- Joined
- Jan 7, 2014
- Messages
- 9
- Purraise
- 1
I'm just wondering if you have any ideas as to how to build confidence in a timid but affectionate semiferal cat? Doris turned up a year ago, with 4 young kittens, and appeared totally feral at the time. We trapped and desexed her, and socialised and rehomed the kittens. After feeding Doris for a month, she bonded with me, and within a few weeks became affectionate and smoochy, sitting on my lap, sleeping on the sofa or sometimes on the bed. She became friendly (though still a little timid) with my partner, but remained terrified of strangers, and was never entirely comfortable within the house - if anything startled her, she'd bolt through the cat door. I was just starting to make real progress with picking her up when we had to take her to the vet. Initially I thought it went fairly well - she was terrified but unagressive, and the vet managed to examine her withouth trouble. However since then she seems to have been regressing majorly. She will only come in the house for meals, and sometimes not even then. Fortunately it is midsummer here in New Zealand. The rest of the time she hides in a remote corner of the garden, though she will let me play with her in the garden in the evening, and is quite smoochy and purry. However she has become nervous of my partner and runs from him. I feel we have lost at least 6 months worth of work. I think part of the problem is that our other cat (herself a timid ex-stray) had become more dominant. A couple of times I have managed to coax Doris inside and onto my lap, but Iris has jumped up and nipped her. Sometimes too if I'm petting Doris outside, Iris will leap on her and nip her. I'm not quite sure how to deal with it.As the days go by Doris seems to become more timid rather than less. So I need ideas as to how to befriend Doris again. I've considered trying to catch her and keep her inside, however we live in a tiny flat and it's not very practical trying to keep one cat in while the other one needs to go in and out. For her sake I would also really rather avoid this if possible. I'm trying to divide her meals into smaller portions so she has an incentive to stick around and keep coming back for food, but I'm not really sure this is working. I'm a bit scared we will lose her altogether.