A post about Moki

This is off-topic, but since we use our blog as a journal, I wanted to document what is going on with Moki, who has been getting laser acupuncture treatments every month since she had an initial treatment on July 28th.  In November, we had one treatment at 3 weeks - so the next was scheduled for 5 weeks instead of four.  About 10 days ago, I had commented that it was hard to know if she was getting any additional benefit from the sessions and perhaps we did not need to put her in the car and drive the 25 minutes for them.

For the week or so before her appointment yesterday, Moki stopped playing with us in the evening.  She will normally jump in the air to bring down flying string toys, or chase a laser light madly (on the well-padded carpet only - she does not play anywhere else.)  She seems rather OCD about everything, and for her to pass up on playtime is not a good sign. The day before her treatment, she would not even play Catch the Crunchy, where we toss a treat and she runs for it, athletically leaping over obstacles anywhere in the room and that is her favorite activity.  She had also been skipping her morning naps on my lap.

However, the night before her appointment I was sitting with her resting on the carpet.  Norris walked into the room and she suddenly went to the top of her cat tree, and started exhibiting this specific behavior which we decided to videotape her for the vet.  The video starts slow and uninteresting, but she was in the middle of an episode of what we're calling Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome that she had begun before we got the camera on her.  She exhibits the classic Hyperesthesia behaviors - frantic cleaning gestures, tail thrashing and skin rippling (not visible in the video) that builds to attacking herself.  At the 24-second mark, you hear an explosive sound. That is the sound of a cat spitting, which I had never noticed from any cat before Moki.

Moki was relatively agitated during our trip to the vet for her treatment yesterday morning, crying the whole way which she does not usually do, but was silent on the way home and calm all day,  She was more interested in playing last night, and although not yet up to running and jumping, she did trot after a couple of crunchy treats if they were thrown close enough to her. And this morning, when I sat down and put my legs up, she came right over and fell asleep on me.

The hyperesthesia symptoms we videotaped and posted here are not as bad as they had been before she started getting treatments. This makes it seem that Moki really needs the kind of help she's getting from acupuncture.  The sessions include photon treatments with a device that was new to Dr. Fochios when we first took Moki to her.  Dr. Fochios believes Moki is in some kind of pain when she does this, and since she doesn't understand it, thinks something else is attacking her.  That certainly explains the frightened look in her eyes and attempts to capture her tail.

Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome is a mysterious condition. The cat whose owners had to call 911 because they were trapped by him in the bedroom has been diagnosed with it and seems to have a more serious underlying problem than Moki does. Usually, it is treated with calming and/or anti-seizure drugs. We did not document her tail-chasing for the year that Moki was on the calming medications, but we believe she has been doing this, or some less extreme version of it, for years.  We simply didn't know it wasn't just the "cat-crazies."

Lu gets acupuncture

Our beloved now 11-year old cat Lu has had intestinal trouble since he was about two years old, necessitating a lot of extra care with diet and supplements, and many trips to the vet with him in a lot of pain, where he had to undergo very unpleasant procedures.  Finally, late last fall, he was losing weight and vomiting so often we decided to try acupuncture for him. 

In December, he had his first consultation with Dr. Andrea Fochios http://peopleandpetsacupuncture.com/. Dr. Fochios was a veterinarian first, and after being introduced to acupuncture for companion animals, took the full course at the local acupuncture school, so she is now also trained in Chinese Medicine for people.

Lu seemed to enjoy his acupuncture treatments from the very beginning.

I had hesitated to take photos in previous sessions, not wanting to disturb his tranquil state, but yesterday I turned the phone volume off and took several shots of him enjoying the needles.  You can't see them behind his head in this next photo, but they are still there while he is obviously quite relaxed.

Dr. Fochios is very sensitive to the Lu's specific needs and moods and during this session, he was warm and touchy about stimulation farther down his spine, so she used lasers to treat that area.

With monthly treatments and herbal supplements, Lu started putting weight back on right away, and symptoms of intestinal troubles have slowly been disappearing as well.

