overnight change in behavior/paranoid reactions

Question
Hi there,
Friday evening my cat was fine and Saturday morning it was as if a different animal moved in. Her normal habits and patterns of behavior are quite predictable and for the past two days she's been acting very oddly.  She seems to be afraid of her own shadow; sniffs and balks at items she sees everyday (like a pair of my shoes on the floor). She doesn't really want to go out (and this cat loves to be outside). Slightly off her feed, but not too much. Drinking normally, not excessively. We don't keep a litter box in the house, but brought one in to check her stool (seems normal even though it took her a bit to figure out the whole "go in the house" gig again).
I'm wondering if she ate something outside and has been having some type of overdose reaction.  I planted her catnip in the garden and it looked chewed down (but the deer recently ravaged nearly everything else in my yard-so who knows who ate what).  Can a cat OD on catnip and have a "bad trip" so to speak?
Would really like some more input. Vet just said to keep an eye on her (which was fairly easy to do over this holiday weekend), but w/the work week looming - I wonder if there's anything else more proactive I can do or look for.
Thanks for your help and let me know if you need any more info. Oh 3yo domestic short-hair, spayed. Gray/white, fabulous, funny, sweet and queen of the house!  Name:Cameo  Thank you!


Answer
Well, first, kudos to you for being such an attentive and caring cat owner. Cameo is lucky to have you. Secondly, I may be WAY off base here and it isn't really appropriate for me to make any assessments without actually seeing the cat, especially since I am not a vet, BUT --- this sounds more like kitty PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) than anything organic/physical. I would be willing to bet that she was upset or scared by something outside. A dog? A car/truck? Do you live in an area where there are fisher cats (which KILL house cats) or raccoons (which can really scare them) or larger critters like bears, coyotes or cougars?  Or skunks? Even if she didn't actually get sprayed by one (which you would know by now, obviously) she could have caught a major whiff and said to herself, literally, "let's go home, it really stinks out here."

I think the best thing you can do for her at this point is keep her indoors for a while until she begins to resemble her old self and give her lots of loving TLC.45 vbnpm (that is an authentic comment from a 4 month old Turkish Angora kitten that just ran in here like a bat out of hell, jumped on the keyboard, jumped up on the shelf above the computer, then ran out of here as though pursued by nasty critters out of Harry Potter). Anyway, as I was saying when so rudely interrupted, keep her indoors for a bit. Leave something tasty for her to eat in the morning if you have it. . . treats on top of her regular dry food, or wet food instead of dry food. . . and go back to work and don't worry. If there was anything physically wrong I think you would have seen more significant signs by now. If you do not normally feed wet food, this might be a good time to introduce it as it is a) better for a cat to have 1/4-1/3 of its food intake come from wet(i.e. canned food) and b) better for its owner in terms of monitoring intake and interest in food and c) a good way to convince her that it is better and safer for her indoors. . . which, frankly, it really is. If she has not eaten by tomorrow night, write back and give me an update. I willl be around and checking email tomorrow night.

Hope this helps

iris