra quiet after our upstairs apartment neighbor had a particularly loud, obnoxious dog. The new house had an extra bonus for her, two long hallways where she could enjoy her new favorite game: “Pixie Toss.” This consisted of her yelling for playtime until I threw a small plastic ball down the hallway for her to chase, and she ran back and forth chasing them until I ran out of balls to toss. Then I’d have to go retrieve them, and throw them back the other direction because while she loved the toss and the chase, she wouldn’t fetch them back to me!
Slowly Pixie started getting more affectionate, she loved to lay next to me on the couch or on the bed, and she was a big fan of “scritches” and would sit next to my chair and tap me with her paw to request them. But she was still a bit jumpy, and nervous, and absolutely did NOT want to sit on my lap at any time. And any attempt to pick her up or hold her resulted in immediate screaming and squirming until she was set down.
A couple years after moving to the townhouse, I decided her energy needed a more active output than a couple rounds of Pixie Toss every day. So I ordered a cat exercise wheel, assembled it, and watched it be ignored in favor of the shipping box for more than six months. Eventually, I decided it was time to give the wheel one last try then pass it on if she didn’t use it.
I started on January 1, and made a new bedtime routine with her. As we got ready for bed, I got some of her favorite crunchy treats and sat down next to the cat wheel. I used my foot to hold the wheel still, and set a treat on it. She cautiously approached, and when the wheel didn’t make any scary movements she happily snatched the treat and received lots of scritches and congratulations for her bravery. We repeated this every night for a week, and gradually she got comfortable enough to place her front paws on the wheel while retrieving the treat. Another week of practice, and she stepped all the way on the wheel to get her treat. I slowly started introducing motion over the next week, by having her step on the wheel and then slowly, gently rocking it underneath her. By the fourth week, she was taking slow, cautious steps on the wheel and getting rewarded with a treat.
About a week after she was taking consistent steps on her wheel, I woke up to a very unusual sound at 3am. I checked the security cameras, and found. . . .Pixie was using her wheel on her own! Later that year, I upgraded her to a larger, more stable wheel from ZiggyDoo, and after a few days of adjusting to the wheel she realized it was solid enough that she could not only walk on the wheel, she could run and even leap!
The increased activity really helped calm her down, along with the quiet home and a regular dose of CBD oil. While she still refused to be picked up or held, she slowly started sliding further and further onto my lap on the couch in the evenings. Then one day, she sat on the bench in my office and when she tapped my leg for pets, I patted my lap and told her to “hop up!” and she took two cautious, careful steps over until she was sitting on my lap!
Once she realized how great lap time was, she was more than happy to hop on my lap at my desk for scritches, climb on my lap on the couch and make biscuits on my stomach, or curl up in my lap in the recliner and nap the afternoon away while I read.
Unfortunately, Pixie has the same IBD, arthritis, and chronic pain issues that Trixie had, and while she’s still taking walks on her wheel and napping in her favorite window perches, she’s also showing signs that her pain is increasing towards unmanageable levels. She isn’t jumping up on things as much as she used to, and she had a particularly bad IBD flare-up last year because she was unable to eat due to the placement of her food bowl. These days, I have a riser for her canned food bowl so she can eat at a comfortable level, and every few hours we go upstairs to the kibble station and I sit on the floor and hold her dish so she can eat comfortably.
She started the new feline arthritis injection a few weeks ago called Solensia, and there has been some improvement from the first treatment. It is a four-week treatment cycle so her next dose is coming up in about 10 days. We’re also trying to get her on daily Gabapentin, but while Pixie has learned to snuggle, and play, and trusts me more than any other person, she has never learned to take medication that can’t be mixed into her food. She is somewhat tolerant of transdermal medications that can be rubbed on her ears, and if I apply it right before feeding her kibble she’ll forgive the dosing within a few hours. But she absolutely cannot be given pills in any shape or form, and any attempt to try means that she spends the next three days running away from any motion towards touching her and is highly stressed.
So our wonderful vet and I are trying all the options that we can to keep her comfortable without increasing her stress by giving her pills. Fortunately she will eat her food with pet-safe CBD oil mixed in, which helps with both her pain and her anxiety. There’s more transdermal Gabapentin on order, and we’re hoping the second injection of Solensia provides more relief for her.
Meanwhile, I’m just spending as much time with my sassy, cheese-loving house panther as I can.
