Original subtitles

Sina will have breakout attacks.

My son Chris doesn't understand what's going on. He's afraid to be in his own

room because there's a cat growling under his bed.

Gigi was very affectionate, but when we introduced the kittens, he's basically

had a complete personal alter change.

Gigi's attacks are normally focused on Princess Fuki, but there's collateral

damage as well.

I'm Jackson

Galaxy. I'm a musician

by night and a cat behaviorist by day.

I've met cats with all kinds of problems.

But I've never met one I couldn't help.

Oh, hello. In my career, I've worked with thousands of cats one -on -one,

analyzing their behaviors and retraining them and their guardians.

When relationships are at an end, I don't have many more options than to

leave. And cat guardians have reached their emotional limit. Just get rid of

her. I'm their last hope.

Are you all right?

Sorry, I don't know. Cats have nine lives, but humans?

Only have one.

Whoa!

Ow! Ow!

I'm heading over to Jen's house and her five -year -old son, Chris, and their

cat, Zena.

Xena's been acting out unpredictably, seemingly unprovoked, and with a lot of

violence.

I'm looking at footage right now. It's basically cat versus child, and you know

that's never going to end well. I'm going to get over there right now and

I can help out.

I'm Jen. I live here with my parents.

and my son Chris, who's five years old, and Xena, my one -year -old cat.

I got Xena when she was just three weeks old. Xena was very playful, very

energetic, and my son Chris fell in love with him.

For the last few months, Xena goes through sporadic

freakouts. Be nice.

And then she'll start tearing through the house.

screaming and hissing.

My dad teaches vocal lessons out of his office in the house.

You need to go now.

Zeno will have one of her freak -out attacks.

She'll latch herself onto his chair or under his bed.

Really?

My dad is so frustrated with the cat that he's ready to see her go.

You have to be able to work in here.

If this behavior isn't stopped in some way, the cat can no longer be in the

house.

And the end of that story is obvious, which Jeff's response then is, fine,

you explain to my son why that cat has to die.

Are you scared having her under your bed, baby? Yeah.

Chris doesn't understand what's going on. There's been times that he's tried

play with Xena, and she just lashes out. She's scratched him already.

He's afraid to be in his own room because there's a cat growling under his

Are you scared of her?

Okay, what do you want to have happen to Zena?

I want her to feel better.

Yeah?

Jackson, please help us. I know that something is going on with Zena, and

the only one that I know that might be able to help.

How are you? Good. I'm Jen. Jen, I'm Jackson. Come on in. As soon as Jackson

walked in the door, I was like, oh, my gosh, it's him. He's here.

How's the day going?

So far, so good.

Zena's been locked in the bathroom most of the day.

Oh.

Yeah. So what's going on with Zena?

She kind of goes into these episodes where her ears go back and she starts

growling and hissing and scratches at me.

Ow! Ow!

The only way that I can ever get her out of those episodes.

is if I literally go in the back, take a towel, burrito her in the towel, and

hold her like a stinking baby.

How long has it been going on since you just started doing this?

It's been about four months.

She had gotten out. You said that she got out? So she didn't normally go out?

No, no. Right after that was when she had her first incident. She was in the

backyard, and my son came running into the house screaming, going, Mom, Xena's

freaking out. And she was running in circles around the house.

screaming. And so I took her straight to the vet and they ran a bunch of tests.

They can't figure out anything.

She's still freaking out like that? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, Jen's giving me bits and pieces of very specific information, but

of it is lining up for me at all. And I feel like this is a road I've never been

down before. I'm glad that Chris was out there.

Because Chris is going to be our main link to that information.

Right. Mind if I go say hi? Go for it. All right, I'll be back.

I figured the only way I could get information that did make sense was to

to the only witness to the crime, and that was her five -year -old son, Chris.

Is Zena your buddy?

Yes, but sometimes she hisses and squashes.

Zena did that?

Yeah. Okay, so you're out there with her and your dog, and you were playing.

And then she flipped out and...

It was like running around hissing all the time. Did that scare you?

Yes. Yeah, that scared me too.

Well, you know what?

Me and you, we're going to go out there, and we're going to try to figure out

what happened to her. Come on, let's go, man.

So it's raining, and it's raining hard.

Chris and I grabbed our umbrellas to recreate exactly what happened so we can

figure out where we're going.

Where was Zena when she started hissing? Let's do it together. Go.

