- Joined
- Feb 4, 2023
- Messages
- 16
- Purraise
- 27
A bit of a long post, but I’d like to provide the background information. So… about 5 and a half weeks ago one of my cats disappeared a week after I was given a new kitten by my neighbors. Unsure if the kitten was related to him disappearing or not because from about day 3 onward he cuddled and groomed the kitten every day. The kitten was around 9-10 weeks old when I got him I believe, and he hissed at me a bit but quickly got over it and from the start followed my two 10 month old cats around and loved them (until the one disappeared). He has since just bonded even more with my remaining cat, and they play often.
Due to my housing situation (I live in a small hut in Africa), my cats are indoor/outdoor cats. My older cat, now 11 months old, spends most of his time outdoors, coming in to nap in bed during part of the day. He likes to spend time up high outdoors above my toilet area and shower, especially in the rainy season. The kitten I have had goes outside for a couple of hours sometimes, but doesn’t know how to climb well yet, so struggles to hang out with my older cat. Due to the structure of my house, that kitten can escape the house from indoors, but can’t make his way back inside yet (which my older cat can), but he will cry at the door for me when he wants in.
Then, come yesterday, some kids from next door told me they found the sister to my new kitten. They handed me a closed plastic bag which I quickly opened and a black kitten exploded out. I grabbed her and she immediately dug her claws into my hand before I managed to scruff her. I opened a cat kennel I had inside my house and put her inside with the door open. My older cat ran into the kennel and sat next to her and she proceeded to hiss and spit at him until I removed him. Then my other kitten, supposedly her brother, noticed her and he proceeded to hiss and growl at her. If it was his sister, he did not recognize her after 6 weeks apart. I gave her some food which she gulped down. She is quite literally skin and bones and is probably half the weight of the kitten I already had, but almost exactly the same height.
It’s been almost 24 hours since then and things are… not going well. Whenever the kitten sees me she hisses and spits like crazy, and same when she sees my older cat. In the meantime, she doesn’t hiss at her brother but he continues to harass her, following her around just to hiss at her. I managed to get her into a blanket a few times to pet her and then she actually responds really well. She lays in my lap and purrs and kneads me. After petting her for a while I decided to show her the litter box. But as soon as I sat her down in it, she instantly went back into freaked out mode and bolted to hide, giving me a good hiss on her way. That’s pretty much been a cycle… every few hours I’ll find her and bring her to my lap for pets, she’ll seem to enjoy it, and then I’ll try to show her the litter box after a while and she’ll freak out. Maybe I should stop showing it to her but to my knowledge she has yet to pee or poop, and I don’t think she has ever used a litter box before, so I’m eager to get her used to the idea. I also don’t think her freaking out is because of the litter box but more so a mode she enters when she is on the ground at all.
This morning when I opened the door to let my dogs outside, the new kitten took the opportunity to bolt out of the door. The dogs were confused and ran with her, thinking it was a new game, causing her to shoot right up a tree to the very top. After several minutes of her crying up on the thin branches and realizing she did not know how to get down, a child climbed the tree and threw a blanket over her to catch her. When I brought her down she ran back into the house, shot under the bed, and hasn’t come out since. Both my older male and the 16 week old brother have gone under the bed a few times too, and she still hisses at my older male and gets hissed at by my kitten, but she doesn’t move and they eventually leave to hang out elsewhere. Due to my living situation, I really don’t have any way to isolate her completely from them because there is not even a door inside of my house to close and even if there were the walls do not reach to the ceiling and my older male can jump up and over the walls…
On the history of the kittens…. There is one other person who “keeps cats” in my village and he has two female cats. Somewhere close to his house exists a feral colony of cats that his two intermingle with and produce children with… eventually the kittens leave his house to migrate to the feral colony. The children living near me had asked him for a kitten before which he had given them, only for their parents to tell them they couldn’t bring it inside and to get rid of it. That was the first kitten I got 6 weeks ago (my two original males came from me asking this man for kittens). Feeling bad about my lost cat, the kids had conspired to get me the sibling, who at this point was living in between the feral colony and her mothers house.
So… my two options for the kitten are to socialize her at my house or return her to the feral colony if she isn’t able to be socialized. Unfortunately there is no vet who performs spay/neuter anywhere close to me (the closest is about 4 hours away and not very reliable), so I won’t be able to get her spayed soon (I plan to take the kitten I already have with me on my next trip to the capital in 3 months or so to get him neutered at a better vet, as I did for my original two cats).
