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 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

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