All right. So we got these circles. Okay, we're going in circles like that.

Okay, cool.

Pretend she's right here, okay? And she's running around in circles.

Yep. Now, what did her ears look like?

They were like... Here, I'll hold this for you. They were like, they were

backwards. Backwards, good. Now, tell me about her eyes. What were her eyes

doing? They were like this.

Yeah. Tell me about the noise she was making. What noise?

Like that, right? So Chris and I are out there doing our detective bit. We are

running around in circles in the pouring rain, and he finally drops it on me.

Where were you with Gina?

Gina was, like, right over here.

And when I petted her, then I petted Zina.

Ah, wait a minute. Now, you were petting Gina.

Then you said, I want to pet Zina, right?

Yes. Okay, so you came right over here.

I pet Zena and then you started it.

That's when it started.

That one piece of information, he turned around to play with his cat. Now

remember, this is the first time that Zena had ever been in the backyard.

She's exploring in a very tentative way. He goes to pet her. She probably didn't

see him coming. Maybe there was a loud bang from a school bus or a delivery

truck. Bang! She goes crazy. And from that moment on, her life changed.

All right.

Wow. That was incredibly good.

Scooby -Doo work. Another high five, please.

That was a high five. Let's go find your mommy, okay? The next place I wanted to

see was where the family drama's been playing out the most, which is her dad's

music studio.

He has vocal lessons in here.

All right, now here she comes.

She's going into her little area here.

If you could just go under and just try to get a pet for me. Sure.

Show me how you approach her when she's in this spot and your dad wants her out.

Okay. Let's see what happens.

Yeah, there it is.

Yeah. Hey, baby doll.

One more time.

It's okay.

You're okay, Levi.

You're okay.

Chris is scared now.

I got to see the burrito technique, okay? Okay.

So the burrito technique is something you use to comfort her. Yep.

Burritoing is taking an animal and swaddling them tightly to calm them

Is this what you do?

Yep. I try to sneak up behind her because obviously when she sees it, she

Seeing Jen go through this with Zena is really hard to watch, but I know that

this is information that is absolutely invaluable because this cat's going to

tell us, I can go here, and once I go past here, the world turns red.

Oh, she got you. Oh, yeah.

Once a week, this is what you wind up doing. Yeah.

Where do we have her now? She ran to the front. I just saw her.

Now this, now what she's doing now.

Yeah. This is what you call the fit.

Uh -huh.

Xena is now fully running all over the room. She goes into this place where it

was like she was seeing ghosts. She was hearing voices. And then she scooted up

her little staircase.

And that's when it hit me. And I figured out what it was.

Come on now.

Dina is fully out there. I asked Jen to go and try to burrito her. And that's

where things went horribly wrong.

And that's when it hit me.

This was post -traumatic stress disorder. Oh, good girl.

Okay, so now she peed on you.

Mm -hmm.

This level of hyper -reactivity, of disassociation, of reliving that, what I

call this feedback loop of trauma, it was all right there.

All right, let her go, let her go, let her go. It was time now to go sort of

decompress. Both of us were pretty shook up at this point.

I'm really sorry that I had to take her there, but the information we just got

was pretty priceless.

Okay. To me, it's clear cut that this cat is suffering from PTSD.

She's clearly in moments of suffering.

Your son was just killer. We were out there, and he told me he turned to play

with Xena.

That's when she flipped out.

So just simply trying to pet her could have caused all this? It's not just

trying to pet her. At the same time, a delivery truck could have driven by and

gone, bang!

This motion now becomes, for her, a predictor of bad things to come.

The wild card X factor here is I don't think she can see.

There was something really wrong with her eyes.

Cats have what's called a nicotating membrane or a third eyelid. That

comes across their eyeballs to basically protect them against things like dust.

But if they're thick, it also comes halfway across to let you know that

something's not right.

I'd like you to see a specialist and figure that out. Good? Great.

All right. Let me give you some homework now. The first thing that we're going

to start doing is introduce her again to the backyard.

I want her to do prolonged exposure therapy.

That means expose her to the things that scare her, the sounds of the backyard

and the smells of the backyard. Find that challenge line and start expanding

slowly until she can deal with it again. We want to get a big piece of sod for

her to smell. Close to the door, actually. And then every day with that

we expose her to the smell as well.

Okay. I'm psyched. Great. Me too. Good. Good. I'm going to get out of here. Hey,

Chris. You want to say goodbye?

