CBD + Your Cat

by Tracey Tong

Calico Callie had a rough start to life. The Calico cat was living under a porch with her babies when Dawn Lamsa, who had been doing volunteer work to help chained dogs, got a call: Would she be able to help the cat and her kittens?

Dawn, an animal lover, immediately agreed. She found a rescue to take the kittens and adopted Calico Callie herself. But despite Dawn’s best efforts to make Callie feel at home, the rescued cat suffered from high anxiety. “She was super scared,” says Dawn, who lives in Leonard, Michigan, surmising Callie was once a pet who had been dumped.

On top of anxiety and fear issues, Calico Callie also had a multitude of physical ailments. She suffers from stomatitis, a debilitating oral condition that causes severe inflammation of the gums and painful lesions in the mouth. Some ofher teeth were infected and had to be pulled. She also had ringworm, which necessitated a bath every other day for a couple of weeks.

“Of course, she really started to not trust me,” says Dawn. “After working with her, she would allow me to pet her sometimes. But (if there was) any change in the home, or if I tried to clip her nails or put flea meds on her, it would take her weeks to let me pet her again. Then I went through a divorce and we moved. She was really scared then.

“It made me feel really sad for her. I tried everything,” Dawn says. “I want her to be comfortable in my home.” To make matters worse, Dawn’s other rescues began to pick on Calico Callie, and she started having accidents and hiding, emerging only to eat.

“I was at my wit’s end,” remembers Dawn. Determined to find a solution, she decided to try CBD oil at the start of November 2018. “I take CBD oil myself daily… it has helped me get off all kinds of ibuprofen for pain and it helps with anxiety.” CBD, or cannabidiol, is a cannabis compound derived from hemp. Unlike THC, it’s non-psychoactive, meaning it won’t get you or your cat high. What it does do is help with all manner of ailments, from pain to anxiety to seizures. Within a week, Callie started coming out of hiding and letting Dawn approach her.

With the CBD oil, you get all of your cat back. You don’t just treat a piece of the disease, it really is like an entire body overhaul.

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