Based on Lu's success, we started treating Moki with a calming supplement and took her out in the car without stopping at the regular vets' office up the road, to try to minimize her anxiety for the trip to Dr. Fochios' office.  In recent years, she had become so unmanageable at the vet, she was getting her rabies shot and not much more, unless they anesthetized her.  Six months later, we started getting acupuncture for her.   She had her regular vet visit after the first treatment, and although the tech used the heavy leather gloves to hold her for the vet, Moki did get a thorough exam of her eyes, ears, teeth, and abdomen, and she sat still and quiet for the rabies shot.

We don't really know what pains and troubles are behind Moki's insecurities, but we think that acupuncture has made her a happier cat and will keep up with the treatments for both cats to give them the best chance for healthier lives. 

Progress on the new shower

On Monday, the shower looked like this:

After our photos on Wednesday, Ronnie had finished planing the framing on the window wall, added additional framing around the window and did some drywall repair. Then he installed and sealed this backing, which is a new type since the original bathrooms were put in in April, 2008.

We took some photos during the prep phase we'll save for ourselves, but here are two versions of the finished tile work.  This first in natural light which doesn't convey the colors very well:

So then I took this one is with the room lights on.  It's probably not all that accurate either, but you can see the results of our designers' input to the process, which we did not have the benefit of the first time around.

The floor mosaic was picked to coordinate with the granite on the sink (you can see a little of it in the last post.) Ronnie is a perfectionist and does not like stone mosaics on backing mesh sheets because he can see the lines where the "tiles" connect. So he removed all the stones from their backing, and placed them individually.  In the process, he removed some that had rougher edges.

 

Next week the plumber will be back to put our new fixtures in and the glass will be reinstalled.  But before the glass goes in, the painter will be trying to get the bathroom repainted so his guys can just throw their ladders up on our high wall.

Meanwhile, the upstairs cats are trying to catch up on some much-needed sleep. 

Lilly is very wary of strangers, especially men.  By early this week, she would check on Ronnie's work while he was in the garage then scurry to safety again. But she let him pet her a couple of times in the last two days.

 Lu is not fearful, but it was his job to sit at the kitchen bar stools where he could watch all day while Ronnie came and went via either the stairs or elevator.  He was exhausted and worn down last night. 

Ronnie has a female cat that looks just like Lu, so he didn't seem to mind Lu's supervision.

Changes at our house

It's hard to post something that pushes Norris' photo of our beautiful neighborhood off the top of the page, but there is a lot going on at our house.  Some of it has already started, and the rest will be happening over the course of the next 6 weeks.



We had several places in our master shower where the tile had cracked.  The last of these left a big hole I was unwilling to try to keep caulked.  This particular tile is no longer being made, so replacing the tiles was not an option - the whole shower had to come out. Here's one of my before shots.  I took the photo at night so the lights are reflected in the glass, but the reflections will be useful later.

Having a shower put in to a bathroom that is not otherwise going to be renovated was a little bit daunting, so we hired a professional local decorating firm, Allard and Roberts, to help with tile selection and other details. They are also acting as the General Contractor, coordinating the comings and goings of the various tradespeople.  First was the glass removal, followed by the demolition, which were both done last week.

This is what the shower looked like after the demolition. Visible in the lower right, under the left side of the window, is some water damage from the built-in shower seat. All the tilers we've encountered along the way had said these built in seats - other than the simple shelf style - leak. I will admit, when we decided to rip out the entire shower, I let up on my caulk-repair vigilance. 

Tile installers are happy to put in the simple ledge style bench, but the way the fog rolls through this elevation, I just can see the mildew growing underneath where we'd never be putting our heads down low enough to see it.  We're getting a portable steel or teak bench this time around.

Another issue underlying our tile was unevenness in the supporting framing system which may have contributed to the variety of cracking problems.  The demolition contractor also pointed out there needed to be better support where the heavy glass shower wall was attached, at the right where the demolished area meets the painted drywall.

(See that towel heater? That's not because we really love warm towels - it's because without it, they won't dry in some months - remember that fog I mentioned?)


The plumber was here on Monday to do the rough in for our new fixtures. Today we have our tile installer, Ronnie.  I took this picture of him an hour or two ago when he was cleaning up after planing the framing flat and installing new 2x4s in that area I just wrote about, as well as framing for the niche's new location.

