Hi all!

I'm a 28 year old mommy of two cats (DSH, 2 years and 11 months), one 14 month old GSH/Rottie puppy, 5 squirrel babies and 1 chipmunk baby (getting them ready for release into the wild) and most importantly, three human babies (James 7/yo, Julia 5 y/o and Josie 3 y/o) (and I have a home daycare to boot)... it's a CRAZY house with LOTS of love!

I'm here looking for some advice about my cats, in particular my cat Peter who is, I'm pretty sure, clinically insane. :devil

Here's a couple posts from my old blog on Peter. Peter the cat-dog. | creatinglittlemonsters
The Ugly Cry | creatinglittlemonsters

Peter is... special. He`s always been... different. My daughter is his best friend. When he was a kitten he would hide behind walls and ambush us, fly out of no where to climb up our bodies and pounce off. Our kitty care-takers were TERRIFIED of him whenever we went on vacation... he was PSYCHO! Julia never gave up on him... despite his craziness. She would get scratched but instantly forgive him. He would allow her to abuse him in all sorts of ways when he`d hardly let anyone else touch him. (see photos on blog... sigh).

Anyway, he`s an adult now and his insane kitten stage was over long ago... but he`s still MUCH more active and MUCH more curious and MUCH more completely insane than any other cat in the known world. This I swear.

When he was 14 months old he got caught in a rabbit snare... my suspicion is some a-hole must have set one in town for gopher or a groundhog and since Peter is a huge fan of groundhog hole diving/exploring, he got snared. (see pictures in blog post #2 for pictures of his injury. Half a grand and many months recovery later, Peter is healed up...

I hate that he is an outdoor cat. I truly hate it. As much as I LOVE that he's got the most incredibly VIRILE personality, I can't stand being such a nervous wreck about him all the time. His "territory" is several blocks away from us (he is neutered but sure doesn't act like it!) and I'm pretty sure he has other "families" he visits who feed him. He's so social and curious and he just adopts everyone. He follows us everywhere, including downtown and very dangerous places. If I'm walking somewhere and he meets up with us, I have to catch him and walk him back to the house because he would follow us to ****, if that's where we were going.

Also, he's a major predator and I have a stash of dead animals he's bringing home. I rehabilitate wild animals for goodness sake! He's breaking my heart.

Keeping him inside seems to be an impossible task. He's a master of ambushing and rushes the door as soon as it opens. You can't catch him if he doesn't want you to. He can climb up and down a thirty foot tree in ten seconds. Not to mention the kids are in and out of our backyard constantly and occasionally aren't too quick with shutting to door. Also, he starts to get really ornery and grumpy when he's inside too long. Starts spraying things, and generally starts acting like a wild animal.

I love him so so so much. I've tossed around the idea of giving him up, but I don't think I can or could ever. My kids would be so heartbroken. I would be heartbroken. Despite that, I want what's best for him. You should have seen me bawling when he came home with his injury. There were times I thought he might not make it through, and there was just no consoling me.

I do need help with him though... or some people to commiserate with. Or something.