This morning my kitten woke me up by sticking his nose in my face. I couldn't figure out how he got upstairs as I definigtely closed the basement door and we always close the bedroom door. Huh.
So, I got up (couldn't sleep with him in there). The bedroom door was wide open, the basement door was wide open and the light in the downstairs bathroom was on. The cat's litter box was sitting on top of the toilet seat.
U asked DH why he'd dont that. He got a silly look on his face and just said he put the littler box on the toilet because it was the cat's toilet. He didn't remember leaving the light on or the doors open.
What is this type of behavior called? He's never done that before. Is this sundowning? I think I may need some help here.
Mawzy - It's kind of like my "ashes" issue this week. Sometimes there really is no explination and it like bluedaze says just the progression. I try not too to figure it out to hard or it will make my mind hurt.
My DH would get up at night, I didn't always hear him, and in the morning I'd find all sorts of things moved around. The TV guide was rolled up in his shoe, the clothes hamper was in another room, figurines moved, computer discs out (thankfully he could not turn it on), etc. None of it made any sense and asking him 'why?' I knew would not produce a reasonable answer. Just make sure he can't get out of the house, otherwise, just put it all back and let it be.
Bettyhere makes a good point ... be sure your husband can't leave the house without you knowing about it. Other than that, what he did made sense to him, and it didn't really hurt anything, so I wouldn't get too upset about it having any special meaning. Just a blip on the radar, just a bump on the road.
Mawzy - "what is this type of behavior called?" In our world, its called normal. I don't ask and I don't get upset anymore. It's just normal & I get on with the day. Thenneck
their behavior will make your mind hurt,but oh how it makes the heart ache. some of these things make sence to them and some of the things my dh just says " i don't know". it's just how things work in their mind and in their world. you just have to learn to not make a big deal out of things and go on. i don't ask my dh why he does some of the things he does anymore,because he doesn't know and probably won't remember doing them anyway. that is the normal at our house anymore,so i just go behind him and flush the toilet,turn the water off,close doors and drawers,check refrigerator and freezer for the wrong contents,lock the controls on the stove,get him in the shower,dress him,make sure he eats and drinks, give him his meds and make sure he swallows them all, make sure hes not cold, keep him covered with his blanket and comfortable in his easy chair, try to keep the shows he has always liked on tv,put him to bed at night and then i am tired and don't get anything else done. my house is a mess. i am embarassed for anyone to come in and see it like this. i feel so stressed out,and then i feel guilty about feeling that way. i shouldn't be complaining. i love him so much and i feel like i am not doing enough but i don't know what else to do. jav
Dear JAV--it sounds to me as if you are doing plenty. What loving things you do. I know you get weary. But you have nothing to be embarrassed about. People come to see you--not to see if your floor is swept or the cobwebs brushed down. Our big deal is papers. DH shreds anything with our name on it. So we have two piles of papers--in almost every room. They don'[t get picked up all the time and taken to the shredder and the recycle bin. I don't even try to explain this any more. I used to when he first started doing it.
Your peace of mind and his well being are the important things. That's enough to do anyday. Blessings!
Thanks for all your responses. You just set my mind at ease.
Jav .... your day and your routine could have been written by me - my life is identical but, like others have said, I just have to concentrate very hard to NOT make a big deal or an issue out of any of the bizzare behaviours, or what seem to be bizzare behaviours to me. Like I can't quite figure out why, all of a sudden, my husband has decided to *chew* each of his vitamins instead of just swallowing them with either food or drink as he has done for his whole life - no, all of a sudden he chews the darn things, including the Vit. E and Omega-3 which are an oil type substance in a gelatin capsul ..... they must taste just awful :( but I find the chewed and empty capsuls sitting on his plate when I clear the table - seems like a strange thing to do but asking why elicits the the most common answer these days ....... "I don't know" :) sooooooo, I've decided the world is not going to end and he won't die from chewing his vitamins rather than just swallowing them, so I'm just not going to take notice any more ...... too many other things to attend to.
what would we all do without each other to lean on. we find so many things that seem to be common among our lo's with ad. no one else,except a caregiver that has experienced these things would really understand. jav
Everytime I look at my less than clean house and all of the "projects in perpetual limbo", I remind myself of Erma Bombeck's last writings. I don't remember all of it, but it goes on about not worrying about what people think because your windows are not sparkling clean, not saving the good china for company or your good nightgown for the hospital. Use the good stuff everyday and enjoy it. Don't worry so much about what your friends think. They love you for you, not because your house is dust-free.