Goodbye, Dustin.

Goodbye, man. Give me a high five.

That's right, man.

I'll see you soon, okay?

Bye. All right, bye.

I'm going in right now to see Jen and Chris and Zena the cat. Now, since the

last time I was here, Zena was sent to the ophthalmologist. Just like I

suspected, the results proved to be a game changer.

I honestly don't know what to expect when I go in here this time. Hey, come

in. Whether things are settling in or just getting worse. So, a little crazy?

Way crazy.

So you went to the specialist that I recommended to you. Let's take a look at

the video homework.

Hey, sweetie pie.

We cannot see through the recording. They're cloudy.

There's lesions on the retina as well.

The ophthalmologist confirmed that it's cataracts.

The last time I was here, I found out I had my first PTSD case.

Now, I've got a cat who's blind and has PTSD on top of that. The challenge is

enormous. She might have how much of sight? 10 % maybe?

I'm down on the ground like this. I'm not above her.

So with the limited sight, this is still going to be okay.

So now we have to do eye drop.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

All right.

Incredibly positive.

Yay. I don't see that level of fear and shrinking back.

That's fantastic.

I saw a lot of Chris footage and everything. I didn't see a lot of you in

Yeah, a lot of it is it's the new job. Pretty much the only time that I get to

spend with Xena is when I'm here to give her her eye drops.

The only time she's around her cat is when she's giving her medication.

Bad association.

We got to change that.

It's going to have to be something that's just not horrible.

Every time it happens. My wheelhouse with giving cats eye drops is waiting

they're just sitting there sleeping and you announce yourself.

Remember, with Xena, you always announce yourself verbally.

Right. You come down to her level. Hey, baby, how you doing?

And then, boink.

Okay? Now, the next thing I want to do is take a look around. Okay.

Office being right there. All right. Great place to start. Let's go. Sure.

Xena is basically blind.

but she does suffer from post -traumatic stress because of that blindness.

Taking a look around this environment was crucial.

The whole world has to change.

I remember how contentious it was with your dad and Xena. How's that going?

It's a lot better now that my dad understands that she's in pain.

You know, he's had eye problems all of his life, and, I mean, he still has eye

drops that he has to take. Your dad has to take eye drops every day. So he gets

it. That's wonderful.

Let's keep moving. All right.

Since this family has gotten the news that they've got basically a blind cat,

their attitude has completely changed. I've got the graph that you said to do.

And she can sit right in front of the door, smell, sight, sound. Great. The

time I was here, I had Jen institute what's called prolonged exposure therapy

for the PTSD.

I wanted her to take the sounds of the backyard.

At the same time, I wanted her to have the smell of the grass, the feel of the

grass to re -expose Xena to the backyard. Because we're dealing with

blind cat.

It's way too dangerous. It's irresponsible to send her outside.

brilliant. All right. Jen, you want to call for Chris?

I really wanted to go check in with Chris. Come over here, man. When you're

dealing with a cat that's suddenly gone blind, you have to now cater even more

to the other senses.

We've got to start playing with toys that maybe she can hear them coming, but

you've got to teach everybody in this house. You're the cat teacher in this

house. So you hold on for one second, because I've got something for you,

All right.

I want to see Chris taking the lead. He's the cat daddy now. I want to give

something so he remembers who he is, that he is the cat teacher in this

You ready?

And now it's time for a kitty bit.

Cats can hear up to 1 .6 octaves above the range of humans and one octave

than dogs.

True or false?

The answer after the break.

True or false? Cats can hear up to 1 .6 octaves above the range of humans and

one octave higher than dogs.

The answer is true.

I got something for you, okay? All right.

I want to see Chris taking the lead. He is the cat teacher in this house.

I got a little something for you, buddy.

I got Chris's own cat daddy guitar case, which it was just so much fun to bring

it in for him. You are now the cat daddy in this house.

Okay, so let me show you what we got going on in here. I got toys for her

make sound.

There's one. Now watch this.

Oh, you see? See how she hears it? What are you doing, baby?

Now she's a nut.

You got crinkle balls in here?

We know she loves crinkle balls. Look at this thing.

Chris immediately started interacting with Xena. He did remind me of the way I

was when I discovered the cats and I got along.

You are the cat teacher in the house.

It was really one of those cool moments, you know, because he is the next

generation of...

Cat guardian.

So you promise me you're going to be a teacher?

I promise.

