#but god do i also Suspect The Worst and wanna pop their tires and doom them to a life of stepping on legos forever. goddamn

[show-us-kaidenshenandoah]

trigger warning: i speculate on if a cat i rescued has suffered from two different tools of possible animal abuse within this post (water squirting primarily, with a bit about plastic-bags at the end). there is no graphic depiction of any event

my heart broke today, finding out someone in my cat's past probably squirted water at her 🥺

i started using a squirt-bottle to add water to the wet-food for my cat, Allegra (named after the allegery meds bc i didnt know it was a real name related to music, thank you), since it's summer and we live in southern California + most of cats' water-needs are met through their meat/wet-food, hence why many (but not all) cats who eat wet-food don't often use their water-fountains (apparently. and also my cat is one of them). i just wanted to make sure my cat isn't getting dehydrated since it's so hot and she's fully stopped taking a liking to fountains since being switched to wet-food. she's a Siamese Cat and her coloration makes it obvious that still has her winter coat on. my concern makes complete sense, like, yeah, sure, add some water to her meat, why not, can't hurt and it's a good idea

and, so far, i have ended up doing this when Allegra was nowhere around. and i just never noticed that before. so im like "just gonna use this squirt-bottle without any problems, much less any bad reactions from Allegra" in my ignorance as i fail to process the fact that my cat hasn't even realized i have been using one on her food. she's been elsewhere. every time. having no idea, probably sleeping soundly. and id just go find her and show her that her food is ready for her and now it has had extra water mixed in, and confirm she's eating it; all as i continue to not process that she missed the squirt-bottle entirely

and for additional context, my cat was a stray. i dont know for how long. but with how friendly she has always been and how scared she was of certain outdoor stimuli, i assume when i first found her that she'd been newly abandoned house-cat of a largely indoor variety rather than one of our neighborhood's regular cats (both outdoor/semi-outdoor and feral) that patrol the block or so around us, much less a socialized feral-cat. but she was approximately 2 years old when she started stalking me to demand i adopt her. so there are a number of years where i have no idea what what she was up to or experienced

and, as part of her being my first cat ever, i watched a lot of videos to research how to take care of Allegra (including "how do you pet a cat" lol i didnt want to get anything wrong!!), mostly by Jackson Galaxy. and i agree with his plea to not use squirt-bottles on cats as it just makes the cat fearful of their owner holding said squirt-bottle, rather than be scared of the bottle itself or learn from the "bad cat" action they did or whatever. i had been taught similar by past trainers with my family's dogs as such could instigate said dog to bite/attack someone to get the squirting human to stop using the bottle against them, so i was in immediate agreement that the same logic would apply to cats

so when Allegra followed me today to see if i would refill her bowl and heard me spritz a couple times into her bowl-- she RAN off and hid. and my cat p much always comes out when she's realized she is being called, she does not like me not knowing where she is nor does she like it when i completely walk past her in search for her. she always at least cries in a "Marco!"/"Polo!" fashion for me to be led to her hiding spot -- that is, if she's not already doing what more usually happens: where she is just straight up meowing "I'm here! I'm over here!" while she hurriedly trots after me to correct my having completely missed her in her said hiding spot, utterly abandoning her previous stealth. the only times she hasn't done EITHER of those things was when she first getting to know me (makes complete sense; completely grew out of that long-since by now) and when she'd hear the fire-alarm (we are working on getting her to NOT silently hide under the bed where i can't reach her when she does that). but my point is: it rarely happens these days. and, after hearing the spray-bottle, even though it wasn't pointed at her: she ran away and hid silently where i couldn't find her for like 15 minutes as i walked through every room of the house, calling her name, only to be greeted with absolute quiet 🥺🥺🥺 that's not like her at all, the poor baby

so now i know Allegra has a history with spray-bottles... in addition to my pre-existing knowledge that she is scared of a couple of other concerning things that i am HOPING are just her having not been socialized with them as a sound rather than that she was abused with them (the most worrying one of those being her fear of plastic-bags/trashbags. she bolts whenever she hears me change the trashcans' bags. but she stopped hiding as part of learning to trust me. now, she'll run into the other room at most but she won't hide in there; usually she just flinches and watches with Big Eyes to make sure i dont approach her with the bag, and then relaxes as she sees i'm just changing the trashcans, and goes back to her bathing or napping or whatever. again, it could just be a lack of being socialized leading to her fearing them and the noise they make. but it also could be abuse. ill likely never know for sure. but im happier hoping its a lack of socialization, even though i have no evidence to support that over the other option)

(plus! you add in the fact that she was clearly dumped by my house at some point in her lifespan since she has a micro-chip that, and i quote, had its information "deleted"— not "never finished putting in their info" or "accidentally erased due to some micro-chip subscription's lack of payment". but both the Animal Rescue person who scanned her chip as well as the person on the phone i called to put MY information into her said chip, aka: two very unrelated people, said her previous owners "deleted" their information. that doesn't sound great of her past owners' character. who the hell dumps a cat rather than surrender them to a shelter?)

and sure, maybe she reacted like that similarly because of a lack of socialization with a squirt-bottle. one that barely made any noise. and wasn't even pointed at her. and didnt get her wet in any way. but also? this dramatic of a reaction to a squirt-bottle?? and considering how stereotypical it is to squirt water at a misbehaving cat?

i'm a shitty fighter, but more and more as Allegra gives me sneak-peeks into her past before we met: id pay someone off of Craigslist to give her past owners' two black fucking eyes, i'll tell you what