In the doghouse

If we had a doghouse, Sundance would definitely be in it. For the last several days she has been getting worse about waking us up in the night and demanding to be fed. Last night was the worst. Tom and I both must have gotten up and fed her or tried to calm her down four or five times. At one point, he was actually in the process of getting tuna for her when she came into my room growling and prowling and getting me out of bed to give her something. I showed Tom that I had left the tuna on the counter after the previous feeding a half hour earlier, and then I went back to bed. He gave her tuna and within five minutes Sundance was back in my room, making her racket. 

We cannot close the doors to keep her out because (1) she just gets louder, (2) she will scratch up the doors trying to get through them and (3) she will claw up the carpet trying to burrow under the doors. We have tried everything the vet and pet store people have suggested -- herbal drops in the food and water, pheromone sprays and special calming treats. Sometimes I can calm her down by getting her up onto the bed and petting her, but last night she would wriggle away, jump back to the floor and start meowing again. Yesterday we got a sort of pheromone room deodorizer that is supposed to calm her. It may actually be making her worse.

At any rate, I slept  off and on -- when she let me --  until seven thirty, and no sooner had I gone to the kitchen to make coffee than she came and sat in the middle of the room, staring at me. Eventually she went into my room, plopped down in the middle of the bed and went to sleep. I am tempted to go wake her up every half hour. Tom slept until almost nine. Under normal circumstances we are both early risers.

We think the underlying problem is that the vet is adjusting her thyroid meds and hasn't stumbled upon the right level yet. I will try to talk to her today, after I go to the library for my volunteer work training, and see what we can do. Sundance has another appointment in two weeks, but we need something sooner than that! And if she is doing this because she is in pain, then we don't want to wait longer.

She doesn't sound like she is in serious pain, and when we feed her, that seems to solve the problem. Momentarily. But what do we know? She talks a lot but her syntax is hard to follow.

The vet already told us that Sundance has a kidney problem -- common among cats with the hyperthyroid condition -- but she wants to get the thyroid thing settled before beginning to deal with the kidney. (The thyroid thing masks the kidney thing and makes it harder to diagnose.) And the kidney issue cannot be cured, just slowed with proper diet. Perhaps the kidney thing is the problem now? 

And Sundance does not adjust happily to changes in her diet.

This could be going in a direction I would rather not ponder ...

BTW, the font for the blog title today is called Kranky. 

If you don;t already know this, the font changes on all previous posts whenever I change it for the day, so unless you are reading this on February 8, what I said about the font won't be true.