Moving on from your past/ letting go of the pain

Hi Sue. I was late diagnosed at 64 just after last Xmas. Yes there’s been huge abuse and problems in my past which could have been avoided had I been dx earlier but there’s been brilliance too, I’m the going-out-of-fashion high functioning autist, a widely published poet, two impressive careers where Ive worked magic with words and numbers and a massive connection with cats which I use not only with my own but at Cats Protection as a volunteer. Life is like a nutty cake, all sweetness and joy but with punctuations of hideous allergy, however I’ve done well really and will continue to do so. Not sure that helps really but maybe a small beacon of hope for some xxx

E (she/her)

Sue. can I dump my C.P. problems on you? Not that you might be able to do anything, but I seem unable to get my point across myself, and it's important.(possibly for the cats as well as me!)

A little over a year ago and six months after our lovely witty and brave cat Maqui (we didn't give him that name) we went looking for an older cat, Preferably from CP or somewhere similar).

Long story short we end up with a pair of cats from C.P. Now, CP had am impressive apparatus to physically rescue, care for, and rehome these two cats, BUT we got virtually zero information about them, and when we desperately needed some follow up information it was like I was asking for something really unusual.

Cat's are not furry robots, these two are chock full of quirks and personality, and clearly genetically very similar but very different in temperament. Blackie clearly had an interaction ritual with one of his previous owners which I could see him trying to get the correct response out of me and I had no idea what he wanted. HE throws up more than any cat I've ever known! He was particularly nauseated by the food that we were instructed to feed him. When we played with them with a thing on a string they took a while to catch on! It was like they'd never seen such a thing, which is possibly true, some cats are very ornamental for their "owners".

And that's just the friendly one, it's taken me a full year to stop the little one from being "skittish" tense and generally unsocial to be the happy and vocal little soul she is now, and she's clearly had to learn that hands coming towards her are not a threat.

I came to feel strongly that when rehoming established and older cats, C.P. need to compile a bit of data so that the new owners, or if the cats are lucky "human companions", can know what sort of life the cats lead before.

We were told these were perfectly healthy, and overall they are, but it's taken a YEAR of dietary experimentation (once we'd finally given up on trying to make the CP instructions work) to get Blackie down to puking less than once a week.

A series of questions like: 

what does your cat like, what does he hate?

has he any health quirks we should expect.

what is his temperament like.

what games does he like and how often.

what does he /she do when they are upset / want attention / want food?

Hi I Sperg, I can help on this one. I am a socialisation/desensitisation volunteer at CP so although I can’t speak officially for the organisation I do know the whys and wherefores. So there’s three main things about passing forward information from a cat’s past to their new human. The less significant one in your case concerns data protection, so information say about previous abuse or I’ll treatment of a cat wouldn’t be fed forward. Then in many cases cats come in with no prior history at all, this is actually very common. Then crucially the charity is really understaffed and doesn’t have the admin capacity to collect and compile the complex information you would find helpful. Of course essential medical information is collected and shared but the more involved psychological things around cats aren’t. 

Hope this helps

E 

Hi I Sperg, I can help on this one. I am a socialisation/desensitisation volunteer at CP so although I can’t speak officially for the organisation I do know the whys and wherefores. So there’s three main things about passing forward information from a cat’s past to their new human. The less significant one in your case concerns data protection, so information say about previous abuse or I’ll treatment of a cat wouldn’t be fed forward. Then in many cases cats come in with no prior history at all, this is actually very common. Then crucially the charity is really understaffed and doesn’t have the admin capacity to collect and compile the complex information you would find helpful. Of course essential medical information is collected and shared but the more involved psychological things around cats aren’t. 

Hope this helps

E 

Hi again I S. How humorously you write, love it. I’m too exhausted and poorly (chest infection) and de-spooned to reply properly now but will in due course, just didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you. 

E

Hello I'd like to talk to y a bit more, you are a fellow cat wrangler (although and offical one not an amateur like me) 

Socialisation and desensitisation are exactly the issues that the fluffy one and the other one seemed to arrive with, and retain for most of a year.

I'm not complaining, I enjoyed the challenge that cat who sets up camp hiding behind your loudspeakers in the spare room, and does not emerge when you are around for a full three months provided, me. Having got to this point where she now comes and asks for stuff, and really enjoys "stroking time" is great, but even now we are clearly "friends" every so often if I move my arm to her head without remembering to clearly tell her I'm going to do that, she no longer dashes off in fear, but I see a flicker of it or even a full tensing, before she remembers that that I am a totally benign prescence in her life. I've had to stop my O/H expressing her annoyance with me loudly because the ginger one gets really upset! 

These guys looked "traumatised" to me, and possibly like they have been left for very long stretches unattended, and are used to food and little else. And the CP had had to keep him back after his dental but were opaque about the details, so at first when he started puking and his miaow changing regularly, we were unable to get any supplementary information.  

NOW under the story I got a couple had split up and "neither could have the cats". There's a mystery right there!! I Don't mind that they arrived with problems, we are clearly getting on top of all of those, and they are steadily improving, but informationally it's been liking looking for a black cat in an unilluminated coal cellar.

If this experience is unique to me, fine. But if it;s a widespread part of the C.P. client experience and a simple (must be simple, I hate complicated and slow form filling) paperwork excercise could make a big difference, I'd like to help or pester someone into getting it done. 

In the case of "hissy missy" camping out behind the electrostatic speakers (I'll need to clean them out before switching them on next, or they'll be ruined...) I think I softened her up with the regular lines of catnip left just outside her entrance and, sweet talk and food etc. But what really seems to have been going on, is that she was letting the ginger one get the lie of the land (for three months!?) and one evening during a pleasant session with me and him in the living room together, he got up, went up stairs and returned with her in tow. She quickly found a new series of safe spaces in the living room, one being my spare camera bag where the camera with the long lens lives, and it's a much flatter more dishevelled looking thing, now, but she's good enough to let me still use the camera occasionally, if I need to, so it'll probably never move again..  

She seems to have required us to wage a gentle campaign of "emancipation" as regards a right to eat her food without her big brother deciding when she'd had enough, and with our style of feeding, there is no need for them to compete over limited resources that arrive twice a day, they get fed on demand, anyway, and if he wants more he gets more, but he gets it from US. He has adjusted to that regime and backed off quite well, TBF, (he is so happy to please) and she's gradually stopped racing to eat her food before he has ate his, (mostly) and seems happier for it. He was clearly used to being routinely very dominant or protective of her, but these behaviours are subsiding, gradually.