So the cat's on prozac

Yep. After talking with the Vet we decided to try some prozac to see if it would help dear old Calliope mellow out a bit. She's had a rough adjustment to Ben moving in and her little world being rocked. She went from ruling the roost to no longer being allowed in the bedroom first just at night and now at all. Her startle reflex is pretty darn high and she will usually hiss when he walks into the room. I think she feels cornered for some reason and will freak.

The idea to put her in the basement when we went to bed was mine. I grew up in a house where kitties went in the basement at night when it was too cold to go outside. She has loved having a little space down there. I got another bed, some extra food dishes and a litter box. At night, when we started this, I'd just call to her, open the door and she'd come trotting from wherever she was upstairs and happily go right down stairs.

Ben is mildly allergic to cats and after living together for a while he woke up with shortness of breath that he attributed to asthma, likely caused by his cat allergy. So, in an effort to reduce nighttime exposure to cat hairs and dander, we just kept her out of the bedroom completely. This sort of added to her trauma because under the bed was the place she retreated to when scared in the past.

Okay, enough of the back story. Let's get to the good part of all her lovely personality changes since being put on drugs.....the first couple of days she seemed to sleep a lot. Then she seemed to lose some interest in her food (not a bad thing as the vet has been wanting her to lose some weight) and didn't always eat all of her dinner. But there is some kind of kitty paranoia that has settled in. The second she hears Ben coming in the door she bolts for the basement and doesn't come back out. A few times when I've walked into the room she has hissed at me, something she has never done before. No longer does she 'chat' with me in the morning when I let her out of the basement and make my breakfast. She also never asks for her dinner and last night I fed her at 6pm and she just sniffed it - this from the animal what would kick the dinner campaign off at 3pm if anyone was in the house. Seldom does she want to jump up into my lap and she winces when I pet her head like she's afraid I'm going to hit her.

All in all, I decided last night that enough was enough. I feel like a horrible pet owner to have put her on drugs in the first place. We were supposed to give her 2 solid weeks for the medication to take effect, but I think 10 days was enough. I only hope that if we take her off of it, her little brain will go back to where it was, not stay in this place or move somewhere worse. I called the Vet this morning to discuss, but I kinda don't care what she says, I can't keep doing this to my kitty.