I need to keep reminding myself that DH doesn't know what is the sink, stove, refrig. etc. The other day he fixed his coffee but put in too much milk and complained that it was cold. I told him to just pour it in the sink. I sat there and watched him pour it on top of the stove. It went down into all four burners. I can laugh about it now but at the time I think I needed my whole bottle of zanax. What a mess I had to clean up!
My husband dropped a full bottle of concentrated cranberry juice on my white tile kitchen floor. I had just come from work and wasn't up to coping with the mess. He grabbed the bottle of dishwasher detergent and poured it all over the floor. The more he cleaned the worse the suds spread. I didn't know whither to laugh or cry-or enjoy my new pink kitchen. I should have laughed because that time was better than what we have now.
well,i do have to tell you,that for years i have told friends that dust provided a protective coating on furniture. i did have one friend that believed it,and she was serious. i know that we have to have our priorities in the right place and let alot of things go,but sometimes it just gets so overwhelming,the house won't clean itself and it can get depressing. i used to take such pride in my home and always wanted it to be warm and welcoming. i used to have projects going and loved decorating, and making things for our home. now i can't. that is just a part of me that i have lost. jav
I've lived in this house almost 8 years. We built on a large addition 3 years ago. There is not one single wall that is not white. Other than that new section, not one single wall has been painted in this house. DH's wall pictures went up in the living room when we first moved in, and other than that he has not done one single repair or improvement in this house. I keep wondering if his AD was starting that long ago. DH also used to be able to run the washer and dryer, vacuum, dust, and he was 'anal' about doing dishes. Never liked to see them in the sink (we don't have a dishwasher. It was suppose to come when we renovated the little itty bitty kitchen which was never done.). He also used to love to BBQ outdoors, and also could do some minor cooking. Now he's unable to do any of those things. I could deal with that if he could just stop cluttering up every surface, and putting stuff in every chair and every window sill. Ugh!
We also moved into a new house a few years ago. Ours got painted because we paid people to paint. I'm glad I gave in on that a year ago because it would not be happening now. He had to have the tool box of his dreams. He has never used it. He had to have this great BBQ. We gave it to our son-in-law a year ago and I'm so glad someone is using it. We've got a Home Theater style TV over the fireplace. We've literally never used some of the equipment because he never learned how. And he is now having trouble with the remote some of the time.
He can still vacuum, but I wish he would leave the stuff in the sink alone.
Etc.
Really, it is OK to vent. Sometimes I need to also.
With the white elephant we live in, i have DH moving LOTS of objects around everyday and he doesnt go near any of the other floors just the top floor! dropping poupourri in the toilet is the latest addition. then i cam to the Dining room where he's pulled 1/3 of the latex flowers off the stems in a HUGE centerpeice. trying to find the attachement for them was murder..he also enjoys relocating pricey figurines and i have to sneak up very cautiously when hes walking with one if you startle it could get dropped:) the last was a lalique candelabra caught it just in time..whew. i rearranged furniture pillows EVERY day and not just the decorative ones, but the leather ones as well. as he paces he rearranges, very strange but i am used to it now. the one that bothers me most is he goes to the kitchen when i am not looking of course, and pulls all the bananas off the bunch opens them and leaves them laying there:)HA! ugh this one hits my blowtop. or he takes bites of EACH fruit and puts it back...hummm... patience, patience, now...you must get used to this you know...divvi
I have the same type of behavior with my DW. Usually in the late afternoon. This occurs while I am her dad, her husband or that other guy that lives here. My solution was to put away everything that I cared about getting moved, then distributed miscellaneous items (primarily stuffed animals) in various places around the house. They get moved each day, and I don't care.
For the food issue, I find the crisper drawers to be a safe place for yougurt, apples and anything that I am planning on cooking with that day. Apparently the drawers are invisible to her. Otherwise, there are 3 lbs of apples, each with a bite out them.
My DH will buy more bananas than we can possiby eat. Since I don't have a lot of time to make muffins or bread, they usually end up mashed with cinnamon, brown sugar and finely chopped pecans and dumped in pancake batter (box mix, of course). Everything now has to be fast and easy or in the crock pot.
"Everything has to be fast and easy or in the crock pot." You could be describing my life too. If I have something that has to go into the oven an hour or more before we eat, he goes nuts. I really did think I was going to be cooking once we retired, but there just plain is no way.
