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- Oct 29, 2022
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I've been in/out of cat rescue since the year 2000, even having my own rescue for 1 of those years. I consider myself pretty good with feral kitties. Here's my scoop...
I live in a regular neighborhood and a year and 1/2 ago I was feeding 8 feral cats. All best of buds. With help of a local rescue they were all trapped and fixed and even tried taming them down by keeping them all in my garage and working with them for 35 days. Finally I decided they just needed to be released so I let them go and my husband put in a cat door in the garage window and within 1 month, all 8 cats were going in/out of our garage at night and 1 of the 8 became tame enough to pet and play but not to be picked up.
A year later I was told by a neighbor that they were going to start trapping the cats 1 at a time and hauling them off somewhere. I wanted them to stay together and that though horrified me so I asked them to give me a week to see what I could do, which they did. I spent the 1st week trapping them in the garage (the first set of 5 who were the fab 5, very close knit. Then I reached out on Next Door and found 2 related barn homes willing to take all 8. 5 to one barn and 3 to the other. It was a dream come true, an answer to prayer.
Well...5 weeks after they were all rehomed to their barn homes, one of the 5 showed up at our house. Why I have NO idea! I played with him with the string toy and fed him and within 24 hours he was back in my garage trapped and tried to start working with him.
Here is where I need ADVICE - one of my cats attacked him out of nowhere. Not bad enough for a vet visit but ugly enough for me to think this may not work out.
He was in the garage 1 month before we caught him again to move him into my big double decker cage. The cage was moved into the bedroom where my other 4 cats hang out most of the day so they could get used to each other. I've been swapping scents and they seem to be ok but he's still in a cage, at least I think it's a he. There were 2 black kitties that looked almost identical and this is one of those. Name is HAPPY...lol
The most progress I've made was with a cat puppet my husband found and I pet him with that puppet attached to the kitty toy wand. I tried my hand in the past 2x but when he reached out to touch me he used all claws. He has NOT learned to be gentle. I've only been able to pet him with the wand toy or with the puppet attached to the wand.
Yesterday morning 10/29, all my normal cats were out of the bedroom and I opened the cage door to give Happy the room for the day and see how it goes. In 3 hours Happy came out and hung out under the bed in different locations as every time I checked in on him, he was moved. That was 6am - 1pm, when I checked in on him again and he was back in the cage eating. I slowly walked over and shut the cage door. Trying again this morning.
ADVICE needed on what else I can do to desensitize my big cat to Happy so no more attacking happens? I do not want to keep Happy if his life would be in misery because of 1 of my other cats.
I know this was lengthy - sorry about that. Just thought you would need the whole story in order to give advice. anna
I live in a regular neighborhood and a year and 1/2 ago I was feeding 8 feral cats. All best of buds. With help of a local rescue they were all trapped and fixed and even tried taming them down by keeping them all in my garage and working with them for 35 days. Finally I decided they just needed to be released so I let them go and my husband put in a cat door in the garage window and within 1 month, all 8 cats were going in/out of our garage at night and 1 of the 8 became tame enough to pet and play but not to be picked up.
A year later I was told by a neighbor that they were going to start trapping the cats 1 at a time and hauling them off somewhere. I wanted them to stay together and that though horrified me so I asked them to give me a week to see what I could do, which they did. I spent the 1st week trapping them in the garage (the first set of 5 who were the fab 5, very close knit. Then I reached out on Next Door and found 2 related barn homes willing to take all 8. 5 to one barn and 3 to the other. It was a dream come true, an answer to prayer.
Well...5 weeks after they were all rehomed to their barn homes, one of the 5 showed up at our house. Why I have NO idea! I played with him with the string toy and fed him and within 24 hours he was back in my garage trapped and tried to start working with him.
Here is where I need ADVICE - one of my cats attacked him out of nowhere. Not bad enough for a vet visit but ugly enough for me to think this may not work out.
He was in the garage 1 month before we caught him again to move him into my big double decker cage. The cage was moved into the bedroom where my other 4 cats hang out most of the day so they could get used to each other. I've been swapping scents and they seem to be ok but he's still in a cage, at least I think it's a he. There were 2 black kitties that looked almost identical and this is one of those. Name is HAPPY...lol
The most progress I've made was with a cat puppet my husband found and I pet him with that puppet attached to the kitty toy wand. I tried my hand in the past 2x but when he reached out to touch me he used all claws. He has NOT learned to be gentle. I've only been able to pet him with the wand toy or with the puppet attached to the wand.
Yesterday morning 10/29, all my normal cats were out of the bedroom and I opened the cage door to give Happy the room for the day and see how it goes. In 3 hours Happy came out and hung out under the bed in different locations as every time I checked in on him, he was moved. That was 6am - 1pm, when I checked in on him again and he was back in the cage eating. I slowly walked over and shut the cage door. Trying again this morning.
ADVICE needed on what else I can do to desensitize my big cat to Happy so no more attacking happens? I do not want to keep Happy if his life would be in misery because of 1 of my other cats.
I know this was lengthy - sorry about that. Just thought you would need the whole story in order to give advice. anna
