Been reading a lot here lately, and one thing I thought I'd pass
along.

My brother brought a beautiful siamese home from Italy. The poor kitty
vanished when his plane landed, and for a week we thought it was gone.
He was very sad.

I got a call from a gal with a thick Texas accent who asked "Did y'all
lose a kitty-cat?" with meowing in the background. Little cat had been
riding in an airplane belly for a week!

The cat (serendipitously named "Terror") was nice, but soon became
very hostile. The first time my future wife met him she went to pet
him, and we all shouted out "be careful!" and he attacked her. He
would routinely escape the house, and my technique for retrieving him
would be to stick my hand under the car he was hiding under till he
attached himself to the hand, and claws embedded, I'd haul him back to
the house like a little cat-glove.

My brother moved out, to a place that didn't allow cats, and my folks
kept the cat, who became more and more aggressive. Finally my mother'd
had enough, and asked my brother to take Terror away to be euthanized.

He arrived sadly at the house, and my mom went upstairs to get the
cat. There he lay, dead on her bed.

Shocked, and a little guilty, my brother had Terror's corpse sent to
the University veterinary clinic for an autopsy.

It turns out that he had lead poisoning, and that was making him
insane. We don't know how he came across the lead, perhaps in Sicily,
perhaps in the basement, but it was the obvious explanation for his
bad temperment.

So, for those with unreasonable animals, don't rule out poisoning of
some sort.. especially for cats who go outside.

BLink