Horrible Experience This Morning

I don't know where to start, as I'm not sure how this happened. My living situation is [horrible] at the moment ever since my second surgery caused me to lose my job. I'll inevitably have more, so in the hope of saving money I decided to take over my mom's house while she's on the road. She hasn't left yet, which means her two large dogs are still here..causing me to have to house my six cats in two big bedrooms.

Three older cats (2-3 years old) are in my herp/rat/invert room, three 1-year old "kittens" in my bedroom. Tilly, my bottle-fed girl, is something of a small terror in the morning so I put her in the snake room to give us a chance to sleep. That was a horrible decision.

The older cats haven't touched a thing, but Tilly single-handedly knocked over two snake bins securely situated on a rack, released my baby female ghost from its closed tub (still snap-locked when I checked it), knocked over two gallon-jugs of water, and then squeezed through the 2-inch gap under the door, and squeezed under my bedroom door to get back to me.

TL;DR - Digitalis, the baby BP, now has several shallow punctures where the cats 'played' with her. I found her right in front of the door the minute I opened it, balled up and scratched. Fortunately the scratches/bites are all superficial..I rinsed and dabbed them all with antibiotic ointment and she's very active and alert. She's otherwise perfect, no facial/eye injuries, no belly damage..but still.

I'm horrified at how destructive this cat was, just to get back to 'her' room..I feel absolutely horrible. It could have been SO much worse for the baby BP, but I'm still in shock and just need to share. :puke2::disbelief I hope that you won't judge me, I just need some support at the moment.

Oh dear! What a messy situation! I for one will not judge you for what happened. I'm so sorry that you are going through all this right now. Things just happen sometimes. I'm glad that the snake escaped with only minor injuries. Kittens and cats can be very destructive at times.

stupid kitty :colbert: it could have been a lot worse but is still sad the little snake was put in that situation. everything is a learning experience and this was just one of them for you and im betting you wont do it again. i bet the bp got a few good strikes in too.

Glad to hear she's ok. It's never a good idea to keep other animals dogs/cats unattended with your snakes. Just them being curious can lead to disaster as you experienced this morning. Live and learn. Make sure you keep an eye on her still as cats can carry bacteria on their claws from their bathroom trips.

Thank you so much, I'm still in tears for my poor little ghost, I'll take some photos after she's had a chance to calm down. This all must have happened in the span of 4 hours, since that's the only sleep I had before realizing 'This cat is not supposed to be in this room right now, how did she get in here?!'

To the quick-typers who posted as I was writing (haha): yes, it was a terrible decision, the most the other cats residing in that room have done is loose a few crickets from an open bin to play with. :/

I will most certainly be watching the baby, I know first-hand how nasty cats' mouths are from a deeply infected bite I receive from one of my feral rescues. Fortunately I was a vet assistant/animal care technician for about 6 years so I have some medical experience had it been worse. Gosh, this sucks.

Sorry to hear about that. I'm sure the ball will heal quickly.

Poor thing. You and the snake.

Pretty much all of us snake keepers have done at least one majorly dumb thing in our experience with snakes. You live and you learn.

It's a bonus you have veterinary experience, that will enable you to help fast if need be. I know you feel like dirt right now, but stay positive. The baby wasn't hurt bad, and now you know the monster kitten can't be trusted.

Gale

It could have been much worse, so be happy it wasn't! :( Many years back, when one of the cats was still young (2-3 years old), we had a pet aquatic frog. We kept it in a locked tank with a dictionary on top.

We went on vacation for three days. When we came back, the cat had pushed off the dictionary and unlocked the tank, and gotten the frog out of the tank. We found the frog in front of the screen door, bitten and scratched to hell -- and still alive. We put it back in the water but it died shortly after. :( I was only nine or ten when that happened but it was still so sad!

If your kitten can squeeze under the door, what's stopping her from doing that again to get to the snakes? Be careful. :C

Glad to hear the little guy isnt to badly hurt and recovery seems like it should be fast. We had a similar situation with our Dog and the snake mostly she just wanted to see what it was and was bumping the enclosure etc. So what we did was fill an extra spray bottle with water and any time we saw her close the dog got a quick squirt. And it worked great now she leaves the enclosure alone and is fine around the snake. Hope this help prevent this again or gives you an idea of how to prevent it.:colbert:
Robie

If the tub is still snap-locked, are you sure that the kitten released the snake? Ball pythons are strong, and can push up the sides of a latched bin if it doesn't have extra clamps on it to secure it.
I learned the hard way that they're willing to seriously damage themselves to do it, too, when a snake in quarantine forced up the side of a bin to escape, and severely skinned her nose. (She healed up fine). They will put their full strength into it, and if there is any flex in the plastic, that's a way out.

Cats. Meh. I'm glad you didn't have to learn a harder lesson with cats in your reptile/invert/etc room but that's a terrible idea whicih you obviously already know. There's a reason for reptile/invert/etc rooms and this is one of them. Thankfully there's no major damage and lesson learned before you lost an animal or worse. Keep your head up and be thankful worse didn't happen!

Kind Regards,

B

My cats get sprayed with water when they try to enter my snake room. I've done it so often, that now when they come near the room all I have to do is hiss or say get out of here - and they take off! Glad it wasn't worse than it is.

It sounds like your kitten is lucky she loosed a baby BP, instead of a hungry breeder female!

If I were you, I'd get a large crate for kitty when they need to be locked up. You could keep them locked up in the snake room, in a secure crate so they can't get to any of the snakes or anything else. Then you can turn them loose later when it's supervised time!(aka, daytime when mom is awake and not attempting to sleep with kitty tapdancing on her head)

Things happen. When the snakes are securely locked up, you don't always think that another pet will somehow free them from the outside! I just left a baby bin open last night while texting back and forth with someone and had to retrieve a baby normal ball from inside the back of the rack, and that was about 10 minutes! And that's with me constantly watching everything and double-checking everything. It just happens sometimes that we make a poor decision that seems okay at the time.

Watch for the infection. With snakes, it could look okay and just be a tiny rising under the skin. That tough stretchy skin hides infections under it really well. Good luck.

I'm sorry that you and your snake had such a bad experience.

Obviously your current housing situation is difficult. Don't waste any time blaming yourself. Things that we should have forseen but didn't happen to all of us. Your snake should be fine--these critters take much more abuse than a few cat boo boos in the wild and survive. Treat the wounds, keep a close eye on the snake until they heal, and work on figuring out a way to keep cats from bothering them again.

Sorry to hear that. I had a similar experience with my cat. Someone left my bathroom door open. When I came home from work around 11pm I saw the door was open. My crested gecko cage got knocked off the counter. Luckily for her and me the cage had latches and was unopened.

I am now a "shut the door" Nazi.

Hopefully your living situation will improve soon. Good luck!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Slashmaster

If your kitten can squeeze under the door, what's stopping her from doing that again to get to the snakes? Be careful. :C

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I'm definitely blocking the space from now on!

And thanks guys..at the moment I have no choice but to have cats in that room, I just didn't realize how much trouble this particular cat would get into being in there for a few hours.

I'll absolutely keep an eye out for infection on the baby. This cat is sort of chunky, so it still amazes me the lengths she'd go through just to get back into the other bedroom. As for the BP, I have two others in shoeboxes with lids like this and haven't had an issue..I chose them for the small brace they have to keep the sides stable.