Why your cat's body reacts when your schedule changes

Why your cat's body reacts when your schedule changes

Ask what changed in your week, and then ask how you started to feel about it, because those are usually two different dates.

I did a reading recently with a woman whose cat is sixteen. He'd started licking himself raw in patches. He was going outside the litter box, sometimes normal, sometimes not. His digestion had gone unreliable. She'd been to the vet more times than she could count, run every test, done the parasite treatment, the probiotics, the psyllium husk, moved him onto a single protein because it seemed to settle things. It settled things for a while. Then it stopped settling things.

Everything looked fine on paper. That's usually when I get the call.

The date you're looking for probably isn't the date you think

I asked her the question I always ask. Things got worse a couple of months ago. What changed?

Nothing, she said. Then, almost immediately, oh. Well. She'd changed her work schedule. But that was back in February, months before any of this.

There it is.

Her schedule changing in February wasn't the thing. What happened in the months after February was that she stopped being okay about it. She'd thought the new hours would give her flexibility. Instead she was gone fourteen hours at a stretch, twice a week, and she'd arrived at the realization that she doesn't want to be doing this work at all any more. That's a different feeling, and it arrived on its own timeline.

So when you're hunting for the week it all started, you may find nothing there. Look further back for the change, and then look at when your feelings about that change turned.

And listen to the words you use. When I asked her about her week, she said, my schedule is all over the place. Not, my hours vary. All over the place. You can feel that sentence when you say it out loud. So can he.

What the over grooming might be pointing at

Here is where it gets specific, and this is the part I'd want you to sit with.

The licking, the chewing at the paws, the same patch worked over and over. That's a loop. And the human version of that loop is the planning, the what if, the running of scenarios, the should have said it differently, the is this the right course to take, the how am I going to get out of this job.

She named herself a spiraler before I could. And on the days she'd been spinning hardest, the licking was worst.

So the practice is small. When you catch him at it on the end of the couch, going and going at the same spot, stop and ask what you've been going and going at. Then do something about your half of it. Breathe. Walk. Go to the class. Whatever actually brings you down.

There's a second thing hiding in that, and it's the bit I love.

Grooming is self care. It's the only self care he has, and he does it every single day without fail.

Now go and find yours in the calendar. If you can't put a finger on it, it isn't scheduled. Self care is the one thing most of us never schedule, and it's the first thing that should go in.

The litter box is asking for your attention, right now

Going outside the box, in a cat who knows perfectly well where the box is, is deliberate. And whatever else it means, notice what it does to your day. Nothing pulls you out of your own head faster than having to deal with a mess on the floor. You cannot plan, ruminate or strategize while you're on your knees with paper towel.

When it happens in the same spot every time, that often reads as territory. Boundaries, space, this is mine. When it moves around the house, as it did here, that reads differently. That reads as scattered. Different worry every day, on a different topic, in a different room.

I asked her whether she was hard on herself. Yes, she said, and sometimes on other people.

Years ago I worked with a woman whose cat was doing something similar. She was an artist. She'd put her work online, got criticism, took it personally, and stopped making anything at all. She'd spent months tearing herself down over it. Once she stopped doing that, the cat stopped almost immediately. Message received, message no longer needed.

Give the week a shape

None of this is your fault, and I want to be plain about that. He might well have a sensitive gut regardless. Some cats do. But when a system that's already reactive is running hot, the reactions get bigger. Cortisol suppresses the immune response and raises inflammation. You already know that if you've worked in health care. It applies to him too.

So here's the practical part.

There are days in your week you can't move. The shift is the shift. Everything else is yours, and right now you're jamming things into whatever gaps appear. That jamming is what's costing you.

Pick your anchors and put them in first. The Pilates class you like at ten on a Monday goes into the calendar before a single client can take that slot. Your slow morning with the coffee and the mug you actually like goes in as a real appointment. Client sessions get set windows instead of wherever they land. You'll still make exceptions, and some weeks it will fall apart. It'll still change how the week feels, and he'll feel that change before you do.

I did this for my own week at the start of the year. Specific blocks, specific days, one early morning, one late evening for the other side of the world. I noticed the difference in myself quickly.

Tell him what's going on

Last thing, and it's free.

Assume he understands every word. Then talk to him properly. Not a schedule announcement. The real thing.

I have to go and I'm not a fan of where I'm going. I'm doing this so I can keep the lights on here, and I'm working on not doing it forever. I'll probably come home flat.

When you name a feeling out loud, two things happen. You work it out a little just by saying it, and your field shifts as you do. He was never listening to the English. He's watching the field.

And when he tells you something, thank him for it. Thank you for letting me know the temperature was rising. Once he knows the message landed, he can stop sending it. Keep ignoring it and he'll say it louder, because that's what any of us do.

When you're ready

If you want to keep working on this with company rather than on your own, that's what The Sofa is. We meet Wednesdays at four, and every second week is a teaching session on whatever the room is wrestling with, with a recorded hypnosis session on that same topic the week after. Everything is recorded, and plenty of members only ever watch the replays.

One of the things we've been working on lately is assuming competence. One member sat down with her reactive little dog, the one nobody could get near, and simply started talking to her about her teeth. Explaining why she needed to look. Now she checks that mouth with the flashlight on her phone.

You can try it for a month and see how it sits.