Rock on, Chris.

We're coming around the home turn here, so I don't want to see one more attack

or freak out in those two weeks because it's important for Chris to have that

stability of knowledge that this is normal, not what we saw before. This is

normal. Great seeing you again, and we'll see you in a few weeks. All right.

Sure, Chris feels better about Zena. Her mom and her dad feel better about Zena.

But the action plan rests with Jen. This is not a done deal. Bye.

I'm going in for my last visit with Jen and her son Chris and her cat Zena.

Now, this cat is pretty well blind, which changed our action plan

Remember, we were just dealing with... Post -traumatic stress disorder, which

was a tall order to begin with.

Hey, come on in.

Anything's possible. I don't know what to expect walking in. Very nice.

How is it? How's things going?

Fizzy, but it's good. Yeah, well, of course.

Sitting down with Jen was pretty immediate right away that she was just

eat. You had your follow -up with the vet?

Yeah, she said that she is doing better. Unfortunately, we can't get the

lubricant gel into her eyes yet.

But she still saw improvement.

In her vision? In her vision. Get out of here.

Yay. Amazing.

Yay.

Man, let me tell you something. This eyedrop situation is a challenge for the

best cat wrangler. So far, she's in a happy, sleepy mode.

And Jen's been having a whale of a time with it. Good girl.

But still getting the job done. Well, we got one eye.

And that deserves a lot of praise.

Hey, Dad.

Hey. We ran into Jen's dad, Mike, and I had an opportunity to ask him how things

were going in his point of view. He lives on eye drops now, and I can

with that. I had a ton of eye problems and had to do eye drops. I get that.

What about the way she is or isn't sharing space with you in your office?

Things have chilled quite a bit.

Yeah, if he's there, he kind of kicks it under the desk.

Chilling, breathing, we're fine.

I'm really thankful that Jackson got involved.

There's not really a price you can put on kids having a cool pet.

Jackson has given his family a big gift.

I'm just a little sleepy.

The first time I had come to this home, I believed squarely.

that I didn't think that Xena was a safe cat to be around a five -year -old

child. You're going fishing for Xena. There you go, man.

But from what I've seen, Xena is a more accepting cat. Nice going, dude.

Now that we've met with Jackson, she's not hiding under bed. She doesn't

automatically get into defense mode, and she doesn't cause contention in my dad.

She plays when she's supposed to play.

I don't know that I could ask for anything more.

You've got to understand, from where I come from, from the shelter world,

gave up their cats for far less reason.

Not only are you saving this cat's life, and you know you've done that, but

you're teaching that kid.

He's going to be the reason why we don't kill cats.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm so grateful that I get to see Chris and be best friends.

Thank you.

Oh, you rock, man.

You're amazing.

I thought it would be nice to get another rescue.

And Nick was reluctant.

I was against the idea because I thought Gigi would react badly.

At this point, shall I say I told you so?

I'm going over to see Nick and Julie and their cat Gigi. Hello Gigi.

Hello Suki.

Who is terrorizing their new kitten.

They're afraid that Gigi being the size she is, she's just going to kill this

poor little kitten.

So I'm going over there right now to make sure that that doesn't happen.

I'm Julie.

I'm Nick.

And we've been together for four and a half years.

We're both journalists in the UK and we were on an assignment in Paris when we

actually started to get to know each other. And we got together a few weeks

later. Say hello, Gigi.

I don't think you should talk over the video.

Gigi's an American short hair. She's a rescue.

We got her just over two years ago and I thought it would be nice to get another

rescue. And Nick was reluctant.

I was against the idea because I thought Gigi would react badly.

And we were told that she'd been bullied by the other cat at the centre where

she was. But I was persuaded to get this very cute kitten.

And I don't think it was necessarily a good idea.

In hindsight, yes.

So before we got the kitten, Gigi was very affectionate. But when we

the kitten, she basically had a complete personality change.

Gigi's attacks are normally focused on Princess Suki, but there's collateral

damage as well.

You can probably see, actually, my lip and the side of my mouth is all cut

up and bruised.

And Gigi did that in the middle of the night last night.

In my opinion, Princess Suki, if this doesn't work out, has to go.

Hi, Jackson.

How are you? Very well. How are you doing?

I am. How are you, Nick?

Okay.

I'm glad I could be here for you. You must be Julie. Hi, nice to meet you.

to meet you.

Oh, guys.

Nice place you got here.

