Same. We adopted a boy in August that is the most chill, patient, and friendly cat I’ve ever shared a house with. I mean, I’ve had friendly cats before, but they’re usually still pretty aloof. This boy just always wants to be where the people are, soaking up attention like a sponge. He is the stark opposite of his big sister, who will flee at the slightest unexpected noise or movement and has been known to claw and bite people who try to pet her without an explicit invitation.

Inpurrvention?

Our cat would get so stressed when I tried to put her in a carrier that she would attack me. I still have a scar on my left arm where she bit me hard enough to sink her canine teeth all the way in. I had to cancel the vet appointment that day because I was bleeding profusely and the cat was hiding somewhere in the house.

After that I bought a soft carrier, too. Mine is called “Cat in the Bag” or something like that. It’s literally a canvas sack with a zipper, a carry strap, and a head hole with velcro adjustment. I just pop it over her head, adjust it to fit, then zip her up. She’s contained but her head is out and she can look around freely. She still doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t freak out and go into fight mode.

A lot of times they will mount them to the wall if the unit is small enough. It’s cheaper and the refrigerant line run is shorter. But for larger units it’s common practice to mount them on a concrete pad on the ground. In this case, someone probably just didn’t want to spring for the wall mounting hardware, so they put it on a couple cinder blocks. It’s not ideal, but it doesn’t really hurt anything.

I’m not sure why you think that would be an issue. Mounting the exterior compressor close to the ground is common practice for ease of maintenance. Getting it wet isn’t really a problem. I’m not really sure why we’re having HVAC install discussions in a cat forum though :P

You do you. But just so you know, cats that are allowed to free range outside have a life expectancy, on average, about 1/3rd that of an indoor-only cat. Killing and eating wildlife is one of the reasons.

I think the main danger with raw meat is harmful bacteria (salmonela, listeria, e coli, etc). Basically the same things that make people sick if they’re present and we don’t cook the meat properly. They aren’t always present, but it’s kind of a gamble to keep feeding a cat raw meat.

I wouldn’t assume that. Some cats just develop fears for no obvious reason. Our 7 year old female cat flees at any sudden noise or movement. She runs and hides any time we have visitors. My sister in law has come to pet sit for her several times but she hisses at her if she tries to get too close. We adopted her as a kitten from a friend who had taken in a pregnant stray. She has never been mistreated or experienced any sort of trauma and was actually pretty normal as a kitten. These behaviors didn’t start manifesting until she was about a year old. As far as we can tell she just has anxiety issues.

My experience trying it with 4 different cats for different issues is that Feliway rarely has any effect. YMMV, but the research on the subject seems to indicate that it’s mostly useless (unless the research is funded by the company that produces Feliway): https://whatyourcatwants.com/feliway

How feisty? You can search Amazon for “cat handling gloves” and find something that’s probably fine for a cat that just gets a little carried away while playing. A lot of them are basically just welding gloves. Some are modified with a little extra material in common bite zones. We have a long haired cat that absolutely hates being groomed. When handled too much she goes into full Pinky mode wherein she will dig in her claws and bite hard enough to cause permanent scarring (I know from experience). Unfortunately she needs regular grooming or she develops terrible matting. So I invested in a set of these: https://armorhandglove.com/

They weren’t cheap, but with those, she can bite as hard as she wants and I barely feel it.