Avoiding Holiday Stress… in Cats

This post brought to you by Comfort Zone® products. All opinions are 100% mine.

Face it, the Holidays can be a stressful time for all of us. We wouldn’t enjoy watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation so much if it weren’t so damn true. Now just imagine how stressful it must be for Aunt Bethany’s cat?

You set up a tree in the house, and hang toys from it, and then you yell at the cat for playing with them. You wrap packages with pretty bows, and then you yell at the cat for eating them. If that weren’t bad enough, Cousin Eddie and his dog “Snot” burst into the house uninvited. To top it off you attempt to put a Santa hat on the cat and take a photo so you can turn it into a LOLCat.

Yeah, it’s no wonder cats urinate all over the house and scratch the furniture. It turns out though that this behavior is largely from stress due to environmental changes. I experienced it with my own cat when we moved to a new house, and purchased a bunch of new furniture. It was at that time, that I was first introduced to Comfort Zone® with Feliway®. Comfort Zone® products help reduce stress-related behavior in cats by mimicking their natural pheromones that help them feel calm and comfortable in their environment.

It comes in either a plugin diffuser, or small spray bottle. The Comfort Zone® with Feliway® Diffuser continuously releases an odorless vapor that mimics the soothing feline facial pheromone. We just plugged it in where our cat spent most of his time, and it really helped to keep him calm so he’d stop ruining our furniture. I still don’t recommend forcing him to wear the Santa hat, but these plugins will really help with other holiday related stress your cat endures. For you, I just recommend Whiskey. Check out their Facebook page for more information, including the version they have for dogs.