The Mechnism of an Episode

FHS first and foremost means hypersensitivity to everything.
Nekko is alergic to reality.
She is still a cat, which means,
from the collection of things to be sensitive to, called reality,
certain things are more upsetting than others.
We don't really expect her to be
as upset with a Dog as with a fly.
But with FHS, the fly is already upsetting
way more than enough.

The mechanism, and this is strictly my theory, goes like thiis:

At first there is some minute trigger,
like a fly she couldn't catch,
that will start the episode and
put the mechanism in motion.

She will not show ANY signs of FHS until
the offensive trigger is absolutly gone.
She might have eaten the fly a few minutes back,
or it may have flown out the window,
or she killed it and pushed it underneath some furniture
with ordinary kitten excitement fury.
She is eight years old though,
and I already know what is about to take place.

This is part of the mechanism of FHS.
It took long and painful years of experience
with nekko to learn that.
Moreover, the mechanism dictates:
The offensive trigger is as if perceived to be dangerous,
and its presence can not allow the fragile
state of being in an FHS episode while danger lurks.

This coincide with the fact,
that FHS is genetically inherited.

Evolution logic demands, that if this peculiar
protective quality of the FHS mechanism were not in place,
FHS could not survive through the generations,
and so can not possibly have been developed during the natural period of cat history.
But there are well documented records of exotic
FHS cats that were taken directly from the wild.
The genes of FHS were developed in the wild,
not in domestication like would be expected
from experience with mental diseases of house pets
and farm animals.
I found Internet records that show reasearch
saying that FHS is more frequent
with Seam cats, himalayan, and other oriental species,
and researches debate whether this disease,
nowadays classified as a syndrome,
is genetically inherited.
If you know your genetics and statistics,
this means a resounding YES.
Much like CVA with people,
if you have FHS genes it might mean that you have,
say a 1% chance of actually getting it,
given other cicumstances.
But it also means that if you do NOT have FHS
in your genes, you will never get FHS,
regardless of the cicumstances.

As for the circumstances,
it is well recorded in many FHS internet logs that
FHS sprouts between the ages of 1 and 4 years,
always several months after a period
of continous abuse of 3-4 weeks.

Nekko has sufffered such abuse from a larger cat
that was introduced to the home.
It took me about three weeks to give up the new cat.
FHS symptoms started occuring in a few months.
Slowly, she would start conversing with her tail
with upsetness, graduating to more upsetness,
and agressiveness
Violence towards the tail took about a year to develop.

Nekko would also never have an FHS episode when I am
not at home.
Correlated with the above, this coincides with the fact that
Nekko feels secure when I am around,
as is evidence mostly by the fact that I can relax
FHS episodes merely by petting her endlessly.

She did get one episode when I was away.
It was in late 2006,
during a calm period,
she had zero valium in her blood at the time,
and I was away a few hours longer than I expected
myself to be.
From the caos she left, it was a short episode
lasting only a few minutes before she restrained
herself.
As so often happens with almost the same exact timing,
the full blown episode started occuring
about a half an hour after I showd up,
and was restrained by Valium.

So it goes like this:
It takes about a half an hour from the time
the FHS trigger is out of sight,
for the first external detcatable FHS episode
symptom to appear.

Detactable symptom, in this context,
only means I can detect such sign with Nekko,
as I have no other experience.

By recollecting the events of the half hour before
the episode started, over years,
I can classify triggers to danger levels.

The earliest sign I know how to detect is Nekko
suddnly appears on my ear radar bashing her tail
against the floor.

This means she was lying down on the floor behind
me, while I'm sitting in front of the computer,
knowing she wants me close,
restraining herself not to come too close,
as she knows her state might cause her to hurt me.

This seemingly imagined guesswork, is deduced from
long experince.

Nekko has repeatedly over years has shown this exact
level of hostilty towards myself and others:

"Don't try anything or you'll be hurt,
I am now crazy enough to hurt you if you do,
but will try to stay away as much as possible
so that we'll never get to that."

During the worst FHS episodes, in 2003 and 2004,
before I knew it was FHS,
episode were very wild, vocal and frightening.
But you always knew that evading her was the easy part.
She always took some distant corner,
usually up on top of the high book shelving unit by the TV,
which I nailed to the wall so she doesn't topple it.
There, she would sream to the skies, jumping
at her tail frantically, attacking it with no end in sight,
with me trying to stop her with a broom
(ten foot pole?)
until hours later she would collapse exausted,
sleep for a good ten hours,
be a cat for another ten if I'm lucky,
and start over.

Without being able to count on her being protective
of me from herself during FHS episodes,
I would not be able to treat her at all,
and would be forced to put her to sleep
like all the veterinarians suggested.

Internet reports show this is typical FHS behaviour,
and it is well recorded also with Nekko that
being overprotective and overworrid about your owner
is a well marked FHS symtom denoting the onset
of a developing episode.