How should I treat my cat’s anxiety? Antidepressants, therapy, diffusers or nothing at all? - Greg Bruce

Is this cat anxious? If so, what should be done about it? Photo / 123RF

THREE KEY FACTS

• The “humanisation” of pets is fuelling the fast-growing global pet industry.
• The industry is expected to grow to almost $500 billion by 2030, according to a report from Bloomberg Intelligence.
• A PD Insurance survey last year found 49% of New Zealand pet owners were spending more than $1000 a year on their pets, up from 38% three years earlier.

Greg Bruce is an award-winning senior multimedia journalist for the Herald, writing features, profiles, reviews and essays across a range of subjects.

OPINION

What’s going on in the minds of our pets? And what should we be doing about it?

We didn’t want a cat. We fought a long and attritional battle with our kids about it. I told them we didn’t have the time or money to care for another living creature and my wife claimed she was allergic. The kids didn’t care about any of that and, as usual, they wore us down.

Almost as soon as we started looking at pictures of tiny, helpless, adorable kittens on the SPCA website, all my concerns – and my wife’s allergies – were gone, swept away on a tidal wave of floof. We wanted every cat we saw. We wanted them in our lives, in our house and on our laps. We wanted, in summary, a widdle kitty to wuv.

We found a precious little ginger who looked at the camera like “Wuv me?” and we answered immediately with an emphatic yes, with lumps in our throat and tears in our eyes.

A few days later, when the nice people at the SPCA brought her out to us, she was shaking uncontrollably. I felt terrible for her but assumed that once she got settled into our home and was showered with love, she would snuggle contentedly into our family’s bosom and the shaking would be exchanged for purring.

But here we are, two years later, and that is not what has happened. Her life continues to be lived in a heightened state of anxiety. She watches us warily any time we come near her, as if something terrible is going to happen, ready to bolt at any moment. If we try to stroke her, she shies away. When strangers come to our house, she sneaks around after them, monitoring their behaviour and intermittently hissing.

All of this is made more painful by the fact of her beauty. Even vets think so. “Look at that face!” the last vet said. “You are very pretty, aren’t you?” It’s true. You can’t look at her floofy little moosh without wanting to shmoosh it. It hurts so much knowing she has no interest in you doing that.

We have tried. Oh, how we have tried. We love her deeply, and tell her that constantly, in cute baby voices. We beg her to come and sit with us when we’re watching TV, patting our laps and looking at her pleadingly. We continue to try to stroke her, just in case today is our day.

There are now multiple options for helping cats with pathological anxiety, including pheromone diffusers, calming food, therapy and antidepressants. We have considered, discussed and come to the very brink of doing some of these things, but have always stopped short. At least part of this is about cost: we are trying to raise three children in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and even if we were able to raise the money, by, say, forcing them to go without avocado toast for a week, there’s no guarantee any of it would work.

But there’s another issue at play here, and it’s this: who are we really trying to help? Do we want our cat to be less anxious because we think it will give her a better life, or because we think it will make her into the lap cat of our dreams? I would never dream of answering for my wife, who is better than me, but I have a feeling that, for me, it’s the latter.

I think it’s possible that alleviating our cat’s anxiety would be good for her, but I know with a great and furious certainty that it would be good for me. What I want is a life of snuggles in front of the TV. I want her to come and sit on my lap and let me kiss her little whiskers. And that’s no basis on which to make a potentially life-changing decision on behalf of another living being, especially one that’s already costing you a lot of money you don’t have.