Disruptive Oriental cat

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moglits
New Cat Chatter
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Joined: Tue Apr 11, 2017 7:53 am

Disruptive Oriental cat

Post by moglits »

Hello all :)

A bit of context - I have a four-year-old Oriental cat called G, and a two-year-old boxer dog. There's me, my partner, and his teenaged daughter. It's a happy and large household, and largely harmonious! My partner works at home 99% of the time; I work full-time in an office.

Recently, we've noticed a change in G's behaviour. To a degree, she's a typical Oriental - LOUD, massively loving, affectionate, demanding, and playful. However, there are a few traits that have been a cause for concern:

- nipping at the dog's ears and legs to get her to move so G can claim the space (the dog is a gentle giant and doesn't go for the cat, they otherwise get on well - plenty of play and snuggling up together)

- increasingly loud and frequent demands to go out. We moved at the end of last year to a bigger house with more space, both indoors and outdoors, for her to roam, but it doesn't have a cat flap. When she's upstairs, she comes and goes through the bathroom window. However, when she's downstairs, she'll yowl at the back door until my partner lets her out. Three minutes later, she's yowling to get back in again. And on and on, throughout the day.

- nighttime disruption. She'll settle on the bed with us, but throughout the night come and go through the bathroom window (and for a 3kg cat, she makes a LOT of noise when she lands), bouncing all over the bed and making sure we wake up. We've tried shutting the window, but as it gets warmer that's less of a feasible option, and then she cries to be let out anyway. When I'm sleepy enough to let her out downstairs, she's back in through the bathroom window within half an hour.

She gets plenty of love, fuss and attention, has lots of space to play and roam, and seems to like the area. The one thing I have noticed (and got her treated for) was that she'd been bitten by a local feral tom, who I suspect doesn't like a new cat on his patch (and G is very small, ergo an easy target).

I know some of these behaviours are simply because she's a cat, and they do have demanding tendencies. However, the acceleration in this kind of behaviour makes me think it might be something else.

Any thoughts or advice are very much appreciated! x
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