Mabel also “hunted,” but only at the end of the day when the clinic was largely empty, corresponding with the time of day when cats naturally hunt. But when she caught “prey” she wanted to be congratulated for her success. She emitted a loud hunting cry until somebody praised her for her effort. Her favorite prey was a tiger toy that had originally been a coiled stretchy thing to put around a doorknob, but over time all the plastic coils broke so the body of the tiger stretched out to almost 3 ft long. She would carry the head in her mouth with the rest of the “body” dragging between her legs the way a leopard drags its kill. Because we had let her on the counter to drink out of one of the water faucets, she eventually felt bold enough to claim the counter as her territory. She used to carry her “prey” to the back door and leave it there for us to find in the morning if her hunting took place after everybody had left. But lately she had been carrying it up onto the counter and leaving it there. Aside from her appetite, this was how we monitored how well she was feeling, since her hunting activity correlated with her overall state of well-being. The better she felt, the more she hunted. In the last few weeks before the end, she had stopped hunting.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 05:08:00 +0000
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