Help Needed In Japan

[bear]

So let's come back and talk about hands versus fingers.

Fingers can also look a little like five mice. This can evoke a sense of prey. Should you find Kato or a kitten striking at your hand, try to approach with a fist, then open your fingers as you get close to pet them.

Do not let anyone work their fingers like on a keyboard. This will basically teach a cat to strike. Do not use your hands as toys in play. Being a human male, I know the strong desire to see just how fast their paws can go. We are simply fascinated by that speed, and of course know we must compete with them. So make sure everyone understands and fully adheres to the saying below.

Make a very conscious effort to let them understand.
"Toys are for playing. Hands are for loving."

How kittens teach each other not to play too rough.
They make a high pitched very loud meow, sounding almost like NO (or Me OW!).
Should one of the cats, strike at your hand, or bite at it, close your fingers into a fist as you make that loud high pitched Me OW.

Continue to teach the cats that it is OK to eat from your fingers. Fold the two outside fingers into your palm. Use your thumb on top of the two next fingers to offer the food. Let them take the food, then slowly retract your hand for a refill.

Know that some cats have a strong dislike for the smell of latex gloves.

 

[Solcita]

Make a very conscious effort to let them understand.
"Toys are for playing. Hands are for loving.".

I liked this .Thank you for your suggestions.
The kittens and Kato absolutely hate gloves. I had a very soft pair and whenever they saw me with it, they would freak out (it was in the earlier days)... I mostly play with wand type of toys but also balls (sometimes it scares them so not all the time).

The kittens eat perfectly fine from the hand so I will try to keep doing it instead of going with the easier spoon.
Tomorrow I will be at home so I will give it a try

This morning I left all food open while feeding the kittens and I have wet food to one of our cars right next to the door... So basically she stopped hissing because was too busy eating and the kittens stopped eating because they just stared at Ponyo... They were fascinated by her... And when she left, they changed positions just to keep looking at her... It felt like they almost realized that was a cat also after all...

The other day I was feeding one of the kittens through the door while watching TV, so I was not paying attention when Kato came and scratched me... I was totally shocked, no warning from her and no provocation from me. I'm still surprised by that type of behavior to be honest...

How old are the kittens now, about 3 months? It's not to late to start trying to burrito them but generally it's easy the smaller the kittens are. How close can you get to them while you're playing? Can you use one hand to dangle a toy and try petting them with the other? They usually accept pets on their back, near the tail. Have you had any luck petting them with a wand toy or a "petting stick"?

Sharing the litter box with your cats is a good sign, it means they are mingling their smells together and accepting one another.

Hissing just means "Don't get any closer." It's not aggressive, it's just setting boundaries.

Are you thinking you might keep the kittens or are you still hoping to re-home them?

I think the kittens are 3 months by now for sure.
And yes, we can pet them with the toys a lot, and with a toothbrush... But it's been getting colder so they tend to sleep together with Kato, which makes any attempt harder
Nice to hear about the litter boxes and hissing meanings.

Regarding the future I rationally think it's better to re-home them all as our hands are too full. That would be best case scenario.
Second option would be keeping Kato if she's impossible to re-home.
Worst case would be keeping all. If they got along without cats it would make our lives so much easier... But Chihiro (oldest, cancer survivor, deft) is stressed and very grumpy lately, putting up also our nerves... That's why the order of the options.
Letting them all out is not an option in my head.

Any ideas?

 

[catwoman707]

It definitely sounds like you've got your hands full!
I apologize for the delay in replying to Norachan 's mention of me as possible help/suggestions.
At 3 months old, they are not likely to tame enough to be adopted/re-homed easily. Their mental development by now has it set that they are not comfortable with humans and will always have the tendencies of hiding around strangers, but in time will warm up to some degree with the main person in their life they are exposed to and fed by, you.
If you found a person who is willing to take one or two kittens and be prepared to allow quite some time for them to gain trust and confidence in them before they stop hiding and being fearful then eventually they will adapt to another home, but unless they adopt kitties for the purpose of natural rodent control then most people don't want to wait for a semi-feral cat, when they adopt they want to interact right away.

Another setback is that they feed off of each other's fear, so you can work with one at a time, get it relaxed but then returning it with it's siblings the time spent calming the one kitten will be erased because of the way the others still act.
Females are the hardest too.

 

[Solcita]

catwoman707 thank you very much for your reply.

We understood that having all of them together would make everything a lot more difficult (specially with feral mom inside with them) but it was impossible to separate them. When we released mom a month ago, she stayed around the house yelling and crying hysterically... disturbing our neighbors. As we live in a rental house, that could have put our lease in danger and we have no means to move as of right now.
And we don't have enough space to keep them all indoors but in separated areas... so we had to keep them all together.