I have an absolute rule nowadays that I will not walk into the kitchen until 5 pm (except to turn the oven on, maybe, and stick something in.) I prepare stuff at lunch if I need to, then hold it until 5. This is because at 5 my husband wants to go in and sit at the breakfast table and wait until dinner. So: he goes in at 5, I go in and unload the dishwasher/start dinner/give him salad bowls to fill with greenery. The order depends on what I'm cooking. We're always eating by about 5:45. His choice would be to eat any time after about 2 pm, then go to bed after "dinner" at 3 pm. (and get up at 2 a.m., of course). Hence the five o'clock rule. I say I never drink sherry before five. And pouring that glass of sherry is the first step toward dinner!
WOW! I guess putting the litter box on top of the toilet lid isn't too bad. I can deal with that. :) You guys are really working a lot harder than I am. DH does not do any cleaning. gardening, maintenence at all. He doesn't drive and he doesn't really read either. He looks at the funnies in the Sunday paper. He glances at magazines. But that's about it. So far, everything I do is just fine and according to him, I'm just wonderful. He does help me empty the dishwasher and he puts everything away in the wroge places. I can find most of the stuff most of the time. So, I don't have any complaints. But I still wish he'd leave the litter box on the floor--I don't want to confuse the cat. Sheez. Isn't all of this just plain nuts or is it me?? :)
well, there are lots of cats that are trained to use the toilet, which saves on litter costs! see http://pottytrainmycat.com/
My husband still remembers (as do I!) the skin of one of his family's cats mounted on his mom's walk-in closet wall. That cat had been trained to use the toilet. Many years ago. Why the skin, dunno!
At this point we have four cats. Two are indoors completely and the others will be once the weather gets colder. Five litter boxes. My husband's in depends. For awhile I was having serious diarrhea. And I was volunteering at the zoo where one of my jobs as a docent was explaining about why the elephants poop and pee more than you can possibly imagine (they have poor digestive systems so what goes in comes out half digested). Excrement I deal with!!
Briegull, are you trying to compete with divvi for Queen of the Poop Patrol?
I've seen that about potty training cats. I've often wondered what would happen if you staggered into the bathroom in the dark in the middle of the night, and the cat happened to be already using the toilet...
The cat would probably get pissed off. I read that someplace on another thread. I'm sorry but I'm really getting a kick out of myself. I think I'd better get ready for bed. Oh, my goodness. That's bad.
I had a friend who tried to toilet train a cat. If anyone could have done it, she would have done it, but Christopher Robin had absolutely no willingness to do anything so un-cat-like. She bought a litter box.
We had a cat that used the toilet. He would jump on the toilet seat, spreading all fours and go. He never had an accident, nor got anything on the toilet seat! I took a picture of him because no one bellieved me! We didn't train him at all. He did it all on his own. I miss him!
To Mawzy's original question about the night wandering and moving things about: That is why I gave up after weeks of having to find him and get him back to bed (not easy - and sometimes took hours) and then in the morning, find out what he moved and hid and put them back before going to work. I was at my wit's end, until I had the doorknobs switched out for keylock doorknobs. He now can't leave the bedroom (we have a bath off of the bedroom) except for our bathroom and he doesn't move things in the bedroom for some reason! I highly recommend it! Locking the door (and hiding the key under the alarm clock radio) allows me to sleep and not worry.
Why does he take the empty toilet paper roller and tear it to shreds and flush it down the toilet? Why does he take an empty lotion bottle out of the trash can and put it back on the counter? Why does he use both his and my toothbrush during the day? I figure it is the same reason his mental clock says 3 a.m. is 6 a.m. and time to get up. <grin> It's like he's trying to do the things he used to do, but the signals are getting mixed up and backwards! Some of the things he used to do he has stopped doing, but he's found new ones to take their places!
It doesn't do us any good to get upset about it, because they can't help it and we can't stop it....however, we can hide our good things where they can't find them (we aren't putting our best ornaments on the tree this year - just the ones that it doesn't matter if they get broken or lost) and the doorknob with key entry only to keep him contained. I'm so grateful that I don't have Divvi's problem yet!
I concur on the door locks. When she is 'marching' (it seems much more determined than wandering), I used to follow her to make sure she did not leave the house. This seemed to agitate her more. Since I put key locks from the inside, there is much more peace of mind. I let her go and I sleep. Family and neighbors have all been informed or have keys. I hide the key on top of the door jamb.