When you hate your pet !! (Give a pet a Home)

Member Name: Scooobydooo

Product:	Give a pet a Home
Date:	11/03/04 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: love, purring, friend

Disadvantages: plenty

Give a pet a home, sounds good doesn't it. TV stations telling you that here is this cute animal and if you want to give it a home ring this number and you can be considered.

Whilst in principal it would be nice to have empty kennels and happy pets everywhere, I feel as though it would be better if you could see the pet, the family, where it come from and a bit of history and Why do I say this, well read on and you will know.


I have always grown up with cats and have a thing about black cats and would have a house full of them.

When I first met my hubby after a couple of months we got a dog, which over the last 8 years have grown to 4 dogs, 4 border collies, one manchester terrier (looks like a doberman minature) I have two cats and they are 14 years old and have been with me through thick and thin.

I really do love animals and would like to have a sanctuary one day and just look after them and to make sure they are all happy little animals.

However we decided to add to the family, basically as we do not like the number 6 and 7 sounds a lot better anyway. So we got Chloe a black petite female who was a babe. She came from council estate and her mum was this lovely grey cat.

We loved Chloe but she was very fertile and she produced a set of kittens at around the time our dog gave birth to puppies. I was in awe of the puppies whilst hubby loved the two kittens.

Now we used to seperate the bitch and the cat as Lottie (Bitch) liked to mother everything in sight and this included the kittens. However she was never scolded for that as Chloe had one set of kittens before and abandoned them and Lottie took over and she allowed the kittens to drink milk along with her puppies. When we were around they would always play together but Lottie really wanted the kittens much to the dismay of Ch
loe.

One day we had come back from a quick shopping trip to find one of the kittens was dead. We looked at its limp body and Chloe was standing over it trying to make it come alive. All we could presume is that Lottie had somehow got out of her room whilst we were out and attempted to pick up the kitten and accidentally broke its neck. I cried my eyes out and Lottie sat next to it and would not leave the kitten and Chloe diverted her attention to her last kitten and would not Lottie go anywhere near it.

Then we moved and the pets were all taken over in their pet carriers and we were happily decorating with all the pets around us, when Chloe decided to go and out and play, something she was always doing. The kitten would now be alseep in his basket and quite happy and the puppies and the dogs were running all around the wallpaper on the floor.

After a couple of weeks, Chloe went out and never come back and so was left the 4 week old kitten with no mum. We looked everywhere and posted leaflets everywhere and followed non existent trails but after two weeks, we knew she would not come back. We left that house 1.5 years later and told the new people where we would be moving just in case she did come back.

So we decided to give the existing kitten a home ourselves and decided to keep her. He quickly became a lovely black cat with a sort of screwed up face and loved my husband but not me. Fine I thought, I have 6 other pets that love me even if you don't. He would purr and purr and purr when he was with my husband but when he was with me he was the cat from hell.


I nicknamed him Devil Cat as I had never known such a stupid insane unlikeable cat in all my life and I suppose I was a bit jealous of my hubby whom he had taken to when it was me who fed him when his mum left by a syringe and it was me who resc
ued him if he ever got hurt. Here are some of the things that he has done.

1) Raided the freezer, he has a knack for opening it and defrosted it and all my food was on the floor. This cost us £300.

2) Constantly chasing the dogs and pouncing on them out of spite and sitting outside my neighbours bedroom at night singing to her. ALL NIGHT

3) Bullying my older cats to the point where they were crying for help.

4) He would sit on the upstairs window outside on the ledge and fall off. The amount of times I have people knocking at my door saying your cat is on the ledge and we have to get the ladders out as he is so clumsy, he will fall one day and break his neck.

5) Ripping up the carpets in the room he is in as he cannot get near to my husband.

6) Ripping my new nets that were only 2 weeks old and causing £200 of damage.

7) Just when you start to eat something he appears and trys to snatch it before you get to it.

8) Refused to use the litter tray and pooed in the bath at the top end.

9) Would pee on the floor right in front of you.

10) Would scratch me if I tried to be friendly.

Now the list is endless and I started to hate this pet that I so kindly decided to home. However if he ever went outside and was playing with the other toms, he would come off second best and come home wounded and it would be me who would patch him up and make him better and he did not mind me doing this but this became the only contact with him.

I now disliked him so much that he was just using me and was always in trouble and shouting at him to stop doing this or that or the other, that in the end, I said to my husband I want him to go. He was now two years old and becoming a bruiser of a cat and was always in trouble and injured. I was really upse
t as all my pets have been good and this Devil Cat was horrible and I regretted keeping him so much that I would end up in tears.

