Problem (?) with my cat - help from cat owners or anyone else

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lordxixor101

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Well, as the title says, I might have a problem with my cat. Has anyone heard of this sort of thing before?

About a month ago, my cat started living in the downstairs laundry room. She would always sleep in there, but now she refuses to leave. Even when we're petting her, if we stop and go upstairs, she won't follow us.

This is odd, since we had the cat for about 4 years, and she would mainly live upstairs. I thought it was the weather, but it's actually cooler upstairs (we don't use the a/c) now than it was in previous months.

We thought she might be sick/injured, but looking at her today, she seems to be in good health (good size to her, her fur looks normal, and she's jumping around down there, so her legs/hips don't seem to be bothering her). Nothing else changed upstairs that I can think of.

Any thoughts?
 
If you're really worried, I'd eat the few bucks to take her in to the vet just to get her looked at. Changes in behavior can be a sign of something odd, or just a new obsession with the laundry room. What happens if you take her upstairs with you? And do you feed her down there as well?
 
[quote name='botticus']If you're really worried, I'd eat the few bucks to take her in to the vet just to get her looked at. Changes in behavior can be a sign of something odd, or just a new obsession with the laundry room. What happens if you take her upstairs with you? And do you feed her down there as well?[/QUOTE]


I wouldn't say worried is quite the right word. It is odd though. She was going upstairs to eat, but only about twice a week, so we moved her food dish downstairs, and she's back eating multiple times a day.

I haven't tried to drag her upstairs yet. Usually when we grab her and try to force her somewhere, it's either a bath or to the vets, so she freaks out anyway (and would run downstairs to hide). So, dragging her upstairs and her taking off really wouldn't be very telling at all.

I think she has her regular vet appointment in a couple of months (wife handles all of that). I think the plan will be to hold off (my hunch is the vet will want to run tests on the cat, she'll be fine, and then I'm out a couple hundred bucks, so not too interested to do that with a cat that I took in to save from going to the gas chamber).
 
is it a female cat? has it been outside ever? or do you have male cats around? it could be pregnant. i belive when they get close to giving birth they find a quiet out of the way spot to start nesting.
 
Yeah, I'd say she might be pregnant or sick. Animals act this way when they're sick [citation needed]. My neighboors' dog attacked our dog when she was pregnant. She totally beat the shit out of her because she was too close.

And you thought PMS were bad...
 
I'd say N1co and LCLB are probably right, cats will generally start hiding if they're sick, but as there doesn't seem to be anything wrong and she's eating ok she's more likely pregnant and nesting.
 
She very rarely goes outside (she's really terrified of the outside, we had to put her out in an enclosed area outside while we flea bombed the house, she got out and waited at the door until we let her in).

She also is fixed (and she has never gone into heat), so I'm guessing it isn't pregnancy (though, it is quite similar to how another cat we had acted when she had kittens.
 
I would take her to the a non-profit animal shelter, they usually have a vet volunteer come in once or twice a week and you can get basic check up for like 5 or 10 bucks.

She's probably not pregnant, or scared, if she is fixed , and cats don't have much of a memory, so unless it was something that traumatized her at young age she's not going to be scared of something for that long and that suddenly.

Also it might be a back problem. My dog when I was a kid had a slipped disc in her back, and while she walked fine she could barely go upstairs and only would if she absolutely had to, which would explain only coming up to eat twice a week.
 
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It might just be that she feels that the basement is her "safe area"? Was there something recently that you did that could've scared her into going down there?
 
My cat did something similar to this. He would just lay near the bathtub all the time and only leave to eat really. Turned out he had gallbladder stones, if memory serves.
 
Bite the bullet and get her checked out with your local vet.

The behavior could be due to her being pregnant, as well as her being sick. Since you said she's fixed, I think you can rule out pregnancy. I'd check to see if the amount of waste in her litter box is more than normal, and if so, then there might be something up.

Has there been any changes to the rest of your house that could cause her to want to stay in the basement as a "safe area"? You said she would only come upstairs to eat twice a week, which was probably when hunger told her that she needed to eat. There's something that has her either sick/uncomfortable/injured and makes going upstairs painful, or something in the environment of your house that has the rest of the house being uncomfortable for her in some way. She's certainly eating regularly now that the food is downstairs, so that's a promising sign.

A phone call to your vet wouldn't be a bad idea, to see if they have some ideas. Most likely, they'll be telling you to bring her in for a check-up.
 
Cats are very good at hiding signs of sickness. Take her. Last year my cat started staying in one room, not moving around much, just became very inactive. Turns out he has low red blood cell counts. He gets shots every week, and takes 4 pills a day now. Just be prepared. If they dont know what is wrong at the vet, they will need to do labs, and it gets costly. I think I have spent $2000 in test, to which we still dont know the real reason why he is sick, and he now gets about $50 in shots a week.

He has good days where he runs around, plays with the other cat and the dogs. Then some days he will stay at the foot of the bed and only get down to go to the litter box or to eat.

Good luck!
 
My relatives had a similar problem. Their cat would stay in a bedroom and never come out, this is after they had her for several years. The vet said the cat had no problems and what could be happening is two things. #1, something outside the bedroom could have scared her and made her want to stay in there. #2 sometimes cat's can become obsessed. For example your cat might have seen a mouse or something in your laundry room. What the vet recomended (and worked out for the cat) was they locked the cat out of that bedroom and after awhile her behavior returned to normal. Hopefully it is just something like this going on for your cat. Hope this info helps.
 
Just take her out of the laundry room and shut the door...Let he roam the house a while and she'll get used to being in other locations.
 
Definitely get her checked out at the vet, cats and other animals do this when they're sick (or pregnant), as others have said already. Good luck.
 
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