It started with a fixation on the swirls on the faux-wood floor, and a sudden flea infestation.

Sylvia and Hank have been frustrated by fleas. We treated them. They came back. I will treat them again before we leave and hope they don’t follow us.

Though Sylvia never noticed the patterns in the wood before, ever since the fleas came, she stands over the dark spots and stares at them.

She also suddenly got very interested in parkour. If she can avoid the floor, she does at all costs, leaping from one piece of furniture to another, crashing through our coffee pot and cups on the table like a wrecking ball.

Parkour!

And on the occasions that she was on the floor, she stared at those spots with intensity. Over time, I realized that she thought the fleas were coming up through the swirls in the wood.

Soon, Hank had his own phobia of the spots on the floor. He also took up parkour.

These are big-ass Maine Coon cats. Their leaping and flying is terrifying and destructive.  So there was much yelling and shouting of “No!”

So they banished themselves to the garage, on a pile of clothes they deemed safe. For three days, these cats, who were once enemies, held each other and waited for the flea terror to pass. We used the opportunity to mop everything down with peppermint oil.

But Sylvia started coming in on the second day. And though she gave a wary eye to the spots on the floor, behaved somewhat normally. But Hank was scared for his life to come in. And she was smug.

She had exaggerated the problem to him when she had him under her paranoid spell. She convinced him he was in danger so she could have the humans to herself. As is always the through line to her schemes. For a moment, she had us all fooled that she was protecting her son.

She was only spreading disinformation to gain control, playing on his fears and longing for her approval to ultimately kick him out of the house.

I have to admit, it stirs a strange admiration in me. I have never met a cat so ambitious and proactive, so diligent and long term in her planning. But she always is. She trains hard. She lays traps. She sets the scene. She doesn’t let anything deter her, and she gets things done.

So today, I dragged Hank in to the living room and made him watch me roll around on the floor. He was so relieved. The fear left him. Now he is basking in the sun, happy to be safe once more.

All it takes to eradicate fear is direct engagement, and for someone else to go first.