- Joined
- Dec 14, 2019
- Messages
- 11
- Purraise
- 38
I’ve currently got a feral kitty living inside my library room who seems to have completely regressed, despite us making progress over the last two months. I’m not sure what to do now and if I should try starting back at step 1, back to a cage/mini house/litter box, or if there’s a way to salvage what progress had been made.
The cat (now Persephone) had been living under a temporary trailer where I work, a construction jobsite. She’d been coming out daily for food and one of the night superintendents (Dave) had been feeding her. He ended up getting laid off by my company so I took over feeding her. She was a friendly feral - each afternoon she’d wait for me to appear, come running toward me but keep her distance, and then I’d place food for her under the trailer. Dave had been doing this for months and had her coming very close to him before he was let go.
There’s a longer story here but the short version is that someone placed traps near the trailer and Persephone got caught. I was concerned about her being taken to the shelter near the jobsite where she’d be euthanized, so I took her to a different shelter hoping for better results, naively thinking some shelters would spend the effort to rehabilitate or find a sanctuary for feral cats. When I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I adopted her after she’d been at the shelter for a week. My initial plan was to let her be an outdoor cat and I followed the feral cat guides on how to confine her for several weeks before letting her go and setting up a permanent shelter for her. I’ve got a backyard with a fence but we have coyotes in the area, so I’d been looking at getting a Kitty Tube that has an entrance coyotes can’t get into. I had her outside in a large cage (with a small cat house and litter box inside) for a week. I was worried about the coyote problem and decided that if I was going to be her caretaker, the best I could do for her was to bring her inside and try to socialize her as best as I could. She may not be a pet cat like my three domesticated cats, but she’d be safe, warm and free of coyotes.
By the time I was able to move her inside, she’d already spent one week at the shelter and one week outside in the cage, so we were already two weeks into the four-week relocation/adjustment period which was not ideal at all. I moved her into small room, set the cage back up with the small house, litter box, and her food dish. I got her used to a SurePet microchip feeder (that opens a flap when she approaches the sensors, located in an arch that she puts her head through to reach the food) and she’d been using that perfectly and using the litter box every single time she went to the bathroom. Eventually I left the door to the cage open and she settled in under a loveseat as her hiding spot. I also slowly switched the small litter box to a larger one, and then added a lid to it. (One of my regular cats pees high, so I need something with walls for her if she uses it). The regular cats had entered the room while se was still in the cage, and while she was under the loveseat and there was minimal hissing. I thought I’d gotten her successfully out of the cage (I removed it) and into this room. Slowly I started leaving the door ajar whenever she wasn’t eating so she could get used to the noises of the house.
At Thanksgiving, she suddenly stopped eating out of the feeder but would eat when I brought her a dish of food. I ended up resorting to just leaving the feeder door open since it seemed like she’d just lost the knack of how to use the feeder. Now she’s started to not use the litter box either. The room is hardwood floor with an area rug and she’s been lying on the rug under the loveseat which seems cozy, so I hadn’t wanted to remove the carpet. Yesterday morning I found she’d pooped on the rug behind the loveseat and when I got home from work, I noticed she’d peed on the carpet also. I thought at first maybe she was spooked by having the door ajar, but then I left the door to the room closed and that’s when we ended up with pee on the carpet. I moved her little box to the back corner of the room, thinking that would help but this morning there was poop on the carpet again.
So I feel like we are back to square one. What do I do? Do I put the crate back in the room and try starting all over to reset everything? Do I just pull the carpet out and keep trying outside of the cage, maybe going back to a small uncovered litter box? For the last two days now I’ve been leaving the door to the room closed all the time, as opposed to leaving it ajar when she’s not eating (so the regular cats can wander in and out and she can hear us moving around the house). I’m just not sure what to do now since it seems like we are back to square 1.
Any help/ideas on what to do now would be greatly appreciated.
Lisa
The cat (now Persephone) had been living under a temporary trailer where I work, a construction jobsite. She’d been coming out daily for food and one of the night superintendents (Dave) had been feeding her. He ended up getting laid off by my company so I took over feeding her. She was a friendly feral - each afternoon she’d wait for me to appear, come running toward me but keep her distance, and then I’d place food for her under the trailer. Dave had been doing this for months and had her coming very close to him before he was let go.
There’s a longer story here but the short version is that someone placed traps near the trailer and Persephone got caught. I was concerned about her being taken to the shelter near the jobsite where she’d be euthanized, so I took her to a different shelter hoping for better results, naively thinking some shelters would spend the effort to rehabilitate or find a sanctuary for feral cats. When I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I adopted her after she’d been at the shelter for a week. My initial plan was to let her be an outdoor cat and I followed the feral cat guides on how to confine her for several weeks before letting her go and setting up a permanent shelter for her. I’ve got a backyard with a fence but we have coyotes in the area, so I’d been looking at getting a Kitty Tube that has an entrance coyotes can’t get into. I had her outside in a large cage (with a small cat house and litter box inside) for a week. I was worried about the coyote problem and decided that if I was going to be her caretaker, the best I could do for her was to bring her inside and try to socialize her as best as I could. She may not be a pet cat like my three domesticated cats, but she’d be safe, warm and free of coyotes.
By the time I was able to move her inside, she’d already spent one week at the shelter and one week outside in the cage, so we were already two weeks into the four-week relocation/adjustment period which was not ideal at all. I moved her into small room, set the cage back up with the small house, litter box, and her food dish. I got her used to a SurePet microchip feeder (that opens a flap when she approaches the sensors, located in an arch that she puts her head through to reach the food) and she’d been using that perfectly and using the litter box every single time she went to the bathroom. Eventually I left the door to the cage open and she settled in under a loveseat as her hiding spot. I also slowly switched the small litter box to a larger one, and then added a lid to it. (One of my regular cats pees high, so I need something with walls for her if she uses it). The regular cats had entered the room while se was still in the cage, and while she was under the loveseat and there was minimal hissing. I thought I’d gotten her successfully out of the cage (I removed it) and into this room. Slowly I started leaving the door ajar whenever she wasn’t eating so she could get used to the noises of the house.
At Thanksgiving, she suddenly stopped eating out of the feeder but would eat when I brought her a dish of food. I ended up resorting to just leaving the feeder door open since it seemed like she’d just lost the knack of how to use the feeder. Now she’s started to not use the litter box either. The room is hardwood floor with an area rug and she’s been lying on the rug under the loveseat which seems cozy, so I hadn’t wanted to remove the carpet. Yesterday morning I found she’d pooped on the rug behind the loveseat and when I got home from work, I noticed she’d peed on the carpet also. I thought at first maybe she was spooked by having the door ajar, but then I left the door to the room closed and that’s when we ended up with pee on the carpet. I moved her little box to the back corner of the room, thinking that would help but this morning there was poop on the carpet again.
So I feel like we are back to square one. What do I do? Do I put the crate back in the room and try starting all over to reset everything? Do I just pull the carpet out and keep trying outside of the cage, maybe going back to a small uncovered litter box? For the last two days now I’ve been leaving the door to the room closed all the time, as opposed to leaving it ajar when she’s not eating (so the regular cats can wander in and out and she can hear us moving around the house). I’m just not sure what to do now since it seems like we are back to square 1.
Any help/ideas on what to do now would be greatly appreciated.
Lisa