Hello everybody,
First of all- hi to all I’m a long-time reader but decided to post for the first time as I recently got a kitten (yay!). sorry in advance for the long post.
We are both no strangers to cats (boyfriend grew up with about 7 cats and I hat one cat as well) so we have waited for a long time to the day that taking a cat in would be a good idea (did not want to trap a cat in a 1-bedroom apartment!). We got our kitten about 5 weeks ago when she was 10 weeks old. She was the smallest of her litter; we got many videos from the family that raised her, and we could clearly see that her brothers and sisters are more playful and more dominated than her. We speculate that the family didn’t really handle the kittens so they didn’t learn to be around humans a lot.
She was very scared and timid for the first couple of days after we got her, but we have slowly started gaining her trust. Now she is very playful and like to chase after her toys and eat lots of yummy food.
She is the cutest thing ever, but she has a few behavioral issues- she has a small fluffy bed that she absolutely loves but she would let us pet her ONLY there and ONLY when she wants it. I tried taking her bed to the living room- if she’s fallen asleep on the sofa and I try to pet her- nope, but if I put her on her bed and put the bed on me (while still on the sofa in the living room)- no problem with that at all.
I’m pretty sure she feels comfortable in the whole apartment as she likes to explore and play in all rooms and beside the bedroom she sleeps on the couch and on the table where I’m working from, so I don’t think that is the problem. And generally, she loves being petted! she learned how to lead us to her bed and meow for a petting session that can last up to 40 minutes several times a day- so not being affectionate is also not really the problem here, I think.
This behavior is really discouraging as everything is happening only by her terms. I know that cats are very stubborn animals, but I have never encountered a cat like that. She will not climb up on us or let us touch her outside her bed.
What we have tried so far:
We are consistently hand-feeding her for the last 3 weeks to build a positive association to our hands. And we tried to purrito her and give her a snack during the session, we read that that what works best for feral cats (even though she’s not feral). I thought about giving her a snack to lure her onto my lap but because she won’t go near any solid food (she’s on a raw diet), stashing kibble in by pockets won’t work and doing it with wet food or wet snacks is problematic. She’s also going just nuts (jumping around and hectically searching for more food) when her food is around so I just don’t see how it could work out.
I know that giving her time to adjust is the first thing that comes to mind, but we are hesitant to leave things unhandled because we don’t want her to get used to this kind of daily life with us.
Any recommendations and tips are more than welcome!
Here are two photos of little Maeve
First of all- hi to all I’m a long-time reader but decided to post for the first time as I recently got a kitten (yay!). sorry in advance for the long post.
We are both no strangers to cats (boyfriend grew up with about 7 cats and I hat one cat as well) so we have waited for a long time to the day that taking a cat in would be a good idea (did not want to trap a cat in a 1-bedroom apartment!). We got our kitten about 5 weeks ago when she was 10 weeks old. She was the smallest of her litter; we got many videos from the family that raised her, and we could clearly see that her brothers and sisters are more playful and more dominated than her. We speculate that the family didn’t really handle the kittens so they didn’t learn to be around humans a lot.
She was very scared and timid for the first couple of days after we got her, but we have slowly started gaining her trust. Now she is very playful and like to chase after her toys and eat lots of yummy food.
She is the cutest thing ever, but she has a few behavioral issues- she has a small fluffy bed that she absolutely loves but she would let us pet her ONLY there and ONLY when she wants it. I tried taking her bed to the living room- if she’s fallen asleep on the sofa and I try to pet her- nope, but if I put her on her bed and put the bed on me (while still on the sofa in the living room)- no problem with that at all.
I’m pretty sure she feels comfortable in the whole apartment as she likes to explore and play in all rooms and beside the bedroom she sleeps on the couch and on the table where I’m working from, so I don’t think that is the problem. And generally, she loves being petted! she learned how to lead us to her bed and meow for a petting session that can last up to 40 minutes several times a day- so not being affectionate is also not really the problem here, I think.
This behavior is really discouraging as everything is happening only by her terms. I know that cats are very stubborn animals, but I have never encountered a cat like that. She will not climb up on us or let us touch her outside her bed.
What we have tried so far:
We are consistently hand-feeding her for the last 3 weeks to build a positive association to our hands. And we tried to purrito her and give her a snack during the session, we read that that what works best for feral cats (even though she’s not feral). I thought about giving her a snack to lure her onto my lap but because she won’t go near any solid food (she’s on a raw diet), stashing kibble in by pockets won’t work and doing it with wet food or wet snacks is problematic. She’s also going just nuts (jumping around and hectically searching for more food) when her food is around so I just don’t see how it could work out.
I know that giving her time to adjust is the first thing that comes to mind, but we are hesitant to leave things unhandled because we don’t want her to get used to this kind of daily life with us.
Any recommendations and tips are more than welcome!
Here are two photos of little Maeve