This morning I am quite concerned about my boy, Bentley. Bentley is over 12 years old. He is a distemper survivor. He was the only one who survived in the entire litter of 12. When I go outside, if he is outside, he will follow me around like a dog. We play fetch with his toys. He brings them back every time. Then he will let me know when he wants to go back inside the enclosure. I walk to the door and open it and he just walks right in. This is a routine that I have been used to for years. My neighbors are always amazed to see him following me around like a dog as well as just walk in to the cat enclosure before dark.

He has never strayed off property in all the years I’ve had him. The reason he is outside is because he sprays like a firehose. Right now I wish I could say that he is doing that now, but it is not.

For the last few weeks, he has been incessantly meowing. Morning, noon and night, not a loud yelling meow just a soft one. So not like him. He’s eating, he’s drinking, he’s moving around, he’s not lethargic. I took him to the vet last week thinking that his stomatitis might’ve flared up. But he just had a recent Depo shot. When I see looked in his mouth, his. stomatitis did not look that bad. The vet didn’t think it did either, but just in case they gave him another shot (a smaller dose.)

When we got home, I decided instead of putting him inside the enclosure. I put him inside the introduction cage. He has been in there now 2 1/2 days. He is eating and drinking. The puzzling part about this is the minute I put him inside the cage, he just went silent. No soft meowing nothing, but unfortunately in 2 1/2 days although he’s eating and drinking he is not pooping and he is not peeing.

I am taking my boy back this morning to find out what’s going on. I already know he has kidney issues So if you’re reading this by any chance during a holiday weekend. Would you throw a few prayers our way? I am really worried about him.

On a better note, our Holiday Farm kitties are turning turned three years old!  Honestly, when they first arrived here, we saw how bad of a shape they were in, we didn’t even think they were going to make it to the first birthday and here they are turning three! We’ve had recent local fires, and there was a lot of smoke in the air. Once that started to happen, Ashley started pulling her hair out. I put a pheromone collar on her, hoping to stop the behavior, it calmed it down a lot, but now with the rain that started a few days ago, the smoke has cleared and she’s no longer pulling her hair out.

I don’t know if she was reacting to something that’s happening inside the enclosure that I’m unaware of, or if the smell of the smoke perhaps triggered some sort of a stress factor in her ? I can’t really understand if that’s the case because when they were born is when the fire was passing over. Newborn kittens can’t smell and they can’t hear. LThey are guided to the Queen by her purring, the vibration that they feel in the ground is what leads them to her .

I am grateful for the cooler weather, I know that California is getting slammed with a lot of rain, I just wish some of it would head up here and stick around. We are getting rain, but it doesn’t last very long and it’s not a hard rain like we need.

I will update this as soon as I know what’s going on with Bentley. I just pray it’s something simple and however it has been my experience with these cats, that really nothing is ever simple when they start acting off.

Update: crisis averted when I went in to get Bentley to take him to the vet he was in  the litter box doing his business! The mineral oil that I gave him in his wet food finally worked. Big relief I was so worried about him.