Also notice behind Ronnie's head is the hole where one of our twin medicine cabinets was installed. Norris has enlarged the opening and installed the new supporting cross-studs for larger cabinets that we think will be esthetically more compatible with our beveled mirrors and new light fixtures. (the old cabinet was visible in the reflection in my first photo.)

Enough of the technical, behind-the-walls stuff: here's how Ronnie is charting out the plan for where the tile seams are going to wind up, top and bottom. (They will be installed horizontally).  He's already worked out where they will fall around the niche and window.

I really like the diagonal lines in this large format tile our decorators Chelsea and Sharon picked for us. Our existing floor tile is a neutral gray. This new tile combines the gray with a warmer taupe, in a very subtle pattern so as not to compete with the busier granite at the sinks.

And more pretty stuff - we're buying all new furniture for the living room.  Here are the upholstery samples - the charcoal on the top is a swivel recliner for Norris, the tweed is a new sofa, the patterned linen is an armless chair, and the slightly green-gray whatever it is (it is sort of like vinyl, but not) will cover two ottoman-benches that will replace our large coffee table.  There will be wood pieces as well - console and end tables and a storage chest. 

Here is another photo of the upholstery on our existing rug.  We don't know whether this combination - particularly the dark charcoal - is going to go with the rug or not.  We'll see when it gets here.  If not, we'll move this rug to our bedroom and get a new rug for the living area.

And lastly, just because this was too cute, is a photo I took of Lu, curled up in a very small basket we had out for our New Year's Eve cheese fondu dinner.

Lu keeps a close eye on all these tradespeople - good thing he knows how to rest up. We have several weeks of this to go, because after the tiling will come repainting nearly the entire house. No we're not doing it ourselves.  Some of these walls are more than 20 feet high.

Cats love TV

Cats love TV not because they watch it but because the laps stop moving around.

This is what happened when Norris was busy programming radios -

But football playoff season is the best!!

More Lessons in Getting Along

This is the fifth day of our new regimen of cat introductions. Moki, Lilly and Lu are eating meals together in the main part of the house for the first time since Lilly's second week with us.

Breakfast Sunday morning, Moki and Lilly are keeping an eye on each other.

Since Moki's attack on Lilly Thursday evening, we have not seen anything more than a hiss from her in Lilly's direction, though she did have a spat with Lu two nights ago. Lilly, however, has been extremely nervous in Moki's presence. I started treating her with Safe Space for Cats when Moki is out, while Moki has gotten a dose of Bully Remedy.  I just put a couple of drops on my hand, then pet the cat in question.

This morning's meeting seemed a little better for both cats. When we put the leash on Lilly now she knows Moki is going to come out.  She often retreats to one of the bedrooms.  Unlike in the past, when Moki came upstairs, this time she did not nervously hunt for Lilly, but went out on the porch to look around.

Moki even took some time to chase her tail, but it happened too fast for the camera. So she was sitting under the table while Lu was lounging back in the house, keeping a close watch on Moki.

 Moki was relaxed enough to wash her whiskers.

 

At this point, on her own, Lilly decided she could come out too. The two cats are about 17 feet apart, with nothing between them. Lilly hadn't even noticed Moki when I took the photo, but she saw her a few seconds later.

Moki shows some wariness. I was sitting to one side and reminded Moki she should relax, to take a deep breath with me.

 

Lilly moved around at the other end of the deck, even disappearing behind the large wooden box while Moki stayed glued in her spot.

Lilly worked her way to the back door and was partially hidden from Moki's view behind the gas grill, scene of the attack on Thursday night.

 But Moki remained in her sunny spot.

Lilly took a moment to flop on the doormat.  Moki made a forward movement when Lilly got up again, but we reminded her to be nice with a stern "Moki!" and she backed down.

Lilly decided to end the session, and walked with Norris back to our bedroom.  We closed the door so Norris and Lilly could have a nap while Moki, Lu and I relax.  (Photo taken with my tablet.)

The behavior vet we consulted with in January 2012 told us it was very important to end sessions before anything bad happens. Everyone seems to think this one finished on a positive note.

Progress report

It's less than two days since Kathy was here to help us help Moki to get along with the other cats, but since that evening, we haven't seen her seriously try to attack Lilly.

Here she is lounging in Norris' new recliner with Lu nearby, enjoying a lot more freedom inside the house today. We are promising Moki if she continues to behave well, we will not be locking her behind doors any more.