So keeping in mind that finding an adoptive home for the kittens (based on the current situation) would be next to impossible, should we start working towards properly introducing them to our cats?
Can semi-feral kittens/cat live with domesticated indoor cats?
If we could open the gates and have all the cats together our lives would be so much easier than now... of course kittens would go back to their room for the night or when we are not around to prevent them from distroying our walls (they tend to climb the walls literally, so we had to put cardboard in their room/hall)

As for the future, Kato and kittens could become indoor/outdoor cats after the winter...

Once again, thank you for your reply!

 

[catwoman707]

Absolutely they can get along just fine with proper introductions.
Ferals are fearful of humans only, and of course the things that go along with us, indoors is strange and intimidating, the vacuum lol. But other cats are completely familiar and usually quite welcome.

The standard protocols for introductions work well. Scent swapping, then being able to see each other, then try them eating together but still separated like with a baby gate or similar, then allow nose to nose with a door in between, just a crack, and gradually work it more and more.
They will have become accustomed to their scents, and when you finally do allow them to be together use play to distract their focus like with a feather wand or laser.

It's critical that Chihiro not feel intimidated or threatened with her position in the home, this is why she is grumpy.
Too old to take on youngsters so full of themselves, it means you will have to show her priority attention when around the others.
They will understand she is the top cat and shouldn't try to take over. If you see any of this behavior then continue to give her special attention and priority for as long as it takes to get the point across.

I did it, 2 strong willed top cat personalities, and had to be aware of every move going on to show the newbie that it was to remain Krissy's castle, despite the fact of knowing and seeing clearly that the new kitty had a very strong dominant personality.
It worked.

 

[Norachan]

Can semi-feral kittens/cat live with domesticated indoor cats?

Sure, they get along just fine together. My 20 plus vary from a very tame pure bred cat who probably hadn't ever been outside before his people decided to dump him, to feral born cats I couldn't touch for the first few years.

They've all been with me a while now and are much more sociable. Being around very tame cats helps them more skittish ones learn that people can be trusted.

We have a few articles on how to do introductions.

How To Successfully Introduce Cats: The Ultimate Guide

Introducing Cats To Cats

How To Fix An Unsuccessful Cat Introduction

Just be prepared to go really slowly. You cats may seem to be stuck at one stage in the introductions, but it's important not to try to move ahead until everyone is really comfortable.

 

[Solcita]

Thank you catwoman707 and Norachan for your replies. I will sit down with hubby soon to have a talk about this posibility.
The last few days he's been losing hope and I didn't even tell him about catwoman707's opinion that they'd remain semiferals!
The kittens have been looking out and crying to the windows (something their mom used to do before) so he started saying he thinks "they'd be happier outside" so he is thinking out loud staying we should release them once we fix them... Which really shocked me to be honest, he is the cat person of the household! He was the one who named and started feeding Kato ...

I already told him about the low life expectancy, that they already lived indoors too long to be released, etc. But he is basically feeling hopeless... I think I will ask him to try making the cats bond and see how that goes. I just hope this doesn't make things worse (like keeping indoors longer for nothing) ...

 

[Solcita]

So sorry for the long absence, the last few weeks have been super crazy for me.

I had a couple of emergency worktrips, by the time I came back, both kitties would run away whenever I'd go inside their hall.
They would run more away from me than from hubby, as he remained a normal sight during that week away. He would give them dry food and water, clean their toilet, but would not feed them wet food.

When I came back, I gave them wet food. It took them a while to start eating again, but we are back into our routine right now.

It is getting colder here, and their hall is in the main gate, so it's super cold... so we bought them a heater (it took us a year to make the decision to buy a heater for ourselves and 24hs to buy the heater for them lol). So they are relaxing A LOT.

We leave the door to the kitchen open all day, and a "baby" gate closed to keep the cats apart. Mini1 remains the most curious one, she comes around all the time to check what we are doing.

Lately we've been petting them with our fingers through the cage, and they don't freak out as much as before.
Kato is also coming towards us a lot more often, but still not proper petting.

About our cats: they like humans, they are super social but they dislike other cats, even when they had accepted Kato when she was out.
Ok, now that Kato and the cats hang out a lot in the kitchen door, they don't seem happy.

However, a few nights ago, when I was feeding the kitties, Ponyo (the one that dislike cats the most) started crying and asking for food, so I invited her and she came into the kitties hall to eat. She would cry at the same time and sometimes hiss. The kitties and Kato couldn't care less.

A while later, when we finished, the 3 of them came to the kitchen gate, and Ponyo attacked them from behind the safety gate. All 3 ran away, but in less than a minute they forgot what happened, which really shocked me. They did not remained freaked out after the initial freak and they kept coming to the gate as nothing has happened.

