Fleeing Feline Causes Flare

Percy, feline escape artist.

I'm not sleeping very well at night time at the moment.

It's not caused by lupus, it's caused by a cat.  But it has results that affect my lupus.

You see, a couple of weeks ago, I bought another cat. He was a rescue cat, and looked lovely, and I felt I just had to give him a home.

That surely couldn't make me sick, right?  After all, I already had a cat and a dog.

Well, Percy turned out to be a challenge.

He's an escape artist, and has no intention of being recaptured.

The first time he escaped, I managed to get him back late that same night.

The second time he escaped - well - it's been over a week and he's still not home.

I leave out food for him, and the food goes.  I bought a cat trap, and the bait out of the trap goes, but the trap is never sprung.

I've been for walks in the evening and caught sight of him.  Family members and neighbours have chased him and been unable to catch him.

A neighbour tells me he spends his day in the stormwater drain, darting down through a grate on the other side of the road.

So I stay awake all night, listening for the sound of his bell, that tells me he's come to the front yard at least to have a meal, even if he won't come home, and if he's too smart for me to catch him.

(I keep experimenting with loading the bait in the trap in different ways, in hopes that I will trick him into tripping the trap, but he's clearly smarter than I am at the moment.)

Then, because I'm exhausted, I'm both in severe pain, and fatigued. My gut symptoms are flaring up and my rashes are worse than usual.  So I guess I could say an innocent little kitty cat is causing a flare.

Pain means it's harder to get to sleep, but when I do get to sleep during the day,  I sleep really soundly and wake up feeling groggy and disoriented.

Theoretically, when I finally get Percy home, I will be able to go to sleep at a reasonable time and eventually get back to "normal". (Or "normal for me".)  I may need some sleeping pills and some heavy-duty pain relief for a couple of nights to reset the pattern, but hopefully all will be good.

Oh, and I'm getting the fence in the back yard cat-proofed.