Hello
Just joined the forum, looks pretty interesting. I have a bit of a problem, and I hope you'll be able to give me some advice.
My wife and I have had cats before in our single lives, and had been talking about getting a cat together. An opportunity came up where we could adopt a rescue cat, neutered, inoculated, litter box trained, and we went for it.
The little fella is called Nigel. The shelter said he was 3 but we think he's younger, maybe 18 months to 2 years (he's got the spindly build and big ears of an adolescent cat). On the whole, he's very well behaved, doesn't bite, scratch, doesn't destroy the apartment.
The problem is he doesn't want to play alone. I will play with him, spend about half an hour in the morning and another half hour just before bed time. He likes me to poke a pipe cleaner through the holes in his cat carrier. But when play time is over and I go and do something else, he follows me around, meowing, and when I approach the room where his box is, he runs to his box, climbs inside and looks out expectantly, waiting for me to get down and play with him again. We've left toys for him on the floor, but unless there's a human on the other end of it, he isn't interested.
Any ideas what I can do to get him to play more independently? I won't stop playing with him, but I obviously can't just drop everything to satisfy his killer instincts!
Just joined the forum, looks pretty interesting. I have a bit of a problem, and I hope you'll be able to give me some advice.
My wife and I have had cats before in our single lives, and had been talking about getting a cat together. An opportunity came up where we could adopt a rescue cat, neutered, inoculated, litter box trained, and we went for it.
The little fella is called Nigel. The shelter said he was 3 but we think he's younger, maybe 18 months to 2 years (he's got the spindly build and big ears of an adolescent cat). On the whole, he's very well behaved, doesn't bite, scratch, doesn't destroy the apartment.
The problem is he doesn't want to play alone. I will play with him, spend about half an hour in the morning and another half hour just before bed time. He likes me to poke a pipe cleaner through the holes in his cat carrier. But when play time is over and I go and do something else, he follows me around, meowing, and when I approach the room where his box is, he runs to his box, climbs inside and looks out expectantly, waiting for me to get down and play with him again. We've left toys for him on the floor, but unless there's a human on the other end of it, he isn't interested.
Any ideas what I can do to get him to play more independently? I won't stop playing with him, but I obviously can't just drop everything to satisfy his killer instincts!