He’s a cat with a history. He’s had a tough time his entire life and it’s only just starting to get better. After three years at Gress Mountain Ranch, his health is improving and Psycho Kitty can now use his earlier bad experiences to help others.
Psycho Kitty is about five years old with long tan hair. The cat weighs twenty-seven pounds and this is one of his problems.
As a kitten, Psycho Kitty was removed from his mother too soon and taken to a frat house. Without the maternal nurturing needed by a young cat, it was inevitable that he would develop psychological problems. At the frat house, Psycho Kitty never received the socialization and attention that most cats get from their owners. Instead he was given beer constantly and in huge quantities, so much so that he developed an alcohol problem. Given Psycho Kitty’s psychological problems and the activities known to occur in many frat houses, it is highly likely that Psycho Kitty also received other addictive or psychoactive substances. This mistreatment led to physical problems. Psycho Kitty became obese and developed a distended and elongated colon. Uneven amounts of drugs under sporadic conditions led to symptoms of drug overdose and withdraw.
Psycho Kitty
By Kathleen Meyers
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Psycho Kitty’s weight and colon problem worsened, making him more uncomfortable, angry and difficult. Around the age of two, however, Psycho Kitty was finally rescued from the frat house by a student who saw the abuse, stepped in and removed the cat. Psycho Kitty next went to the student’s mother but the cat was too difficult for her to handle. His colon condition became acute and the cat was unable to eliminate on his own, making daily laxatives and purges necessary. Twelve rescue organizations or shelters refused Psycho Kitty because of his medical condition and psychological problems. Many of the shelters suggested euthanasia.
Because the student had volunteered there at one time, he brought Psycho Kitty to Gress Mountain Ranch and the cat began to mend. Now, three years later, Psycho Kitty is receiving good medical and therapeutic care. With daily treatment he can live a close-to-normal life. His anger is subsiding with the healing attention of Gress volunteers who hold him, pet him, talk to him and sooth him every day. He interacts well with the other cats, dogs and pigs and is sometimes now even friendly to humans.
Because many animals at Gress Mountain Ranch are used in therapy programs for humans, it may seen ironic that, for Psycho Kitty, it was once just the other way around. But now, visitors with psychological problems similar to Psycho Kitty’s are particularly drawn to him and can easily connect with this cat. Sometimes the first step in healing is a relationship with someone else who has been through the same difficulties that you have been through, and that “someone else” can certainly be a cat like Psycho Kitty.