Thank you. And nice cat.

This is Gigi.

Gigi.

She's the troublemaker.

What's the trouble? So we've had Gigi for just over two years. Okay. She's a

rescue cat.

And Gigi, we just...

I met a woman on the street who had some kittens and we said we would foster one

and she was going to pick any one and she's been probably a bit spoiled by us.

She's the centre of our household.

She's a very affectionate cat so we thought she would take well to a kitten

she hasn't.

Some of the attacks have been so vicious that I was starting to get concerned

that she was actually trying to kill the kitten. I don't know whether that is

even a possibility.

Yeah.

Do I think that Gigi could kill Princess Tuki? Of course I do. It's a no

-brainer.

This is a cat with a history of fighting off other cats in order to survive

against a kitten who knows nothing. She hasn't learned anything.

She's going to lose, and she's going to lose badly.

And so you've moved on past the point where you realize that it really had

nothing to do with Gigi, that it was really, you wanted a kitten.

No, that's not the case.

She was a cat who was terrorized by other cats.

And you said that regardless, I think she wants a kitten.

I thought...

Given time, that's Gigi would like the company.

I thought it would be nice. You have to know that this cat specifically... At

this point, shall I say I told you so?

No, I'm not. All I'm saying is it's more important for you to get past that. The

reason I'm doing this is because your expectations have to be realistic.

Your expectations have to be that no one's going to get killed.

These guys aren't going to wind up on the bed together, grooming one another,

and being like, you're my buddy.

Have you ever seen a situation where the cats don't get on and then get along

fine? Well, to me, get along fine is, I'm not going to kill you. Or we can

a space.

This has got to stop. We've either got to do something drastic to solve this,

Princess Siki needs to go.

She needs to go. Now?

Now. Oh. I mean, I want to give it more time. I don't want to rush to hand her

back. If I think that she's miserable, I'm going to agree with you and say

and we're going to have to think about finding her a new home. I didn't think

was that serious.

I want to take a look around.

Okay. That one, it couldn't be resolved, and two, that we had to act straight

away to remove the kitten.

Yeah.

Gigi, who used to sleep on the bed, Gigi spends most of the time, day and night,

in the living area.

She has the room of all this area.

And Sookie is predominantly in the bedroom all day and all night.

This poor kitten never leaves the bedroom.

She should be exploring, asserting herself, and Gigi never gets in the

which is a really important place. That's something we have to put an end

As we started to go through the house, I want to establish the anti -treasure

map. Every step we take, wherever you say a fight has occurred, we're going to

imaginarily put an X on the ground.

Where in here are the X's where she would get beat up?

Okay, well, X.

We go X.

X right here.

Were these X spots that we defined as we went along where all the fights

happened? The couch, the floor by the couch, the bed. Were they surprised? Of

course not.

These, territorially, are the most important spots for a cat in the house.

Because they smell like the people.

This is the throne of the territory.

Queen Gigi has been displaced from the throne by this little princess. And

that's what's causing the grief.

Okay, so Princess Suki spends most of her time in the bedroom, which I don't

her. No, I suspect she's under the bed. She'll be under the bed. I get this

feeling that she was quite adventurous to start with, and she's kind of being

beaten into submission.

If you can grab her, meet us out on the couch. Poor Princess Suki is learning to

choose fear over bravery, learning to choose disappearing into this small ball

as opposed to being expansive and going out there and conquering like any

teenager should do. She's an eight -month -old kitten. This is

What I'd like you to do...

Pick her up, because you always carry her around anyway.

I'd like you to pick her up, bring her back to the couch, and sit with her.

Jackson said that we were going to put the cats together, I just thought it

wasn't going to work. There was either going to be a fight or they'd both run

off straight away. It's more than important for me to see the behavior.

If anything happens, I'm here.

All right?

Just start petting Sookie.

Just pet.

Yeah, see how that's starting to...

I was very impressed. I don't know what he had, some kind of energy or

something, but they just kind of seemed to coexist at that time, and that was

the perfect moment.

So, Nick, what I'd like you to do is take Gigi, take her off the couch. You

put her sort of in the middle of the floor there, and let's see what happens

from there, okay? And then you can just, once you've done that, you can just sit

down.

All right.

And I'm going to come in.

Hey, baby.

Oh, here we go.

You know, so I was, you know, bracing.

I was waiting for something bad to happen.

Take Gigi, take her off the couch, and let's see what happens from there, okay?