Lilly is in the guest room sleeping off some serious play time with a short all-cats-out session sandwiched between.  We are keeping Lilly on the leash as she was when Kathy was here for these encounters with Moki, for her own safety.  Although Lilly has always just acted like a young cat, she is learning to slow down her movement so that she doesn't provoke Moki during these sessions.

Nearly two years....

In October, 2011 we brought Lilly into the house. Moki didn't want a new cat and made that very clear, trying in every way to make Lilly leave.  We consulted with a veterinary behavior specialist and a cat behavior specialist.  The vet met Moki, but in his office about three hours drive from here.  The cat behaviorist was all the way on the West Coast and only had our word for what happened when Moki would see Lilly.  We have tried drugs, natural remedies, and behavior modification techniques.

But today we had a consultation with a local Animal Communicator.  Norris is not sure she was actually talking with Moki, Lilly and Lu, but she did work with us and with the cats and while she was here, we had Moki out and about on her own in the house, with Lilly on a leash to keep her from getting into trouble with Moki.

Norris is in the foreground, with just Lilly's ears and the top of her head visible. Moki can be seen at the opposite end of the room, lounging, but not relaxed as Kathy explains what behavior we are asking of her.  Kathy used her body to make sure Moki did not have a straight path to Lilly. 

A few moments later, Kathy stepped back into the house. Now you can see just Moki, Norris and Lilly.

When Moki started to look like she wanted to rush Lilly, Kathy went back out on the porch to remind her what we were asking.  All went well.  Here's a shot from a little later, as the scene shifted back in the house.  Again, Lilly looks pretty relaxed, and though Moki is not relaxed, she's not attacking and there's no one actually between her and Lilly.

Norris is just to the right though and can snatch up Lilly if need be.


Kathy left us with instructions to keep up these introductory meetings several times a day, with a few bits of advice on how to proceed through the week.  We had all three cats upstairs this evening for dinner, which went very well.  Moki finished hers, and went back toward the bedroom to wash her whiskers.  Lilly and I stepped out on the porch.  Moki came out a few minutes later.

This is real progress - just to prove it, here's another photo where I'm not even looking at Moki and she's staying in her meatloaf position, though she's keeping an eye on Lilly.

We have worked a long time to get to this point. Unfortunately, things did not continue to go perfectly.  A few minutes after Norris took this photo, Lilly was getting bored and thought she'd sneak off into the house, going behind the gas grill.  I thought we'd be ok. but Norris was watching Moki, who got upset when she couldn't see Lilly, and quickly went around the other way to head Lilly off.  She started hissing and batting. Lilly got upset too, but using the leash I swooped her up and carried her away from the scene.  Moki had a few minutes to calm down before we put her in the carrier to take her back to "her" space (my studio) to cool off for a while. 

We'll keep trying!

Status of Cats

It's been a while since we've talked about the three furry members of our household, so I snapped a few photos of them today to share.

First our youngster Lilly.  She continues to be a pleasure to have around- well for us anyway. Approaching two years old, she's still an adolescent in maturity and she gets on Lu's nerves as she wants to play a lot more often than he does.  Of course, Moki has still not accepted that Lilly is part of the household. 

 I caught Lu napping in the box that Norris' latest pair of shoes arrived in.

Sure enough, when my picture taking woke him up from his nap, Lilly had to step right in.

Moki used to be anxious when shut off from us, but now she seems to enjoy her private suite. Here she is on the wide window ledge from which she can watch the birds and butterflies in the wildflower meadow.  Or lately, there have been a lot of snails.

We still feed the cats together, having progressed in the last few months to having both Moki and Lilly on leashes in the studio. We don't have to hold on to the leashes - just wearing one keeps Moki from crossing the room to attack Lilly and Lilly has a good appetite and usually just eats her dinner up - yum yum!  When they finish their meals, Norris tosses them favorite treats.  Moki will take no more than a few steps to pick up what seem to be gourmet morsels to her palate while Lilly sometimes jumps to and fro to get hers.  We try to keep Lu in the foyer outside the door.  This is working well enough, though we'd like to see Moki relax more over her dish.  A relaxed cat crouches at the bowl, but she eats standing up when she's wearing the harness. So we do breakfast with leashes, while at dinner, Moki gets to be in the big playpen, where she feels secure and does crouch to eat less nervously.  Tossing crunchy treats to her afterwards is a little harder.  We just drop them through the wires.

