Dear Gary:
I went out of town for a couple of days. I hired a cat sitter I had used previously. She is a vet tech and very competent.
The first night she came over, our "Furnami," a 4-year-old male tabby, was very friendly to her. (Furnami is what you get when you combine fur with a tsunami. When he was a kitten tearing through the house like a maniac, I said to my husband that he was a tsunami with fur and my husband said, "Furnami.")
He has a mellow, laid-back personality, and is the kind of cat that's not deterred when he's laying on your feet in bed and you try to kick him out of bed so you can turn over. The kind of cat if you squirt him with water to discourage him from doing something, he is unaffected.
The second night, the pet sitter came over wearing a stocking cap and he approached her growling and hissing. He has never done that behavior in four years. She threw the hat on the floor and he "killed" it.
The third night the sitter came over without the hat and he was fine. She said that sometimes dogs react to her hat the same way. There was nothing unusual on the hat, no trim or anything.
Have you heard of this before?
Barbara Bushee,
