Kitten Not Coming Around

[LittleShadow]

Back in May, I found a stray cat with a litter of maybe 4 week old kittens under my back porch. Mama cat, now named Mia, has tamed right down and is now a complete cuddle bug. She's also fixed and vaccinated, and I'll be keeping her.

She and her five kittens were all captured and moved into the spare bedroom back in July, and are at various stages of tame. Ghost happily walks up to people, pushes into pets, and is generally a friendly, happy kitten, though she dislikes being picked up. Cloud is super shy, but will purr if petted and will cuddle with me. Houdini likes pets...if you can get a hand on her. She tends to be skittish, but if you actually manage to touch her, she pushes into pets and purrs. Unfortunately, she still is a bit bitey if scared. Purrito has recently turned a corner, and while he's a bit skittish about being touched, if you can get a hand on him, he'll be limp and purring ten seconds later, and will gently grab your hand if you try to stop.

Mackerel though...oh my. She used to be showing signs of coming around. She'd come to food, and let you pet her as she ate, though she'd flinch back if she actually realized the good feeling was a human petting her. She'd play with fishing pole type toys. Generally she seemed to be getting tamer. Then I took them for their vaccines. Oooooh boy. She's now VERY hissy, wants nothing to do with people, and won't go anywhere near the food dish if people are nearby. It's been two weeks since her vaccines, and I finally decided to transfer her out of the kitten bedroom to the large dog crate I used when they were itty bitty.

I spent a couple hours yesterday camped out next to her kennel, being hissed at fairly often, though she eventually ate the offered food I gave her. She mewed all night long, and I'm thinking of dragging a mattress out next to her kennel and bedding down there. Thoughts?

Also, all five kittens are due to be fixed on the fourth. I'm concerned about getting her her pain meds the two days after. Can liquid pain meds be mixed into wet food?

 

[susanm9006]

I don’t think the pain meds can be mixed into food but discuss it with your vet. Getting the meds into her the first night home shouldn't be difficult because she will still be loopy and slow from the surgery. After that if you can’t catch her or don’t have someone to help you hold her still for the meds I personally think it is better to forego them than try to wrestle with her but again discuss you concerns with your vet.

When it comes to trauma of any kind like going to the vet, every cat is different in how they react and how long it takes them to recover from the scary event. There are cats like my drama queen that take days to recover from something another cat would be over in minutes. Best thing is to treat them like you normally would and ignore the hissy or hiding behavior.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Ask the vet about compounding pain meds in a way to put into food, or applying to the ear, etc.

If she gets along with the other kittens, I am not sure isolating her is going to be of any benefit. It could put additional stress on her. It might be better to just go in the room where they are all at and spend time talking/reading/singing to them all - mostly for her benefit.

It is possible that in addition to her being particularly traumatized by the vet visit, that she also was affected more by the vaccinations than the others and felt crummy for a while - which she may not have yet gotten over being bothered by it all.

But, I would also ask the vet about any possible side effects she could still be feeling from them at this point. The hissing so much seems a bit concerning to me.

 

[LittleShadow]

Thanks for the advice so far! I'll talk to the vet when I take her in for her fix appointment, that's a good idea. Part of the reason I'm trying separating her is that she hasn't responded to increased time spent with her in the kitten room these past two weeks since her vaccines. I've spent upwards of six hours on days off just hanging out, either alone or with the person adopting two of her siblings. No dice.

Ghost also used to be the hissiest and bitiest baby, but after managing to escape and it taking three days for me to tempt her into a trap to get her back into the kitten room, she made a complete 180 and became super friendly and cuddly. I know they're different cats, but I'd been hoping some one-on-one time without her sibs in the mix might help Mackerel come around too.

I'm just getting concerned about Mackerel not taming down. She doesn't have the skills to be feral, and if I can't get her tame enough to home, I'm not sure what I'll do. I've spent the last....17 hours within three feet of Mackerel now, and the past few playing a white noise generator combo of a purring cat and a cafe babble of human voices. I did go ahead and bed down outside her kennel. She's gone from hissing and hiding to eating offered food and sleeping. She's also switched from hissing to an odd murrreew chirp. ....I think that might be progress?

If I haven't seen definite progress by their fix date on the fourth, I'll put her back with the rest after the fix. I really don't want to stress her out, I just want her non-hostile enough that I can safely rehome her. I am planning to home her as a pair with her brother, Purrito, who is rapidly becoming a purr factory, so hopefully if I can just get her to "skittish and standoffish" instead of "hissy and wouldn't mind taking a swipe or nip at you", I can convince her future human to be patient and wait for her to come around, and focus their desire for a cuddly kitten on Purrito.

That’s her right now. Yes, she has a sleeping spot, but being a cat, declined to use it.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Sounds like a plan! Here's hoping it works!

 

[LittleShadow]

Over 24 hours camped out next to her (excepting bathroom and food breaks) and she's starting to sniff my fingers when I hook them around the cage wire and stay still for a while. And bat at my nest through the wire, so long as I'm not looking. When I look, she hisses and hides. I switched from purr and babble to an audiobook, which she, predictably, hissed at periodically.

On the upside, I've gotten her to slow blink back at me!!!! It wasn't a long slow blink, and she didn't relax too much, but she stopped hissing when she did it and sort of...slouched over to the side some.

