5 Tips To Relieve Stress In A Cat

Sadly, cats can be stressed out so quickly, especially with any changes in their life. Stress in a cat is not a pleasant condition, and it may cause significant complications in the long run. They can become both emotionally and physically sick and may develop physical diseases as well as show behavioral problems.

Signs of stress in cats are various and have a wide range and could be anything like eating too much or not using their litterbox.

Therefore, if you want to be a good cat owner and parent, you don’t want your cat to be stressed out. So, here in this post, you will find different tips to relieve stress in your cat.

But before we talk about how to relieve stress in a cat, I want to point out some signs your cat is stressed!

5 Signs Your Cat Is Stressed

Stress in a cat can be hidden for most cat owners; it is not because you didn’t pay attention, but it is because cats are good at hiding their pain and stress. After all, simply, they are hunters in nature, and they avoid showing their weakness. Therefore, the stress in a cat is a condition where it is your job to pay more attention to the signs your cat may indicate, which translates to this problem.

1. Aggression Toward You, People, Or Other Animals

Behavioral changes are one of the most common symptoms you may notice at your stressed cat. Aggressive actions toward you people or other animals can be a prominent sign your cat is stressed. At this point, you must contact your veterinarian for a consultation.

2. Solitude Or Isolation

Another behavioral change your stressed cat may show is isolation. Your cat may begin by avoiding any interaction with people and other pets (If you have other pets) or even you. Isolation can also be a sign of pain. Therefore, once you notice your cat is isolating itself from others so often, consult your veterinarian for further help.

3. Decrease In Appetite

If your cat stops eating or starts to fast from eating all of a sudden, that is an alarming sign to contact your veterinarian fast. It would be best if you remembered that cats don’t go on fasts or diets as we do. So, if your cat suddenly loses interest in eating their food or stops eating altogether. It could be due to stress or to an underlying health problem.

4. Urinating Outside The Litterbox

Another vital sign to notice is that your cat starts to pee outside the litterbox. This sign, however, may be due to other causes such as urinary tract problems in cats. Sadly, most cat owners’ initial reaction to pee accidents is to yell and scream at their cats, which may increase the stress! 

Most Cats that urinate outside the litterbox are stressed due to anything you did to inside the house, such as loud noises, dirty litterbox, or even rearranged furniture. Another cause for this behavior is that your cat may also have an underlying health issue causing the improper urination.

5. Excessive Grooming And Licking

The meaning of excessive grooming here when your cat starts to have raw or bald spots due to excessive licking.

5 Tips To Relieve Stress In A Cat

Stress in a cat can be a serious condition if you, as a cat owner, don’t fix it fast! Such conditions may lead to depression, and that means more severe complications. Cats are easy to feel stressed and bored. So, taking care of your cat and making sure your cat is not stressed is an important task the same as cleaning your cat’s teeth or treating it from a dangerous disease. The following are 5 tips to relieve stress in a cat:

1. Get Rid Of Cat Competition

If you are a multi-cat household cat competition is a common thing in the house. This competition is one of the main reasons to increase stress in a cat.

Sharing the house, food, litterbox, or even their water dishes can cause a lot of tension and stress between a cat and other pets.

Accordingly, Be sure every cat or pet in the house has its own things to call their own. Also, You must put cats’ stuff all over the house, and away from each other, so one cat doesn’t try to keep them all for itself.

2. Having A Feline-Friendly Place

It is easy to stress a cat with any minor changes in the area they live in. Therefore, it is crucial to have a cat-friendly place where they feel secure, safe, and stimulated.

Also, remember if you have a multi-cat household, each cat needs their own things and their own space away from other cats. That means they need their own litterbox, beds, food plate, water dish, toys, etc.

Also, try not to change anything within the house so often, as it is one of the reasons for the cat stress. Sudden and many changes in the area where the cat lives in can be challenging and stressful to the cat.

3. Spend Quality Time With Your Cat

Cats maybe not as social as dogs; however, they still need to interact with humans and other animals. So, you must spend quality time with your cat and learn to communicate with it.

Your cat loves you, and there is a particular language cat use (Read More Here) to communicate with you and tell you that, if you fail to understand them and ignore them, that will lead to a stressed cat.

Also, avoiding your cat and not spending time with it may lead to more significant problems such as depression in cats. (Read More Here).

Meaning, as a cat owner, you have to spend time with your cat every day and make sure to play with it more often. Doing that will decrease the possibility of stressful events for your cat.

It would be best if you played with your cat at least 5-10 minutes two times daily. It will help subdue that extra energy as well as fulfill your cat hunting instincts. Plus, it provides your cat with proper mental stimulation. All these things are great ways of relieving your cat’s stress.

4. Promote Normal Cat Behaviors

Imagine yourself loving something so much, and someone came to you and took it away from you. Isn’t this going to stress you out?

For cats, this is going to be so stressful, it is in their nature to do some cat-things, and as a cat owner, you have to guide them and promote these healthy cat behaviors. 

For kitties, being able to do cat-stuff like climbing on stuff, marking things and places with their scent, scratching things, hunting things, or even hiding, are essential in their life. If they can’t do those cat things, they might begin doing lousy stuff like peeing inappropriately or grooming too much.

The solution is to provide them lots of opportunities for normal cat behavior, such as:

A. Climbing: Kitties and older cats love to be high up! It’s just in their nature! So as a cat owner, you must provide them with tools to give them opportunities to do that. 

You can begin by getting them unique cat shelves on the walls and platforms specially made for cats to hang them on a wall. Also, you can get a tall condo, which is the right place for your cat to hide and sleep. Another idea is to put one near the windows because cats love watching things outside like birds.

B. Clawing & Scratching: Providing your cat with a good scratching post with the material it likes is the best way to make it happy and avoid developing stress. Also, it is preferable to put it near where your cat sleep, cats usually like to scratch when they wake up. However, you can put it near the doors of your house so your cat can rub on them and mark their scent and whereby mark their territory.

C. Hunting: Cats are predators in nature. So, as a cat owner, you must provide them with different ways to make them feel like real hunters and stimulate this nature in them. One of these ways is to provide them with a variety of toys which are suitable for this matter.

D. Hiding: Hiding is a cat thing, and they love it. Cats love to hide in different places where they feel secure or to sleep or both! Providing them with something suitable for both would be an excellent thing for your cat! That’s why, if you give them just an empty box and place a few of them around the house, they will be less likely to be stressed and much happier.

5. Medications & Special Pheromones

In some cases, whatever you do for your cat, they will fail, and your cat would end up stressed out. In such rare cases, there are other ways to give your cat some extra help. However, you might end up giving your cat some particular medicine to get rid of this stress from your veterinarian. 

These ways may include:

• Specific Pheromones: This product is a humanmade version of cat pheromones, which is available as a product called Feliway. The product proved to help cats to stay calm and reassuring.
• Nutraceuticals: Another product comes as a supplement that acts as a medication. The idea of this product is to give it to your cat, which starts to work the same as the drug diazepam, and it helps cats to calm down and get rid of the stress.
• Medicine: The last option is to take your cat to your veterinarian to check your cat to exclude other causes your cat may have. After making sure no other diseases are causing these problems, your veterinarian may prescribe some antidepression for cats.

So finally, I hope you found this article useful and informative. Let me know your answer down below. What do you think about these Tips To Relieve Stress In A Cat? Do you have more information or tips about stress in a cat or how to avoid them? Write them down below.

If you have any other questions or different opinions about it, leave a comment below.

Today’s Quote:

“When Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time!” — Seanan McGuire

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