Frank slums at DU

[dutch508]

greenbriar  (1000+ posts)      Sun Apr-20-08 02:02 AM
Original message http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7670469
My cat hates people including me...I don't know what to do
 I wanted a cat sooooooo much. Finally after 18 years of marriage, my 16 year old daughter talked her dad into letting me have one for my birthday in November which was a surprise for me. Almost from the start (he was 7 weeks when we got him) he has been mean. Scratched the hell out of me and hubby. We got him fixed and hubby had him declawed because he was so mean he hisses at EVERYONE me included. When I try to pet him or love on him, he bites and hisses.

We thought it would get better, but he seems to be getting meaner

Growing up, we had many house cats and I Have NEVER had a cat act like my spooky.

I guess I get have a hateful cat.


I hate it because I always wanted a cat to pet and love...Daughter thought she was doing such a neat cool thing so I don't say anything but I think it is the most hateful cat I have ever seen.

Zavulon  (1000+ posts)      Sun Apr-20-08 03:40 AM
Response to Original message
2. Ignore the cat fully, other than feeding.
 Eventually, Spooky will come to you. Trust a guy who has owned close to a dozen cats since the 80's, probably half of which started out the way Spooky did.

Cats are, in their own way, attention whores. If Spooky ever gets the sens that you don't give a shit, he or she will eventually want to be petted in your lap.

This advice is, of course, given under the assumption that Spooky is a healthy cat.

Do NOT shell out hundreds for the advice of a pet therapist until you try my advice. If you feel the need to spend money, spend it at a vet instead - it's always possible the cat could just have a toothache or some other minor malady. Pain makes any pet irritable.

FRANK!? Is that you?

[BlueStateSaint]

greenbriar  (1000+ posts)      Sun Apr-20-08 02:02 AM
Original message http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7670469
My cat hates people including me...I don't know what to do
 I wanted a cat sooooooo much. Finally after 18 years of marriage, my 16 year old daughter talked her dad into letting me have one for my birthday in November which was a surprise for me. Almost from the start (he was 7 weeks when we got him) he has been mean. Scratched the hell out of me and hubby. We got him fixed and hubby had him declawed because he was so mean he hisses at EVERYONE me included. When I try to pet him or love on him, he bites and hisses.

We thought it would get better, but he seems to be getting meaner

Growing up, we had many house cats and I Have NEVER had a cat act like my spooky.

I guess I get have a hateful cat.


I hate it because I always wanted a cat to pet and love...Daughter thought she was doing such a neat cool thing so I don't say anything but I think it is the most hateful cat I have ever seen.

Zavulon  (1000+ posts)      Sun Apr-20-08 03:40 AM
Response to Original message
2. Ignore the cat fully, other than feeding.
 Eventually, Spooky will come to you. Trust a guy who has owned close to a dozen cats since the 80's, probably half of which started out the way Spooky did.

Cats are, in their own way, attention whores. If Spooky ever gets the sens that you don't give a shit, he or she will eventually want to be petted in your lap.

This advice is, of course, given under the assumption that Spooky is a healthy cat.

Do NOT shell out hundreds for the advice of a pet therapist until you try my advice. If you feel the need to spend money, spend it at a vet instead - it's always possible the cat could just have a toothache or some other minor malady. Pain makes any pet irritable.

FRANK!? Is that you?

I don't think so, as I know his name over there.  And, I'm not saying a thing.

[dutch508]

Because, without a detailed look at things, Frank will not be happy:

Zavulon, a charactor from the Russian movie, Night Watch: Night Watch (Russian: Ночной дозор, Nochnoy Dozor) is a fantasy novel by a popular Russian writer Sergei Lukyanenko published in 1998 (1st ed ISBN 5-237-01511-5).

The story revolves around a confrontation between two opposing supernatural groups (known as "Others"): the Night Watch, an organization dedicated to policing the actions of the Dark Others—and the Day Watch, which polices the actions of the Light Others.

