Animals do get jealous. And today, I experienced for myself the extent of such jealousy amongst my eight cats.
I had to foster Felix, the little tabby kitten I rescued yesterday. He had an eye infection and none of the fosterers I contacted could help me out. So I took him back, despite having eight cats of my own.
The vet advised that ideally Felix should be kept at a 10m radius from my other cats. This would not be possible at all in my small house. The best I could do was to keep him at the back portion of my house with Mac, our 13-year old dog who is friend to every animal we’ve ever rescued.
I was aware of the risk of one or two of my cats running away from home when I bring home another kitten. But I had no choice. I couldn’t possibly leave Felix out on the street.
Well, Little Chief did not come home last night from his alley. Also, where I had put Felix’s cage was Little Chief’s entry route into the kitchen.
This morning, we searched and found him a few houses away, but he refused to come home. When I got home after work, I noticed practically ALL my cats had “run away from home”. Only good-old Vixey and Indy were around.
I finally had no choice but to board Felix at the vet’s lest I lose all my cats in one day!
Then, I came home and went on a hunt to get all my cats back. All of them are home now, and things are back to normal.
Phew…they get jealous and insecure too.
By the way, Felix is a wonderful kitten. Although his eye infection hurts very much, he never complained at all when I washed his eyes and applied the eye ointment. The vet said it would take about 2 weeks to ensure the infection has cleared.
Would anyone like to adopt Felix? He is three months old, and is a tabby cat.
We’ll take a photo after he gets well and put it up for all to see.