In the last few days Mickie has been acting strangely.

Well, more strangely than usual. She will go on a catfit-like spree, her tail lashing wildly (she often chases it because it’s acting like a wild animal) and the fur on her back twitching and writhing as though she’s being tickled by invisible fingernails.

One day I picked her up during one of these fits and started running my fingernails along her back in the area that was twitchy, and she settled right down and let me do this for as long as I wanted to. In the course of this, I dislodged mass quantities of shedding fur from under her guardcoat.

Twice more that same day as she was in the middle of a crazytail fit she jumped up onto my lap and looked at me, as though asking me to do some more of that soothing thing I did before. Since then, Chris has gone at the area with a soft brush designed to dislodge loose fur, and it’s done wonders for her. Apparently Mickie’s undercoat is very coarse and has trouble making its way out from under the outer guard-hair coat. Instead it stays trapped, the loose ends of the individual hairs tickling her skin.

She’s much calmer now, but she can still be incited into another fit if, for example, I sneak up on her and tickle here right there with, say, the corner of a catalog.

Not that I would do such a thing. Heh.