So… I don’t know. This is kind of a unique situation I guess because I don’t have a lot of options for separating and containing the cats. I’m sure if the new kitten explored she could find a way out of the house, but luckily this hasn’t happened yet. I just didn’t expect so much hissing and anger from the sister of my sweetest little kitten, and I don’t know if she is too old to be worked with now or bond with other cats in this way… any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated
Due to my housing situation (I live in a small hut in Africa), my cats are indoor/outdoor cats. My older cat, now 11 months old, spends most of his time outdoors, coming in to nap in bed during part of the day. He likes to spend time up high outdoors above my toilet area and shower, especially in the rainy season. The kitten I have had goes outside for a couple of hours sometimes, but doesn’t know how to climb well yet, so struggles to hang out with my older cat. Due to the structure of my house, that kitten can escape the house from indoors, but can’t make his way back inside yet (which my older cat can), but he will cry at the door for me when he wants in.
Then, come yesterday, some kids from next door told me they found the sister to my new kitten. They handed me a closed plastic bag which I quickly opened and a black kitten exploded out. I grabbed her and she immediately dug her claws into my hand before I managed to scruff her. I opened a cat kennel I had inside my house and put her inside with the door open. My older cat ran into the kennel and sat next to her and she proceeded to hiss and spit at him until I removed him. Then my other kitten, supposedly her brother, noticed her and he proceeded to hiss and growl at her. If it was his sister, he did not recognize her after 6 weeks apart. I gave her some food which she gulped down. She is quite literally skin and bones and is probably half the weight of the kitten I already had, but almost exactly the same height.
It’s been almost 24 hours since then and things are… not going well. Whenever the kitten sees me she hisses and spits like crazy, and same when she sees my older cat. In the meantime, she doesn’t hiss at her brother but he continues to harass her, following her around just to hiss at her. I managed to get her into a blanket a few times to pet her and then she actually responds really well. She lays in my lap and purrs and kneads me. After petting her for a while I decided to show her the litter box. But as soon as I sat her down in it, she instantly went back into freaked out mode and bolted to hide, giving me a good hiss on her way. That’s pretty much been a cycle… every few hours I’ll find her and bring her to my lap for pets, she’ll seem to enjoy it, and then I’ll try to show her the litter box after a while and she’ll freak out. Maybe I should stop showing it to her but to my knowledge she has yet to pee or poop, and I don’t think she has ever used a litter box before, so I’m eager to get her used to the idea. I also don’t think her freaking out is because of the litter box but more so a mode she enters when she is on the ground at all.
This morning when I opened the door to let my dogs outside, the new kitten took the opportunity to bolt out of the door. The dogs were confused and ran with her, thinking it was a new game, causing her to shoot right up a tree to the very top. After several minutes of her crying up on the thin branches and realizing she did not know how to get down, a child climbed the tree and threw a blanket over her to catch her. When I brought her down she ran back into the house, shot under the bed, and hasn’t come out since. Both my older male and the 16 week old brother have gone under the bed a few times too, and she still hisses at my older male and gets hissed at by my kitten, but she doesn’t move and they eventually leave to hang out elsewhere. Due to my living situation, I really don’t have any way to isolate her completely from them because there is not even a door inside of my house to close and even if there were the walls do not reach to the ceiling and my older male can jump up and over the walls…
On the history of the kittens…. There is one other person who “keeps cats” in my village and he has two female cats. Somewhere close to his house exists a feral colony of cats that his two intermingle with and produce children with… eventually the kittens leave his house to migrate to the feral colony. The children living near me had asked him for a kitten before which he had given them, only for their parents to tell them they couldn’t bring it inside and to get rid of it. That was the first kitten I got 6 weeks ago (my two original males came from me asking this man for kittens). Feeling bad about my lost cat, the kids had conspired to get me the sibling, who at this point was living in between the feral colony and her mothers house.
So… my two options for the kitten are to socialize her at my house or return her to the feral colony if she isn’t able to be socialized. Unfortunately there is no vet who performs spay/neuter anywhere close to me (the closest is about 4 hours away and not very reliable), so I won’t be able to get her spayed soon (I plan to take the kitten I already have with me on my next trip to the capital in 3 months or so to get him neutered at a better vet, as I did for my original two cats).
So… I don’t know. This is kind of a unique situation I guess because I don’t have a lot of options for separating and containing the cats. I’m sure if the new kitten explored she could find a way out of the house, but luckily this hasn’t happened yet. I just didn’t expect so much hissing and anger from the sister of my sweetest little kitten, and I don’t know if she is too old to be worked with now or bond with other cats in this way… any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated