Yeah I was recently cat sitting for friends who have two normal litter boxes and two Litter Robots. The Litter Robots weren’t functioning correctly and they didn’t know why yet so they were basically just normal litter boxes at the time, but gigantic lol.
Anyway I wasn’t very impressed if both their very expensive automated litter boxes weren’t working.
So I haven’t been left with a great impression of Litter Robot’s reliability.
Is this an overlook off the BR parkway?
Gotta tuck the snoot
Def bring it up with the vet. When my cat started going outside of the box, it was because she had a nasty kidney infection.
Edit: also “randomly when I step away,” do you mean if you’re travelling? She might be stressed because she misses you and she’s lonely.
Our cat doesn’t respond to catnip but she does respond to silvervine!
I don’t think it’s the classic catnip response (which I assume is because of her genes) but she gets more playful and her pupils enlarge… for a few minutes and then she just wants to take a nap 😂
And from me please give her a lil forehead scritch, thanks
Yeah I’ve been seeing this for a few months now.
My workaround is to upvote threads I’ve read, since it’s doing a better job of remembering what I’ve voted on.
Scoutabout and Scootums are both VERY good, we might have to start using those! 😁
Scout
Who 99% of the time is Scooty.
She’s occasionally called: Scootybutt, Scooterella, Scoots, Scootyscoots*, Scuttles, Scuttlebutt, Scoutster (only ever used by my mom lol), Scootypuff Senior (a la Futurama, but she’s too old to be Junior. Scooty is 12.)
(*Edit: I should add that when using this one, it’s always pronounced as “ScootySCOOOOOOOOOOOTS” in imitation of our friend who coined this while drunk.)
We pretty much only call her Scout at the vet
I’ll add a picture when I get another break from work
Edit: pic tax
Looking guilty after I caught her licking a plastic bag
Asking for attention/if she can steal my chocolate croissant
“Helping” me work from home
What’s Boris hanging out on top of? I’m intrigued but by the shape lol
Also, love a girl cat with a classically male name. I had a roommate with a fat orange cat named Leroy. Leroy was a girl 😁 (Leroy was also a big sassbutt.)
Get off your high horse of weed being healthier than prescription medication.
I’m not a doctor (but clearly neither are you) but I doubt you actually have ADHD… Weed exacerbates my ADHD symptoms. Attempting to treat my disability with weed would NOT work for me.
Let’s say you’re correct and you do have ADHD and vaping a sativa strain really does help you. Well everyone is different and not every medication or treatment program is going to be a solution for everyone (for any condition, not just ADHD.) So either way, gtfo of here with the attitude that weed is the only solution anyone could possibly need and all of us are just victims for thinking otherwise.
I think state regulations might vary. Where I am, every three months I HAVE to have an appointment to get a refill prescription for my Adderall. But fortunately my psych is still doing virtual appointments, which is a lot less disruptive to my workday.
Your use of “chemist” makes me think you’re out of the US.
Most ADHD meds in the US are “controlled substances” and that means our doctors can only prescribe up to three months at a time. After three months we have to have a follow-up appointment, then they can prescribe three more months of meds.
Plus the federal government decided that too many people were taking medications like Adderall. So their “solution” was to instate a cap on how much Adderall manufacturers can make. Which means there’s now a national shortage of Adderall. And that shortage means folks with ADHD are frequently going without their meds entirely or are forced to call multiple pharmacies in the area to ask who has their meds in stock. (My health insurance through work requires me to use a mail-order pharmacy because it means cost savings for them. But that means I don’t have the luxury of shopping around different stores to see who has my meds in stock - at least, not to fill the prescription through insurance and get the lower price. So if the mail order place is out, then I’m screwed.)
Our healthcare system is so fucked.
Apparently it was first identified in Labrador, Canada. Which I didn’t know until your comment inspired me to find out where the name comes from, so thanks!
Sorry this isn’t a dog comment either
Our girl has favorite spots in the house too. She tends to favor one spot for a little while, so she’ll spend almost all her time hanging out there but then get bored and switch to a new spot. I recently named this phenomenon “Spot of the Week” lol
Re: getting her to eat
Our 12-year-old kitty was recently diagnosed with kidney disease, and on top of that she had a kidney infection. After several weeks of antibiotics the kidney infection has cleared up, but we’ve been struggling with getting her to eat enough, especially while she was really sick.
Finding the right wet food has really helped. She can only eat kidney-approved foods right now so our options are more limited. Turns out she does not care for the paté style wet foods but she LOVES the Royal Canin options with “little slivers.” I think she prefers that she can pick up the bits in her mouth rather than licking a clump of meat lol. The Royal Canin kidney diet options are specifically designed to be appealing to cats who might have a limited appetite, and I can definitely vouch for its effectiveness with our girl.
I know you’re not needing kidney-friendly foods for your girl, but my point is, if she doesn’t like the first wet food you try, they have different options and maybe she’ll prefer another type. So experimenting might help.
At one point we needed an appetite stimulant for our girl, so that’s an option too. The vet gave us a transdermal medication that you rub on your cat’s ear (so they can’t lick or rub it off before it gets absorbed.) That might be an option for you, although probably just in the good ear right now 🙂 The appetite stimulant REALLY helped us when our girl was in the midst of her infection. She went from basically not eating anything to being so hungry that she was purring while eating her food cause she was so happy 🥹
Originally we used the appetite stimulant every day, but it’s not necessarily good for long-term use in cats with kidney disease, so we’re trying to figure out the minimum dose to keep her eating. She got a half dose about four days ago, which kicked up her appetite. And I think getting used to eating more food again is relatively self-sustaining for her, because she’s still eating more all these days later. So yeah, I can also vouch for the effectiveness of the appetite stimulant.
The brand name is Mirataz
I would Google some vet recommendations.
I tried to find the video again but I couldn’t. But I recently saw an Instagram video of someone asking a vet what they recommended as a safe method of transporting a pet on a bike. If I remember correctly - which I might not - the vet was strongly against something on the handlebars that the pet could be flung out of in a crash. I think they suggested a pet-carrier backpack style method instead.
There are already some super valuable comments on here, and I’m half commenting as a way to save this thread for myself for later.
I wanted to say that for adopting a kitten, the current recommendation is to adopt two kittens to avoid “single kitten syndrome” (aka an unruly/loud/needy cat.)
Which was not something I knew of ~12 years ago when I got my single cat as a kitten. And she is very needy and very loud (less annoying in older age but still.)
However, I haven’t adopted a second cat to be her friend because we also now have a high energy dog and another new animal would just be too much for us.
When it’s time for our next cat, my plan is to go to the shelter and sit down in the cat room and take home whoever curls up in my lap first (current kitty prefers “proximity snuggles” to true snuggling.) So probably adopting an older cat rather than a kitten. And probably also sticking with just one unless the shelter says the kitty has bonded with a friend (and adopting a bonded pair would be amazing.)
But if we ever get kittens again, I’ll definitely get two. Better off letting them terrorize each other in the middle of the night rather than me 😁
My best friend has struggled with depression for a long time and no SSRI really worked for her. She switched to an SMS medication and it has made a huge difference for her depression.
Meanwhile I’m treated for anxiety moreso than depression, and also felt some emotional blunting on SSRI’s. I switched to an SNRI, which targets both serotonin and norepinephrine and that has gotten a lot better for me. It’s a lot easier for me to feel joy now.
TLDR: if your meds aren’t working for you, shop around and see if something else works better. Yes it takes time, but it’s better than being stuck feeling nothing.