I'm sorry I've been trash at my shy cat documentation. He's now been with us for a month! He is still getting used to my spouse but he's chill around me and has fortunately gotten over his annoying Napoleon cat phase.
I did make one horribly wrong move though, and I will confess here so that others may learn from my oversights. About a week ago, I got some of those catnip laced paper bags. He's a catnip addict and I thought he'd have fun with it. Yeah, no. He didn't have fun. I left him for the night and by the next morning he had regressed back into a hidey cat who was afraid of everyone and everything and would hiss and spit at you if you dare peek at him hiding in his paper bag.
This here is exactly why I think advice to provide plenty of hiding spots for a shy cat is shit advice...
A space where they can go to feel safe: Absolutely fine. A space where they can *hide*: No.
So I promptly removed the paper bag.
He continued to be timid for the rest of the weekend. It is common for cats to start pulling their fur out or overgroom in response to recent stress or trauma, or because they're bored. Some people do this too -- in fact I'm one of them and have had this issue my whole life. Think hair pulling, skin picking, nail-biting, etc -- those mildly destructive behaviors we tend to shrug off as just being nervous habits. It's actually a fairly common though not well known type/relative of obsessive compulsive disorder (google "body-focused repetitive behavior" if you're curious). This dude is a fur puller. And he eats his fur. Which then makes him have bad hairballs, which makes him not feel well, which makes him not want to eat anything, which makes him feel even worse, which makes him feel vulnerable, which puts him back into scared cat mode.
The bag incident came at a particularly bad time because he hadn't been feeling well.
I have had several cats in the past who were fur pullers. Usually they get over it on their own once the stress passes, but sometimes it becomes a habit and they need to be brought to the vet for intervention. Unless there's some underlying medical condition to explain away the fur pulling, they will get prescribed antidepressants. At least in my experience, they don't need to take the medication for life -- just long enough to be broken of the habit, and then they're fine!
If not for fear of being pushed back about 30 steps if I dared bring this cat to the vet, I'd have brought him to the vet for his fur pulling weeks ago. Kitty antidepressants would do him a lot of good and probably would have made this whole transition to a new home a thousand times easier.
So anyway, on with the story -- Sick hairball-filled cat. I tried giving him some hairball medicine. There are several different kinds you can get over the counter at a pet store -- the ones that are a gel that come in a tube though are the kind that work. A lot of cats will just eat it without coaxing, but he won't. You can put it on their paw to entice them to lick it off and eat it, which is normally what I would have done, but he was acting so fearful of me there just wasn't any good way to go about it. I tried and failed miserably…So the next solution would be to mix it into their food. But...he wasn't eating...I opened so many different cans of food and he wouldn't touch anything.
Finally, as a last ditch effort, I resorted to something that I don't think I would necessarily recommend to others, but I'll admit here so you all know when things don't go as smoothly for you as it did for me (trust me, I've had my fair share of rocky moments), it's because I cheated. Illegal prescriptions. The one in question happens to be one that I know a lot about and happened to have on hand. Mirtazapine.
My now deceased cat, Moppet, in her late years was on mirtazapine as a maintanence drug as she had a chronic medical issue that caused her to have no appetite. My other cat, Tews, had also been prescribed it a few years ago when he was stressed out because we were moving. He made himself sick and stopped eating. And funny enough, I take mirtazapine as an antidepressant and was prescribed it because I don't respond to SSRIs and "lack of appetite" is a pretty pronounced symptom of depression and anxiety for me (if this describes you, Ask Your Doctor About Mirtazapine). Mirtazapine for humans is a decent enough antidepressant. The cat form of mirtazapine though is a WONDER DRUG. Makes them good and hungry, and calms them right down! (by calm, I mean turns them into an affectionate spaz) And the best part -- it now comes in a transdermal form, so you can just rub some on their ear lobe!
I am almost certain -- more than certain -- had I brought him to the vet, they would've stressed him out with a bunch of stupid bullshit first, insisted on an ultrasound to make sure he doesn't have a blockage or something else going on, and charge $1000 for it only to tell me exactly what I already know and had been trying to tell them -- "oh, guess he's just stressed and has some hairballs from obsessive grooming!" -- and then proceed to tell me about this great wonder drug for cats called mirtazapine. And then I'd bring him home and would need to find a pair of kevlar gloves if there's any chance in me rubbing anything on his ear in the next week.
Well anyway, fortunately I got to skip all that this time. I had some kitty mirtazapine leftover from Tews' incident. It was technically expired, which in the case of mirtazapine, the worst thing that might happen with an expired tube is it just won't do anything. I crossed my fingers and gave it a shot. And luckily, it worked miracles! The boy was back to himself in just a couple of hours, and was more than happy to eat food laced with hairball medicine. And that's all it took -- He recovered very fast and hasn't had any incidents since.
(Liability notice: If you take mirtazapine and think you can try this at home, it's a good sign you should take your cat to the vet. The dosage of kitty mirtazapine is completely different than the human variety of the same drug.)
He is still overgrooming sometimes, but he's definitely getting better and I have a feeling he will stop on his own eventually. I have continued lacing his food with hairball medicine every morning just for prevention, and will continue to do so until he kicks his fur eating habit. There's really only so much I can do about this behavior--He doesn't just do it when he's stressed, but he'll do it if he's bored or sometimes just for no apparent reason. When I catch him overgrooming, I try to distract him by playing with him and that usually does the trick for at least a little while. I have also discovered he enjoys music! Particularly harp music. And bird videos on youtube. I also try to brush him every day to reduce the amount of fur he can potentially eat but he’s one of those cats that insists on walking around, rubbing his face all over everything whenever he’s being groomed with a brush, so it’s tricky! If this overgrooming an ongoing habit of his that can't be fully broken, I will eventually take him to the vet for it and get him a proper prescription. But I just don't think inflicting that kind of trauma on him right now is in his best interest if there's any possibility of avoiding it.
