Okay, so it is official…Autumn is afraid of the dark. Yeah, I know she is a cat…and yeah I know cats are nocturnal. Look, it isn’t my doing, I just figured it out. Though I must say, since I gave her the night light things are much better.
The first night I had Autumn it was just her and I in my parents room. My parents like it really dark so once the lights are out it is very disorienting. Well, I had been reading and Autumn was laying up against me purring. Shortly after I turned out the light she started hissing and growling. I turned the light on to see what she was doing and she instantly started purring. I turned the light back off and the growling and hissing started again. We went through this about 4 times before I finally just gave up, turned the light on low and we both went to sleep.
Fast forward 3 years later and suddenly, in the middle of the night, Autumn starts attacking the other cats sleeping on the bed. Well, cats screaming, growling, and hissing all through the house is not a pleasant way to wake up. In fact, there is no pleasant way to wake up at 3 in the morning. This happens for about a week…every single night. We start taking notes and trying to figure this out. It seemed like when a cat jumped on the bed to sleep with us it would startle Autumn. She would then go into Fight or Flight Mode and she is definitely a Fight kitty. So whatever kitty startled her would get the crap beat out of it. As soon as the beating was over Autumn would stroll back into the room – tail up and purring. By this time Michael and I would be up trying to restore peace to the house and the lights would be on.
After about 4 straight nights of this I called the vet. She said to bring her in to have her vision and hearing checked. If those were fine, then we might want to look into kitty Prozac to get her through this episode. As soon as she started talking about medicating her I started thinking about Feliway. Feliway is herbal and is supposed to calm the cats. It works great. There are 2 ways to administer it: 1) as a spray around the area the pet spends most time in, or 2) as a plug in (like Glade). I immediately went to Petsmart and got both. I put 2 plug ins in the room and sprayed it around like it was Poverty Repellant. LOL. That night we went to bed and waited for the midnight screaming marathon around the house.
Around 3 in the morning the screaming and growling and hissing and spitting started up again. Again we got up and tried to restore peace in the house. Again Autumn comes strolling in purring and with her tail up. Michael commented on the immediate change in her and then I realized that she doesn’t beat the other cats during the day. In fact, during the day everyone is friendly and nice…it was only happening at night with all the lights out. Holy Shit! My cat was afraid of the dark. I immediately plugged in a digital clock that shines blue and all was fine. We haven’t had any screaming or midnight beatings since.
We also figured that it started last week because we finally put away the rolling air conditioner. I like to sleep in the cold and during the summer it costs a mint to do that. So Michael and I compromised and keep the house at 72 degrees day and night. But we also have a portable air conditioner that we run at night to get the bedroom down to 65 degrees. We close the door most of the way so the cats can still get in and out, and when we get up in the morning we turn off the portable AC. Why is the portable AC important? Because it has a bright blue power light that illuminates the room when it is on. Not too bright but enough that a kitty could see everything. With the blue clock plugged in it too illuminates the room enough for a kitty to see.
It has been a week now and there has been no getting up in the middle of the night to restore peace or rescue a kitty. The other kitties are starting to come back to the bedroom to sleep. So far Bumpers is the first, but when I woke up this morning Cheese was laying next to me and purring so hard he was squeaking. Things are getting back to normal…though with us we don’t know how long that is going to last.
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