Since Moki was more aggressive with us while on the full dosage, and even at the 75% level of the drug we've had her on since January 2012, we've taken her to a 50% dosage level. This has made her an easier-going, more playful and energetic kitty, while not changing her reactions to Lilly.

Finally, since I had only a sleepy-eyed photo of Lu, I took one more to show his handsome face.

Entertainment

The cats and I were rather startled early this afternoon when birds kept coming up to our front windows, fluttering and beating against the glass.  These were larger than our usual hummingbirds, but in flight, I was not sure what they were.  But, a bit later I witnessed these scenes:

A female goldfinch clings to the window frame from the outside.  There's not much of a sill to these casements, but goldfinches are known for their perching and balancing skills.

She was completely oblivious to me and my camera, just a few feet on the other side of the glass from her.  The afternoon sun must have been creating good reflections, so it was as though I was looking at her through one of those surveillance mirrors.

A male goldfinch showed up on the hummingbird feeder and she flitted up to join him.  

The hummers were rather disturbed by these goldfinches perched on their feeder, and flitted about in panic - too fast for me to capture with my camera.  But one of the hummers got brave enough to use the feeder two windows over, and eventually, as the goldfinches carried on their little conversation, the hummers started to use this feeder as well.  You can just see the tail of one of them on the far side of the feeder in this next photo.

All of this activity captivated the furry members of the house.  Lu watched patiently for a while....

Then he slowly approached.  He was very, very stealthy, and again, they were oblivious...

 

...until he leaped up at them.  Then the male flew into the nearby sourwood and eventually left altogether.  But the female kept hanging around, letting me continue to photograph her in her breeding season plumage.  Here she is on the other feeder.

We've had hummingbird feeders on these windows since we moved here almost five years ago.  This is the first time we've seen the finches on them.

How are all the cats?

This week, it will have been one year since we took Moki to the veterinary behavior specialist outside of Charlotte.  We changed our approach, we added drugs, we consulted with a non-vet behavior specialist by telephone, we added Spirit Essences.  Each of the changes we made had a positive effect on Moki - some big and some small.  She is no longer attacking us, or Lu. In fact, yesterday, while Norris was out, I was in the studio with Lilly and came out to get a cup of tea to find this scene.

They were snuggled up and sleeping on the bench right outside my door.  

We are extremely happy to have Lu. Every day, sometimes twice a day, Moki gets to be in the house which means Lilly is in the studio.  But Lilly panics if she's left alone.  If one of us is not available to be with her, we have Lu to babysit.  If it means he's locked in the studio, it works best if he's sleepy, but everyone gets treats when we have them swap places, so they don't complain.

Here is a scene from the dismantling of the Christmas decor.  Lilly still has kitten behaviors and occasionally wants to play beyond the limits of Lu's patience, but they mostly live harmoniously.

 Lilly is particularly challenging as a photo subject in the winter. With her pretty blue eyes, we get a lot of red-eye shots, which make her look quite devilish.  Here is one photo where she was not looking at the camera.  This box is just her size.

Just now, she tried a new perch and was looking very pretty there - but it's been dark and dreary so the flash was required for a photo. Automatic red-eye reduction with the camera has no effect on the way her eyes look in a photo. Automatic  software meant for human eyes leaves her eyes gray with red rims, but better than untouched.

Lilly has an endearing personality and we enjoy her antics. We'll keep working with Moki, and keep our steps at introductions to an extremely slow pace.  It probably took 4-5 months to get Moki calmed down, but she now has a better relationship with Lu than she had had in a few years, and she has learned to accept Lilly's presence in ways she previously could not.  As recently as a couple of weeks ago, she made threatening gestures at Lilly during a meal, but those are far less aggressive than they had been even last fall.  Another change is how quickly Moki recovers after she gets upset for any reason.  Formerly, any time she attacked in Lilly's direction, Moki would withdraw in anger then become lethargic for a day or two.  Now, she seems to be completely over it in a matter of minutes.  We have to measure progress in little changes like that to continue our efforts.