The novel is first in a tetralogy that continues with Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor, Дневной дозор), Twilight Watch (Sumerechny Dozor, Сумеречный дозор) and Final Watch (Posledniy Dozor, Последний дозор).

pretty decent movies, to be told. but I like russian cinema

Zavulon
(Also spelled Zabulon) (Grand Dark Mage) - An ancient schemer about the same age as Geser. He runs the Day Watch in Moscow and his plans frequently involve misdirection and hidden agendas. His power seems to rival that of Geser but he is often, if not overpowered by Geser, outwitted by him. His true form has taken on demonic characteristics because he has spent a great deal of time in the Twilight. His chosen human appearance is often misleading, as he appears as a thin intellectual who does not seem to be a threat to those who do not know him. Day Watch Novel: Geser's consistent ability to outwit him eventually forces the outside forces of the gloom to step in and restore the balance between Light and Dark. Face of the Dark Palmira: His human name is revealed to be Arthur.

[franksolich]

There's something wrong with the psychology of the plagiarizing greedy thorn primitive.

As if we didn't already know that.

The plagiarizing greedy thorn primitive frankly admits she always wanted a cat "to pet and to love."

That is the absolutely worst reason to have a cat, or a dog.

Cats (and dogs) do not live for the purpose of human ego gratification.

All things that live have a purpose, and it is an offense against God when one seeks to "use" another thing for personal ego gratification.

If a cat or dog or any other living thing just happens to come into one's life, one is obligated to treat that thing with respect, not to devise ways and means of using that thing for one's own gratification.

I know, I know; I sound like some 17th-century "Puritan" here, the last Puritan in America.

Also, there is something very wrong with a human who seeks "to pet and to love" an animal.

Usually, as Sigmund Freud has said, it's indicative of a human who doesn't get along with other humans very well, and seeks a substitute in animals.

This is not healthy, psychologically.  To put it mildly.

I know nearly everybody over here has pets and loves those pets dearly, but I suspect everybody over here has non-selfish reasons, non-selfish motivations.  RebelKev and his dogs, for example; I quite reasonably suspect RebelKev treats his dogs with nothing but respect and consideration for their own needs, rather than his.

[dutch508]

Not only that, Frank, but i suspect animals sense how ****ed up a person is. They may not like gb because she's a feeking loonie!

[Carl]

Not only that, Frank, but i suspect animals sense how ****ed up a person is. They may not like gb because she's a feeking loonie!

BINGO!

[Flame]

Not only that, Frank, but i suspect animals sense how ****ed up a person is. They may not like gb because she's a feeking loonie!

[franksolich]

Not only that, Frank, but i suspect animals sense how ****ed up a person is. They may not like gb because she's a feeking loonie!

That's it too.

Dogs have that talent more than cats, even though even cats have an awesome skill for it.

I had a great-aunt who lived in the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania; even though severely crippled (wartime injuries), she lived alone, and kept a couple of small dogs around to watch out for her.

The dogs were great, the dogs got along with just about everybody.

Excepting that when one of her older brothers came to visit.  Then the dogs would gnarl and protest.

This great-uncle was a nice guy; I couldn't understand it.

As it turned out within a few years, while the great-uncle was nothing but brotherly love towards his sister, behind the scenes he was busy contriving ways and means of getting the property, prime property smack in the middle of a Pennsylvania state forest (the family had owned this land before the commonwealth had made a state forest out of the surrounding neighborhood).

Sometimes, if not most of the time, dogs and cats--and possibly even birds--know more about human nature than humans do.

[dutch508]

Lorien  (1000+ posts)      Sun Apr-20-08 01:47 PM
Response to Reply #5
16. Cats aren't dogs. Any sign of aggression towards the cat makes you a feared
 enemy. With dogs, aggression establishes you as the pack leader. Cats are not pack animals. They choose their associations through an agreement with others, and they don't accept domination.It's better to deny the cat any reaction at all. If he misbehaves, just give him a five minute "time out" locked in the bathroom (five minutes will have the same effect as an hour; cats don't have the same sense of time passage that we do). If he behaves well, reward him. Physical punishment NEVER works with a cat, but negotiating a "better deal" usually does.

The OP may need to take the cat to the vet. There could be something physically wrong with him that is causing the odd behavior.

intersting comments from the DUmmie. Almost like they do get it.

