The Stressed Cat Continues
Well a quick post on the cat stress theme before going out to the day job after a bank holiday weekend in the UK. I heard a very good analogy the other day about stress in cats. This is to think about the cat as a pair of scales, like the kitchen scales for weighing food ;-). Remember though each set of scales is unique as regards the various tipping pints. So if we stress the cat a little bit and tilt the scales slightly then with the correct weights we can put the cat / scales back in sync. For example short term acute stressors like going to the vets (much less at a cat only vets), going on a car journey, going to the cattery, giving a pill, can all be corrected both by the cat and often with a little bit of help from us.
However if we tilt the scales too far then it becomes very hard to find enough weights to bring them back into equilibrium. Thus the cat becomes stressed for long periods of time and we end up with chronic problems which are much more difficult to sort especially in the cat.
Remember the idea is to correct the imbalance very quickly with little weights but you have to have the knowledge to be able to know exactly when the scales are starting to tilt. Because these are cat scales this is not always obvious! The whole idea of the Cat Behavior Guide, this blog and website is to try and give you the knowledge and education so you understand your own cat scales perfectly 
A perfect example of chronic stress is the indoor cat being bullied by another cat. To humans the signs are very subtle unless you know what you are looking for. Yet to the cat this causes major stress, physiologically you get increased heart rate, increased glucose production etc yet the cat cannot run away and fighting will not stop the bullying. As the cat is unable to tilt the scales back it becomes chronically stressed and we get all the symptoms of the stressed cat in various combinations. The signs can vary from just being a bit quiet to full blown idiopathic cystitis etc. This is chronic stress.
This actually in many cases then brings on stress in the owner and the household in general. Once started this cascade of stress as I call it can be very hard to stop.
I will cover all the stress signs in subsequent posts and hope you have found this useful