 

[LittleShadow]

She...seems to be calmer? She's sniffing me when fingers are offered, sleeping with her back to me, yawning, grooming, playing with her mouse....just generally cat-ing more. She's also not hissing when I get up and lay back down, unless something else has spooked her, and she's not making the cat in the car cries at night.

At this point, I've been at her side, excepting six hours one day for work, and food and bathroom trips, continuously since Thursday night. She seems to be getting used to me, finally.

 

[LittleShadow]

Haha! Got a few fingers on her. Through the wire, I just rested them a bit over her freshly filled food bowl, and she shoved her head right under them and ignored me. Now if she'll let me do that with the kennel door open, I'll be almost back to where I was with her before her vaccines!

 

[5starcathotel]

Oh my, she sooo sounds like my "Shrinking Violet" kitty. She was born in my back yard, and brought inside along with her mother Dory, but still socialized too late (the same time as her sibling, Blue).

Today she will rub on me and purr and seek tons of affection, but only in the early morning hours, when I am just waking up, and she is hungry. During these 2 hours or so, she will let me pet her face, neck, and belly...and will even groom my hair/scalp.

Every other hour of the day, she thinks I am an axe-murderer, and avoids me!!!!

 

[LittleShadow]

The problem with cats being only semi-domesticated is that you either have to get them really, really young to start socializing them, or run the risk of them never fully taming. I'd been working on getting this litter tame-ish before actually catching them, but even with exposure to people and food from four weeks old, they're still hissy babies.

I think they were Mia's first (and last) litter. According to the vet, she's not yet a year old, so she probably got knocked up her first heat. This litter was...amazingly disobedient, to put it mildly. They do NOT come when she calls, or take the lead from her regarding people. Back when they were just 5-6 weeks old, she could call and call for them, and they'd ignore her. At one point, I had her purring her head off, rubbing all over me, calling the kittens, and they were all either hiding under the porch, or right next to the hole they used to get under the porch, hissing at me.

In the progress front, Mackerel licked my fingers today! She's doing good on the "sniff offered fingers/toes" front, and after she ate and started grooming, she decided to groom my fingers a bit too! She still hisses whenever I open the kennel door though, even when I'm offering food. I'll be keeping her in the kennel through the fourth, mainly because there is no way on this green earth I'll be able to catch her again on the fourth for her fix appointment if I let her go in the kitten room before then.

All five kittens will be in the kennel overnight, so they don't jump or run after surgery, and we can get them their pain meds in the morning. They get along well, like to cuddle pile, and will be pretty drugged up, so it should be fine. If they're still woozy, I'll leave them one more night in the kennel, so I can get them their second dose of pain meds.

If they're starting to bother each other and it looks like it will be more dangerous to keep them cooped up than to release them, I'll go ahead and transfer them to the kitten room, but I hope they stay chill long enough for me to wait until the second dose of pain meds has them sleepy and loopy to move them.

Ghost, Cloud, and Purrito shouldn't be hard to transfer. Ghost allows herself to be picked up briefly now, so we can just scoop her into a carrier without drama. Cloud is timid and likes being cuddled where she can burrow her face into my neck, so I can just carry her from kennel to room. Purrito can be "scruffed" with a single finger and thumb light pinch, and just gives up and goes limp, and will be easy enough to subdue and move to a carrier and then to the room.

Houdini...well, if you can get a hand on her and pet her a few times, she likes petting. But she hates being picked up, and she bites when upset. Gloves are going to be the best idea with her. Mackerel....well....I'm probably going to need gloves for her too, if she's not completely loopy. I'm thinking she's too stressed by being isolated for it to be worth continuing after she's fixed.

I feel like I have made progress with Mackerel, but she's not happy about it. She's less afraid of me now, and more...annoyed, most of the time, I think. I'll try to continue spending ridiculous amounts of time with her after the transfer back to the kitten room. Molly's litter spoiled me, I wasn't expecting this one to be so darn difficult! XD

 

[LittleShadow]

Breakthrough! Breakthrough has been made! My hand is so tired, but it was so worth it!! Molly decided to be jealous and lay on me, and because she's a cuddle bug with an easy purr motor, it took about five seconds to have her purring. This caught Mackerel's attention. I rubbed my hand all over Molly's cheeks, not that she minded, then slipped my fingers through the kennel wire.

Mackerel sniffed, watched Molly get petted, then crammed her head under my hand and started purring too. After a couple minutes of Mackerel doing everything she could to get as much of herself petted as possible, I took a risk and opened the side door of the kennel and stuck my hand through. I tucked the sheet I use to cover the cage so she'd have a harder time realizing the door was open enough for escape, and it seemed to work. It took a minute or two, but then Mackerel was back under my hand, purring up a storm, just absolutely going nuts over being petted.

I must have spent over five minutes petting Mackerel before she got tired and wandered off, still purring for a good ten minutes until she fell asleep. I didn't have food out or anything! Also, Mackerel really likes having behind her ears rubbed. A lot. And under her chin and the front of her chest. I just....I know she's going to backslide again, that's a given, but.... She now realizes petting feels good!

Sorry the pics are blurry and not great, but I didn’t want to risk annoying her trying for better ones.