Crossposted from Tumblr, because honestly I need to just put things in two places a lot more, and having somewhere that's only original posts and not reblogs sounds useful...

Jay had a weird little skin mass removed Monday and so he's in The Cone Zone for a couple of weeks as it heals, and because his brothers are little gremlin dicks who love nothing more than to sneak up on each other's blind spots and start shit (read: perfectly normal cats) he's got to be isolated for that time.

Which turns out to be necessary anyway, because Crow and Magpie both have a seriously funny case of feline non-recognition aggression and have decided that this is an alien from the planet Vet who just happens to look like an evil clone of their missing brother. They've been taking turns bigging and hissing at him and we get to introduce them all over again (can't call it reintroduce, because they were born together and the only time they've been separated on accident, Jay came home with Shelter Smell, which they still recognized as their own).

And like, I've seen this before. I've had multiple cats growing up, and they just do this. If you don't have the Group Smell you're a scary outsider. It's an almost universal behavior and it's something you can totally overcome. At the absolute worst, the offenders get to go on a short course of gabapentin or something to reduce the strange cat anxiety, and then all they know is that the """new""" guy doesn't scare them, so he's okay, and once the meds are done the impression that he's cool and has the Group Smell remains. It's whatever.

But my partner, who's only ever had single cats, is really struggling to understand how this works and it's been stressing them out, which stresses me out, and that stresses them out, so they think Jay is stressful to be around, and you can see how that goes. But I did find an article all about it for them which helped, and knowing that there's things to do helped, so they're a lot more chill today.

It's so funny how you gotta handle anxiety in animals vs. humans. Sometimes it's super similar and you just need to adjust surroundings and handling and enrichment! Sometimes you gotta leverage the human ability to understand complex concepts and rationalize. In either case, high-value treats work because humans are also animals.

This is all a really really long way to say that I'm going to go get myself and my partner a little baklava cheesecake and a little Dubai chocolate cheesecake and some fresh decaf coffee beans for evening espresso shots, and we're going to eat them "for no reason" after swapping the cats around and making sure everyone's scents are mixed for the day, which will involve bigging and hissing and growling and acting generally weird. Because I know enough about cat AND human psychology to manipulate all of us into chilling out, self included!

("But Nevi, aren't you nonhuman?" I'm several things, and human is just one of those things, but thanks for hypothetically asking!)