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- Aug 4, 2014
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- Purraise
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Hi everyone!
Just to get this out of the way - we’ve discussed these issues with several different vets to ensure there wasn’t a medical problem at the root of any of this, and he’s repeatedly had a clean bill of health.
Anyway, long story short, we brought in a feral cat who had a lot of health issues, like a permanent head tilt and FIV. His name is Pretty Kitty, or PK for short. He is kept in his own room to reduce the risk of transmitting FIV to our very large, constantly rotating clowder inside (and also for PK’s safety to not constantly introduce him to new cats who could be carrying disease).
That was a year and a half ago now.
And let me tell you - this boy is a wild one. In a year and a half, we’ve made NO progress socializing him. He hisses every time we come in the room, hisses the entire time we try speaking to him (even from a distance), he won’t come anywhere near us.
In fact, he even tried to attack me the other day when I accidentally caught him out in the room (I usually knock and wait a few seconds for him to go hide… apparently I didn’t wait long enough this time!).
So human interaction and play time is mostly out of the question.
We’re really struggling to find alternative enrichment for him.
He doesn’t appear to be comfortable up high at all, presumably because of his head tilt and perhaps some residual dizziness. So trees, shelves, windows, etc he has no interest in (even with various steps and ramps and ensuring everything is large and super stable for him).
He also doesn’t like tunnels, ball track/tower toys, cat mobiles, treat toys/puzzles, scratchers (we’ve tried them ALL!!!), automatic toys/lasers, heating pads, self-grooming arches, silvervine sticks, chew toys, etc
He has also shared his room with foster rats and baby squirrels I rehab at various times, and had no interest whatsoever in watching them. A fancy fake aquarium didn’t interest him either, neither did a tub of water filled with toy fish that “swim”.
No interest in the cat wheel, cat garden/grass (we even made it large enough for him to lay and roll around on), or a low hanging hammock that attaches to chair legs.
I’m missing a few things, but we’ve essentially tried pretty much everything I can think of to try and bring some joy in this cats life.
What he does like:
- the ripple rug
- Small toys, especially squeaky or catnip toys, but only when they’re in the ripple rug
- catnip
- hiding places on the ground
- cat music (okay, I don’t know if he actually likes it, but we do play 4-8 hours of cat music for him daily)
I try to rotate the toys in the ripple rug somewhat regularly, but I feel so awful and guilty that this is his only real form of enrichment and he’s otherwise alone in that room all day with nothing to do
He seems to like to stalk and pounce with the ripple rug, so I’m thinking of making a foraging box with shredded packing paper + in tact packing paper for him to “stalk” toys.
We’ve also thought about maybe adopting an FIV+ friend for him, but he has a history of fighting, so I’m not too sure about that.
Honestly though, at this point, if it wasn’t for his FIV, I’d actually consider releasing him back outside because this situation feels so unfair to him. We normally don’t have an issue keeping our “room cats” entertained :/
If anyone has any other out of the box ideas, that would be really great!
Just to get this out of the way - we’ve discussed these issues with several different vets to ensure there wasn’t a medical problem at the root of any of this, and he’s repeatedly had a clean bill of health.
Anyway, long story short, we brought in a feral cat who had a lot of health issues, like a permanent head tilt and FIV. His name is Pretty Kitty, or PK for short. He is kept in his own room to reduce the risk of transmitting FIV to our very large, constantly rotating clowder inside (and also for PK’s safety to not constantly introduce him to new cats who could be carrying disease).
That was a year and a half ago now.
And let me tell you - this boy is a wild one. In a year and a half, we’ve made NO progress socializing him. He hisses every time we come in the room, hisses the entire time we try speaking to him (even from a distance), he won’t come anywhere near us.
In fact, he even tried to attack me the other day when I accidentally caught him out in the room (I usually knock and wait a few seconds for him to go hide… apparently I didn’t wait long enough this time!).
So human interaction and play time is mostly out of the question.
We’re really struggling to find alternative enrichment for him.
He doesn’t appear to be comfortable up high at all, presumably because of his head tilt and perhaps some residual dizziness. So trees, shelves, windows, etc he has no interest in (even with various steps and ramps and ensuring everything is large and super stable for him).
He also doesn’t like tunnels, ball track/tower toys, cat mobiles, treat toys/puzzles, scratchers (we’ve tried them ALL!!!), automatic toys/lasers, heating pads, self-grooming arches, silvervine sticks, chew toys, etc
He has also shared his room with foster rats and baby squirrels I rehab at various times, and had no interest whatsoever in watching them. A fancy fake aquarium didn’t interest him either, neither did a tub of water filled with toy fish that “swim”.
No interest in the cat wheel, cat garden/grass (we even made it large enough for him to lay and roll around on), or a low hanging hammock that attaches to chair legs.
I’m missing a few things, but we’ve essentially tried pretty much everything I can think of to try and bring some joy in this cats life.
What he does like:
- the ripple rug
- Small toys, especially squeaky or catnip toys, but only when they’re in the ripple rug
- catnip
- hiding places on the ground
- cat music (okay, I don’t know if he actually likes it, but we do play 4-8 hours of cat music for him daily)
I try to rotate the toys in the ripple rug somewhat regularly, but I feel so awful and guilty that this is his only real form of enrichment and he’s otherwise alone in that room all day with nothing to do
He seems to like to stalk and pounce with the ripple rug, so I’m thinking of making a foraging box with shredded packing paper + in tact packing paper for him to “stalk” toys.
We’ve also thought about maybe adopting an FIV+ friend for him, but he has a history of fighting, so I’m not too sure about that.
Honestly though, at this point, if it wasn’t for his FIV, I’d actually consider releasing him back outside because this situation feels so unfair to him. We normally don’t have an issue keeping our “room cats” entertained :/
If anyone has any other out of the box ideas, that would be really great!