About a year ago, a stray cat appeared in our back yard while we were BBQ'ing. We enjoyed petting and playing with him, and of course we fed him a lot of BBQ scraps.
Well, it's a little over year later, and he's our little Tomcat now. He is predominantly an outdoor cat.
He comes home in the mornings for breakfast, hangs out for a bit and gets some loving, burr-removal and general brushing. Then he politely indicates that he wants to head back outside.
We generally see him again in the late afternoon, if it's our day off, or evening if it's a work day. He will generally go through the same motions, eat, lounge, enjoy being pet and brushed. Then he's ready to go out for the night.
Occasionally, more so since the temperature has dropped, he will spend the night indoors, then resume his routine in the morning.
Recently, though, he has been disappearing for days at a time. When he does come home, he is famished and disheveled, like a hobo cat. Last night was the worst. He had been gone for almost 3 days, he has an open would on his paw and we pulled a fully engorged tick off of his neck.
He looks generally beat up, dirty and doesn't seem to be attending to his normal self-cleaning habits. We cleaned him up and let him sleep on a blanket on our bed and it appeared to have puddle of drool (?) where he was sleeping.
Since he was a stray, and we've only really accepted him as "our" cat for a few months, we aren't sure about his vaccinations.
How concerned should we be about this change in behavior?
Thanks in advance for any insight.
[link] [comments]
from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/ant1q8/outdoor_cat_change_in_habits/
No comments:
Post a Comment