Another day, while we were doing a big clean up and moving big boxes, we left the gate open by mistake, and when we wanted to realized, Chihiro, our oldest cat was with us... which meant she went through the kitties' hall without caring about them... when I checked them out I realized they also couldn't care less about Chihiro being in "their" territory.

So it seems Feral family doesn't care about territory at all, but Ponyo does.
Kato and the kittens keep trying to communicate with our cats, and if one of our cats cry, they would reply.

We received a cat bed that the kitties didn't like, so I gave it to Chihiro. She sleeps on it all day long in front of the heater, looking all the time to the kitties door. She does sounds from time to time, but she is caring less and less about their presence.

I told hubby about them remaining semi ferals and he said that meant releasing them was no longer an option (yay!) so that's how we are now looking for a bigger house to relocate so we can accommodate all cats more properly... so next year will come with hopefully big changes

 

[Norachan]

Hi Solicita.

Thank you for the update. It's getting really cold in Japan, isn't it? I can't believe you survived for a year without a heater. I have my two toyu stoves and a kotatsu. The cats practically live under the kotatsu, it's the best thing we ever bought them.

I'm so glad to hear that the cats aren't going to be released outside. I think Kato might adjust, but the two kittens would have no idea what to do. They've been inside since they were tiny babies so they will have forgotten all about being outdoors. They wouldn't be able to survive out there.

It sounds like Ponyo and the feral family are just establishing some boundaries. One of my cats walks around the house hissing at the others. The other cats just ignore her, they're used to her funny little ways, and as long as no one gets too close to her all Susy does is hiss.

Where are you going to be moving too? Are you looking for a bigger house in the same city? Hope you can find somewhere with a bit of a garden so Kato might get her Catio one day.

良いお年を！

 

[Solcita]

Hi Norachan
Thank you for the reply!

The kittens are doing well, we have been able to pet Kato and Mini2 the last couple of nights! They are very relaxed, so sometimes when he goes through their hall, hubby simply puts his hand into the cage and pet them. I was super shocked the first time, but they don't seem to mind. They do eventually freak out but as soon as he removes the hand everything goes back to normal, they don't even move places.
I tried doing the same, but I think I'm more gentle (and scare myself!) so they don't jump as much with me... but I was super surprised that Mini2 was watching me when I was touching her and not only she didn't react but she relaxed and almost fell asleep.
It's also surprising that it was Mini2, the scared one, but as she is attached to Kato, and she closely saw hubby touching Kato, she realized it is OK...
In the meantime, it's impossible to pet Mini1 with our hands, I pet her now with a pompom... also a toy we got from the former rescuer.

Hubby sometimes chases Kato a little bit "trying" to pet her, as sometimes Kato doesn't want to move places when we need to go through the hall... and she eventually moves. WHat I do when I need to go and she is in the middle, I ignore her and go... sometimes she moves, sometimes she doesn't... I think she knows we mean no harm...

Yesterday my daisenpai came to have lunch and he and his wife were not very aware of what "feral" meant so the second they arrived they tried to touch Kato... she was inside the cage, so she just moved back, but the kittens didn't show themselves in the entire time they were here. Even when I opened the cage, they didn't even go to the toilet during those 5-6 hours.
The moment they left, they came out, ate dinner as usual, etc... so no huge freak out... they don't seem to remain freaked out for long after whatever bothers them goes away.
But when a female friend came, they were super curious and were at the door all the time watching her... so it seems they like girls more

We are struggling with Ponyo now. While Chihiro is getting more relaxed (most of the time she is sleeping where she can watch the kittens all the time so she is caring less and less), Ponyo is becoming more aggressive even towards us.
She sleeps with us, right in the middle and under the covers. Normally she comes in during the night, but yesterday she came in the second we went to bed. She relaxed, we were petting her and suddenly out of nowhere she bit hubby in his hand... first time ever... at first I thought it was playing but she really hurted him. She is grumpy most of the time, even when I pay close attention to her and pet her a lot so she doesn't feel left out... any ideas?

On the other hand, by the time Kato came, we also saw another feral young female in our area that I was already thinking in catching to neuter, but she doesn't come as often (we probably saw her 5 times in the last 6 months). Today she stopped by and checked our window. She is bigger (but way smaller than Kato) and her ear is already tipped! So it seems someone else is TNR in our neighborhood.
There's also a big boy with his ear tipped that comes through our backyard every day... (and Ponyo of course hates).

We will go to check other areas next week to see how we feel. We currently live in Yokohama, but in order to get a bigger place we know we will have to change cities (not very fond of that idea as I love it here), so we are considering some place in Chiba as for the same rent we could get 3 times the size of our current house... we will see how that goes.
If not, another option is going south, towards Kamakura/Zushi, that we could get twice the size.

Everybody!
良いお年を!!!
Hope you have a great start of the year!!!!!!!!