I tried to spend time with him, but he hated me and vice versa. I put an extra litter tray out but he insisted on going in the bath. Smitten as he is called, (hubby named him that) would not conform to anything and the last thing we wanted is a pet out of control as the other cats would think if he can do it so can we.

He had broken countless ornaments and he would knock and smash everything in his site. One day I got hold of him and found his ears were blocked up. As his mum had abandoned him so early I do not think she had taught him how to wash himself properly and he was mucky and smelt. I got hold of some cotton buds and gently cleaned all his ears out so he was spotless and this solved the clumsiness, it must have been that.

Not long after that we moved and again his bad habits came with him. But one day he came back from one of his trips with a perfect round hole in his head and it looked as though someone had shot at him with a pellet gun. I cried my eyes out as it had not lodged in his head but you could see through to the bone. I sorted him out and every 4 hours got a towel and wrapped him in it so he could not scratch me and bathed him and eventually the scar healed, but even after that loving and pampering he still hated me.

So the next time we moved was to a house and again he became embroiled in fights and his looks and his build was becoming that of a fighter Tom. He was becoming ugly, scarred and muscular. This then reminded me of a cat that used to hang around our old house with his mum Chloe and I think that must have been his father.

So trying to make him more of a nice cat and to stop all this fighting I decided he was going to have the snip otherwise that would be the en
d of him living with us. My hubby was against this saying he was lovely but the cat calling outside my neighbours kept everyone awake at night. So off he went to the vets and when he came back I had cooked him chicken and rice and I rang the vet up every couple of hours in tears, saying is he ok... This meant to me that I did have some feeling for him and deep down I do not think that I could have got rid of him.

He came back and after his usual pampering, the cat calling stopped and he started to loose this muscular fighting look and gone were the scars but he still did not like me and preferred my husband. He would play with Milly who was our dog who was born around the same time as him and he would chase Milly into the Garden and then they would stop at the bottom and swop round and Smitten would chase Milly into the house upstairs and then they would swop again and chase each other. This was lovely to see and so funny. I began to feel left out as though I was the only one he did not like.

I have refused to give up and when my husband has had him purring away. I have sat next to him and stroke him just like my husband has and he has instantly stopped purring and walked away in disgust.

So I have tried everything I can do to get in his good books and now he is 4 years old and he looks so beautiful. His face is lovely and he is just so cute and he will always be a part of my family.

Three weeks ago, Smitten came to me and I nearly passed out on the spot and he sat on the sofa next to me. I dare not move and was in tears as this was the only time in 4 years that he had done this. I wondered whether I should be daring to stroke him or not as I was so happy that he had given me the chance to give him a stroke.

Hubby could not believe it and said there you go, he must trust you a bit. Since
that time, I have spent more time with him trying to gain his trust and setting him aside little nibbles. After all Rome was not built in a day was it? Just over two weeks ago, my computer came downstairs and seems to hang around me more and more. I made a cup of tea and sat down and he jumped up on my lap and started to purr. PURR yes, I was over the moon, this meant he was happy. I did not dare push my luck and cuddle him, a little bit at a time.

I thought this might have been a fluke and a one off but no, over the last few weeks, I can now go to him and if I shout him he will come to me. He now comes over and sits on the table behind me and purrs like mad until I pay him some attention. Failing that he jumps on the keyboard.

Today we have been playing with crisp packets tied in a knot and he has been chasing them all around the kitchen and front room. He has become so playful in the last few weeks and loving, it is as though he has transformed himself. I sat next to him and said I do love you Smittent and it is about time we called a truce and be friends. I know this sounds quite stupid but we are friends now.

He has stopped chasing the older cats around out of spite and shows no interest in my freezer whats so ever and is quite happy to stay in my company. I set aside a bit of time everyday to play with him when he has my undivided attention. He is happy now and so am I.

I do not know why the sudden change has happened but he is more of a house cat and does not want to go out all the time like he used to do. Ten mins ago when I was writing this he was on the table looking directly at the computer screen as though he was reading it. Now he has moved after a cuddle and me telling him that I love him, he has settled down on the sofa chair with our collie dog all wrapped up together and snoring.
>
It has taken me 4 years to gain the trust of Smitten and I am glad that I have not given up on him. But in the last 4 weeks he has been a different cat and no longer do I refer to him as a Devil Cat. I really love you Smitten and am glad that I never gave up.

So rather than ringing up TV programmes and saying yes I want it in a mad moment of oooh he looks so cute. Try doing the following:-

1) Visit a kennel or the Cats Protection or RSPCA

2) Get them neutered as soon as you can and innoculated.

3) Try and find out the history if you can.

4) Play with the kitten to see how it responds to you.

5) Could you put up with what I have gone through, remember a pet is for life.

6) Make sure you have kitten packs available, cat litter etc toys.




Karen :0)

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