Nope, he's still kicking... or should I say scratching and biting and
going ape bouncing off of walls? *shrugs*

Anyway, he is now almost TWICE his original size. His frame appears
HUGE to me now for some reason and he is weighs obviously more. You
can tell when he lands on you that his landings are thuds rather than
soft kitty landings.

He is still beautiful, still looks like 90% of him is one cat, while
10% of him is ring-tailed lemur or raccoon.

He comes when called, knows several words and phrases and listens all
the time when it involves food and at least half of the time when it
involves stopping what he's doing.

He is still ferocious and attacks at will, but we can keep him calm
enough. Now when I pet him, he nuzzles me keeping his mouth closed
but rubs his teeth on me. Or sometimes he opens his mouth and bites
with no pressure -- kind of like he took his teeth out of his mouth
and just rested them on me. See #3 for more information on this
note.

The other day he was in a "bounce off of everything mood" so wound up
halfway out of the door when I let the dogs out for the restroom
before I could stop him. What he did do? He looked as if he had
just been shot in the chest, totally bewildered and shocked, looked
back and forth several times before spinning in a circle twice to see
where he was, noticed the open door and me standing there giggling,
and bolted back inside. He evidently does NOT want to go back to his
stray no-home lifestyle. Who could blame him?

I am quite convinced that what CatNipped sometimes says is absolutely
true -- kittens are stupid. Gabby likes to sneak his head under the
couch sideways (so that it fits) and then try and pull it out with
his head upright (which doesn't fit). So he winds up screaming and
digging in with all his might to reverse his path -- which doesn't
work. A few times he has been lucky enough to realize he should
crawl forward putting his entire body under the couch and then
crawling out -- yep, you guessed it, by putting his head sideways out
and under the couch. I say lucky and not smart because he does not
do it on purpose in my opinion. Only as a last resort which makes
him pretty daft.

Also, we believe that we have bested his crazy "kill all" mentality
(for the most part anyway). The few things we've done differently.

1. No more playing rough (thank you CatNipped and Sheelagh (quite
possibly more)).

2. Timeouts - I think this was most fundamental in the "cooling
down" stage. The crazier he acted the longer he stayed in the kennel
in a side room. The best he got was seeing us walk past the room.
He has even gotten to the point he won't cry out immediately because
he knows we are ignoring him. After a significant timeout he calls
softly to us and we let him out. And he stays calm for some time.
(Thanks to myself for this one, and RobZip for letting me know I
wasn't being cruel in doing so.)

3. Keeping those claws trimmed - Screw the nail coverings, forget
the "teach him to not scratch stuff" method, none of those were
effective. Cutting his nails as professional as possible and filing
them have proven to be amazing! (Thanks to those who gave advice
about trimming nails, how often to do it, how to pay attention to the
location of the quick, et cetera. Sadly, my memory does not allow me
to name specifically each individual who helped. (Although a Google
Groups search could assist.))

Keeping his claws trimmed down introduced a SEVERE biting problem. I
already mentioned in another post where the spouse had to "choke"
Gabby off of one of our daughters. He was so worked up that he would
NOT let go of our daughter and did SERIOUS damage after just a few
seconds. Does she hate him? No, but it seriously damaged their
relationship. She doesn't want anything to do with him as do the
rest of our children. Which is most definitely sad.

I hope that he continues this current streak of moderately good
behavior and they can eventually calm down around him. It breaks my
heart to see him in a "mood" and the girls stand at the ready in
defensive postures blocking their faces or with arms extended ready
to swat at him if/when he jumps at them.

The only thing I know for certain is that if he does this as an adult
to one of my children again (the total number of SERIOUS attacks are
not at 8) he is going to the pound where he will be euthanized -- no
questions asked. But enough of that negative thinking -- my boy has
been behaving GREAT for almost a week!

4. NO DECLAW - This is actually part of 3. Thanks to Megan
(http://www.stopdeclaw.com), cybercat, --MIKE, and several others who
prevented me from harming my beautiful boy.

See: Message-ID:

5. Cans of pressurized air - Thanks goes to ALL who mentioned things
like shaking cans of marbles, pill bottles (that was mine), coins, et
cetera to calm a kitty down. However, it didn't work. Nor did
yelling. Nor did whistles. Nor did popping balloons. Nor did
insert about ten other methods. Finally I got the bright idea to
spray at him with canned air (NEVER at his face). One quick
"SSSSSHHHHTT!!" at his bottom or his feet and he IMMEDIATELY stops
the craziness. I refused to subscribe to the "he will become afraid
of it" mentality simply because it was not hurting him. And luckily
it worked. Considering this was a necessity to determine Gabby's
fate, to us it was a gamble that was well worth the risk.

6. Grass - I forgot who initially mentioned this, but thank you!
And a BIG thanks to --MIKE as well. Gabby was scared to death of
this stuff at first but after only ten minutes he had snatched his
first piece from the pot and was going to town.

The entire family tried eating some (we always try whatever the
animals have to eat) and none of us were impressed. I did try making
a salad out of it since it did not have the normal bitter taste of
normal grass and it turned out wonderful. I'll save that recipe for
my cookbook though. : )

7. Persistence (thank you Matt, cybercat, CatNipped, Sheelagh, and
several others that my memory simply won't allow me to name). We
were ready to believe that cats could not become socially trained
animals, especially since he was getting worse. Thanks to the above
tips amongst all of the other good advice we got here, it is
definitely a keen situation again.

I cannot stretch the truth and say there aren't times when he doesn't
push the boundaries to the VERY limit, but at least for the most part
he redeems himself. And for the times he does not, he sits in "kitty
prison" (the kennel) until he realizes the error of his ways.

For the most part, I have my loving and gentle kitten back and I
thank you all for it.

Thanks to everyone who showed patience without being an arse about it
-- CatNipped, Sheelagh, --MIKE, Matthew, cybercat (yes, I said
cybercat), mlbriggs, PawsForThought, and more I cannot remember.

**
See my next installment in a few days entitled: "Gabby did something
crazy again. We thought about killing him. Then he softened me up.
Then he did something crazy again so I almost killed him. Then he
did something nice and sweet. Then topic cut off due to length..."

** ; )

See ya'!

--
-Lost
Remove the extra words to reply by e-mail. Don't e-mail me. I am
kidding. No I am not.