Now that it's cooled off in Phoenix, we've shut off our A/C and have taken to opening the windows in our house, and leaving them open, all day (as long as we're home), and most of the night (while we're awake). While we sleep, we'll leave one or two windows open.
After we started opening the windows, we noticed one of our cats would hide under the bed in the spare room,
all day, and not even come out when treats were presented in front of him in an attempt to lure him out.
When he does brave leaving the "safety" of the spare room, he slinks through the house, body low to the floor, eyes wide, like he's expecting something to jump out and attack him. It's kind of funny to watch.
Our other cat, completely unphased by the windows being open, will sometimes walk over to the "scaredy cat" as he's slinking through the house, and sniff at him and look around. Maybe he's trying to figure out what's wrong, who knows.
When the windows are closed, the cat with the phobia will be perfectly normal. This morning as I got ready for work, he greeted me as he normally does, mewling for food, rubbing against my legs and dashing toward the kitchen at the first sign of me moving in that general direction. (that cat acts as if we never feed him, he's always so eager for food to be put in his dish.... even if it's not completely empty)
I didn't open any windows before I left, I figured I'd leave that for Josh to do since today is one of his days off.
He called me about an hour and a half after I got to work, to let me know he believes he's discovered the cause of the cat's phobia... As soon as he opened the arcadia door, the cat bolted and hid. Hmm. The only way to determine if it's just the arcadia door being open that freaks him out or if it's any window would be to open the windows first and see what he does.
We wonder if maybe some animal spooked him while the arcadia door was open one night. About the only thing that could have gotten into our yard without the gate being wide open would be a neighborhood cat. My only other theory, is that recently, at night, the coyotes have been rather active and we can hear them yipping and howling, and maybe he heard that one night and it freaked him out.
Anyway, the cat in question here is Fawkes, who is typically the more relaxed and laid back of our two cats. He's the one who goes running to the door when the doorbell rings, and when the bugman visits, he will rub against the guy's legs. Hobbes, our "spaz", runs to hide when the doorbell rings, and is overall more skittish than Fawkes. So it's rather surprising that Fawkes is the one who developed this weird phobia.
We just hope he gets over it, 'cause we're going to be opening the windows in the house until it gets too cold to do so and we have to start turning the heater on. If not, then he can just continue hiding. At least we know he's staying out of trouble that way.
That's all, folks...