Oh, here we go.

You know, so I was, you know, bracing.

I was waiting for something bad to happen.

Stay cool.

Stay cool. We're here. Breathe. Breathe for me. Come on.

Do you see what she just did?

Sent a message, starts walking away. The overriding thing in big neon letters

that I saw today was territorial insecurity taken to new heights.

So Nick and Julie's homework this week revolves around a very simple concept,

reclaiming the throne for Queen Gigi.

Now, let me give you some homework for today.

The first thing, in terms of reestablishing the throne, The most

is that Gigi has to be in your bed.

What we're going to start doing is sight swapping, okay? And it's going to be

regimented. It's going to happen daily.

So on opposite days, this one sleeps with you. On the other day, she sleeps

you. It's that simple.

Gigi has to feel like there is a pecking order in this home, and she's on top.

So part of that is to do what I call sight swapping. Sight swapping is

cats gather information through scent.

They get to go in, smell the same things, put their mark on things. It's a

to get to know each other. So at any time, Gigi's in one room and the

in the other room. The second thing is really getting that energy, what could

play energy, out of them. They get played with every day.

Now we want to do the respecting the hierarchy.

The thing that I'd like you to start doing is cracking the door.

And I want to have feeding done on opposite sides of the door. You can use

stops. Basically, we're going to have them fed on opposite sides of the door

with door stoppers so that everybody is safe. A little bit of visual

stimulation, more scent stimulation, and a slow moving towards each other.

They're at a nice distance, and they're going to eat. But what you're going to

do is you're going to put her food down first.

You're going to say, you are the queen.

And give it a couple of beats, let her start eating. You are the princess.

She gets it second.

And finally, I want you guys to journal, journal, journal.

So that next time I'm here, we're going to know these guys so well that your

fear and your feeling of lack of power will be out the window. Okay, thank you.

Okay, fantastic.

I'm excited about the days to come. I have renewed hope that we're going to be

able to work things out and that maybe I didn't make the terrible mistake that I

feared I had when I brought her home.

I know there's a long way to go. There's going to be some hard work and there's

probably still going to be a bit of thirst lying.

Mm -hmm.

It's been a few weeks since the last time I saw Nick and Julie, Gigi and

So I went over their video homework.

I saw them starting to play, which was good, and starting to go through the

process of the feeding and the site swapping.

That was good, but what I saw that was missing was an actual adherence to the

program I put forward with play and with feeding. They were jumping ahead.

They used a screen door, which lets in all of this information.

Too much sight, too much smell, and of course the cats got too stimulated and

fights followed.

So how's it going?

Um, I don't really know what to tell you. It's kind of up and down. Okay. Day

day. There was something about Julie this time.

that just wasn't there the last time. I got to tell you, I feel you.

Like, you're just, like, radiating over here.

What's going on with you right now?

I think I felt we were going backwards a little bit.

I think I thought that... Yeah, I was ready to throw the towel in there. Yeah,

mean, I've been away for a few days, so Nick has been basically taking care of

them both, and has been at his wit's end at times, and I've called him. He's

just been, I can't cope with this.

When you don't really see a lot of...

then you just think, well, is this really working?

And is it time to get rid of one of them?

And it's the way I've felt from the start, that it just wasn't going to

I don't think there's enough improvement that both cats are happy.

What do you think specifically is upsetting you?

It's still the attack.

Nick and Julie are both journalists, which means they're, first of all, used

working on deadlines.

It's their process. Well, guess what? This isn't their process. Now, what we

need to do is get up and explore.

They have to move at the speed of cat. There is no deadline when it comes to

cat.

So, because Nick and Julie really didn't do the homework with play as well as

I'd like to have seen them do, and nor did they do the feeding exercise the way

I wanted them to do, I had to step in and do the homework with them. Now, with

cats... Everything is ritual.

So what we're going to do with her is we're going to go straight from the

and after she's caught something, then we go into the eat, right?

Good girl.

I hate speaking in generalities, but here it goes with cats.

Every cat, hunt, catch, kill, eat. You play, you move into food, they go into

grooming, then they sleep. It's a natural life cycle of a cat. Ten minutes

Like that?

That's all I'm asking. You will not see fights.

Nick and Julie did not accomplish my feeding homework the way I asked them

so it was important that I step in, take them through it exactly the way I want

to see it for the next couple of weeks.

Here's our door stops.