Lorien  (1000+ posts)      Sun Apr-20-08 03:18 PM
Response to Reply #23
25. Read "the Tribe of Tiger" n/t

er...what?

http://www.leftfield.org/~rawdon/books/nonfiction/tribe.of.tiger.html

by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Simon & Schuster, © 1994, ISBN #0-671-79965-7
I live with two cats, and I frequently am at a loss trying to figure out how they behave why they do. Thomas has written this very nice book which helps fill in some holes.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the evolution of cats and some general principles regarding their behavior. Unlike dogs and bears, cats are almost exclusively meat-eaters; they might nibble on some other food, but meat is their sustenance. This means that their whole life is organized around hunting, and this goes a long way towards explaining them. But there's a lot more to it, as well: Cats are highly competitive, fight and kill each other for territory, and are infanticidal by nature. While cats live in a hierarchical structure, it turns out that other than the top cat there may be several cats on the same rung of the "ladder".

It also appears that housecats sometimes accord humans some special status. While I have friends who can say that one of their cats is definitely the "top cat", my two cats appear to be equals. I've finally decided that they think that I am the top cat - which appears to be what happened in Thomas' household for a while, as well.

The evolution of cats and their ecosystem is also rather interesting: Many cats are hunt-and-stalk types, such as pumas. A few, like cheetahs, run their prey into the ground and don't need camouflage. And most cats are social: Lions are most obviously so, but tigers tend to live in groups too, albeit groups where the individuals are spread out by hundreds of feet. But they still know that the others are around. It also appears that lions are more recently evolved than man - about 700,000 years old.

The second part of the book is largely a collection of anecdotes involving Thomas' experiences in Africa with lions. She was familiar with the lions and the bushmen of the region and watched the two groups interact in the 1950s. And she was able to return more recently when the bushmen had largely been driven from their land, and the lions' habitat was also being taken over. Lions are adapting bit-by-bit to the intrusion of "modern" man, though their relationship to the men is very different - and a lot more hostile - than their relationship with the bushmen was.

The third part discusses in more detail how many cats are dealing with modern society. Tigers are not faring so well, in large part because they are specifically hunted for their coats and as "resources" for oriental "medicine". She discusses how zoos tend to be awful places for tigers, because they canUt hide, and they can't interact properly with each other, and it's just tremendously boring. At the same time, she says that tigers might have already died out if not for the artificial breeding programs promulgated by zoos. She says that circus tigers tend to have much better lives: People who care for and about them, other tigers to interact with, and a challenging and exciting job to perform.

By contrast, the puma seems to be doing quite well, much to the surprise of some. Apparently the puma was thought to be dying out not long ago, but in fact pumas are thriving out west (e.g., in Colorado), and are even returning to the east coast; there is even some reason to believe that pumas never were driving out of the northeast, but that they became especially adept at avoiding man and have been there all along.

It's an interesting book on many different levels, and if you like cats, I highly recommend it.

um....ok...

Rhiannon12866  (1000+ posts)       Sun Apr-20-08 01:16 PM
Response to Original message
13. Awww. I am so sorry. Have you talked to your vet about his behavior?
 Edited on Sun Apr-20-08 01:37 PM by Rhiannon12866
My cat, who I rescued from outside, was extremely skittish, mostly hid, which wasn't surprising, after what she'd been through. But my vet discovered that the poor kitty had really bad dental problems, must have been in pain. After dental surgery, she completely changed, was practically a lap cat after that...

 
dental surgery?

asteroid2003QQ47 (640 posts)      Sun Apr-20-08 03:56 PM
Response to Original message
26. Do a drive-by cat ejection in front of my house,...
 it's traditional in my neck of the woods. My cat pop. varies from about 10 (now) to 35 (a year ago). When they get thick, coyotes, eagles (saw one checking the yard 15 min. ago), owls and fox thin the careless and or unlucky ones out fast.

it's either Frank or the hunter from TENN.

[franksolich]

Oh man.

I hauled out the boat and rowed over to Skins's island just to see that bonfire.

Primitives don't know shit about cats, any more than primitives know about religion or economics or history or sociology or politics.

Not only that, but the primitives are cruel to cats too.

What the plagiarizing greedy thorn primitive has to understand is that this cat KNOWS she's not healthy, mentally, and that's why it's skittish around her; people not mentally healthy tend to be volatile, unpredictable.

Cats like predictable people.  I know.

To solve the cat's problem, the plagiarizing greedy thorn primitive needs to see a psychiatrist about herself and her problems, and to see that psychiatrist often and for a very long time.