My sweet little Penny, who has never had any problems at the vet's and has never even had to have a tranquillizer before going, has suddenly become very aggressive.
Last Thursday, I took Penny and Gabe to the vet, Gabe for his final FIP immunization and Penny for her regular checkup and vaccinations. She had been there three weeks before, when Gabe got his vaccinations, to get the initial FIP dose and had been perfectly calm. On Thursday, though, things were different. The assistant helping to handle her was a new employee. He's a grown man of 18, but he looked to me as if he were 12 or 13 years old. (On Friday I called the vet to ask why he had a child assisting with animal exams, and he told me the young man's actual age.) He had a hard time picking her up to take her to the room where the vet extracts stool samples, and the vet had to demonstrate how to restrain her for the exam. Pen began to hiss and growl during the exam. Concerned for the safety of the assistant, whom I believed to be a child, I was not reassuring to Penny. I told her to quit hissing and growling because it was rude.
The real explosion took place when the doctor had finished the exam and began administering the FIP drops. She started lashing out, trying to scratch and bite, and the young man couldn't control her. I stepped in to protect the presumed child and restrained Penny myself. The vet told me they could do it and they didn't want me to get hurt; I told him I didn't want the assistant to get hurt and she was my cat. At that point, she bit my thumb, scratched my hand, and catapulted off the table. The vet said he was going to stop, reschedule her shots, and give me some tranquillizer pills for her to take before coming in for the shots. I put her carrier on the floor, thinking she would dart right into it. She didn't. When I reached down to put her in it, she started hissing and slashing again. The vet had to nudge her into it with a long-handled brush that they use to sweep the floor, while the assistant bandaged my badly bleeding thumb.
Today I took her back for her shots, very mellow and purring on the pill--until the carrier was opened in the exam room. She immediately began hissing and growling again. The groomer restrained her this time and kept control of her while she received injections, but after the doctor gave her the FIP nose drops, she bit the groomer! (I'd told him when he first came in that she'd bitten me on Thursday and to be careful, and I apologized when she bit him.)
The vet and his staff say that this happens with some cats, not very often but not rarely, either. They can be calm and friendly for years, then suddenly "snap out" like this. She obviously doesn't like the nose drops, which she hadn't received prior to the dose three weeks ago. I'd sprayed her blanket with Feliway before putting it in her carrier that time; I wonder if that made the difference.
This, from a cat who, on her first visit as a kitten, purred so much that the doctor couldn't hear her heart and lungs!