You just keep her interested in that.

All right, Nick, here I come.

I want you to put this door stop on your side. Don't put it down because I do

want her to, once again, respect the hierarchy here.

We're going to put Gigi's food down first, let the kitten see it, and let

start exploring her food first. So, Nick, whenever you're ready. And that

she says, that's right, I'm the queen. I get fed first, you can watch.

We've got Suki right near the door right now.

We've got Gigi completely eating.

That's what I wanted to see.

The most important thing about this is that both cats know where the other cat

is if they're making the choice for either toy or food or both.

And if you look at Gigi right now, there's none of that, you know, I'm

kill you type of thing going on. When those two cats ate near that door, it

wasn't just a game changer for the cats.

It was also a massive moment for Julie. She just reinvested. And now we can get

some work done.

Finally, the throne work here is very important.

We still have to continue this.

Success is that by the next time I come here, these guys can eat around each

other. We can open that door.

Really? By the next time? Okay. Unless you rush and you open the door and we

have an attack.

I think we realize now that things aren't going to happen quickly.

What is that?

What is that?

When we see Jackson next, we'll have to make a decision one way or the other.

And hopefully that's a good one. But if it doesn't work, then we'll have to find

another home.

Come on.

I'm going in for my final visit with Nick and Julie and Sookie and Gigi.

The last time I left them, we had made some gains, but just to get these cats

eating within six feet of one another with a cracked door was kind of major

surgery. So I'm not sure what to expect. If these guys really took their

homework to heart, maybe we'll have a breakthrough. I don't know.

I think I might actually have the answer to my question.

How are things going? How have things been since the last time I was here?

Pretty good, as you can see.

I mean, talk about a turnaround.

There's Nick and Julie and Suki and Gigi all sitting on the couch together. Look

at this.

Yeah, things have just changed dramatically in the last eight days or

you were last here.

I mean, the playing seems to have made a big difference. I think Suki has got

more confident with the playing.

They play together sometimes with the feather, which is pretty dramatic.

Tell me about how feeding has been going.

Yeah, feeding's been going okay.

Between the door and... Yeah, we did that, we did that, and then I have to

confess, on one occasion I had them in the same room together.

When I had the cats in the room together feeding, I felt a bit naughty because I

wasn't doing what Jackson told me to do. They were doing so well, and I just...

I thought it would be okay, and it was. Nick, were you there when this was

happening? No. He wouldn't have let me do it. I wouldn't have allowed it.

I would have done the same thing.

But if that's working for you, then I'd like to see it again, actually. Okay.

I wanted her to recreate it because she said it went fine.

I wanted to make sure she hadn't just gotten lucky one time.

I'm glad that you're respecting the hierarchy here.

Okay. There she goes.

Right now, you can put that bowl down right where she is. There you go.

Leave her alone. Back up a little bit.

That's it.

Yeah. Okay, good.

Okay, good. Guess what? She didn't get lucky.

It actually worked. Let's take it one step further. What I'd like you to do,

Nick, first, pretty easy for you, just to get up and move away.

Now. It's my job to push the challenge line. We have two cats sitting together

inches from one another with the humans next to them with total peace radiating

from this couch. Well, if that's the case, let's push it a little bit. I want

see this as our crowning achievement.

Now, we're just going to sit here for a minute.

We're just going to see what happens.

This is amazing.

Good girl.

It's interesting now to look back at the place where we were when we started and

then look at where we are today.

Yeah, it's been a pretty dramatic change.

I don't think we really expected to change that much. And to have them both

of sitting nearby on the sofa without any problems is totally unexpected.

All the things that Gigi was working at so hard.

In that rescue situation and in here, overowning. She doesn't feel like she

needs to do it anymore. She doesn't feel so threatened.

Huge. Yeah.

Huge. I can't imagine why we would rehome this kitten at this point. I

there's no threat. It was great to see Jackson's reaction to how we'd

progressed. And I think it would be pretty devastating now to have to get

her, especially as we've made such progress.

We brought you something from England.

Oh, really?

You got an English present?

Remind you of us. Oh, my God. When I first started with Nick and

Julie, with Gigi and with Suki, thank you so much.

I had one cat who literally just wanted to kill another.

We fast forward just a few weeks.

What we have, these two cats sitting on the couch next to one another with no

hint of violence to come.

And that makes this job pretty worthwhile. I just couldn't be happier.

couldn't get any closer without kissing.

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