I'm temporarily sharing a house with my elderly parents, and between us, we have a total of six cats. Five of them coexist more or less peacefully (sometimes blissfully!), but then there's Abby.
All we know of Abby's background is that, at about 18 months, she was trapped and brought to a shelter, where she promptly delivered five kittens, one of whom is my darlin' Clyde. My mom and I volunteer at that shelter, and we tried to work with Abby as much as possible, to help her relax and become adoptable... but she remained terrified of (and hostile toward) everyone, human and feline alike.
After her brief and disastrous adoption to a crazy woman, we couldn't bear to see Abby go back into a cage, so we decided to foster her and see if we could make progress at home. My mom worked very hard at it, and has won an amazing degree of trust -- Abby plays with her now, and loves to be petted and brushed.
The catch is that Abby lives in my father's room, door closed, no other cats allowed. When Mom tries to bring her out to join the rest of the family, Abby hides. So Abby lives alone.
It's been three years now, and Abby is ours. The only way we would give her up is if we found her a quiet, one-cat household where she could be happier. But that's not being contemplated now -- the present issue involves my father.
My father is 85, and his thinking is going askew. He's confused and often angry, and he has come to profoundly resent Abby. So we have to move Abby out of his room -- the one place she feels safe -- and we have to do it TONIGHT. The only place for her to move TO is Mom's room, and that is complicated by the presence of our newest feline family member, St. John Dundee, a five-month-old kitten who was thrown out of a moving car at the age of six weeks. (He is miraculously unscathed, untraumatized... a wonderful little redheaded boy!) He is the first and only kitty ever to sleep with Mom, and she just can't put him out.
So the plan is for Abby to live in Mom's room, and for St. John to join them at night. This is slightly less alarming than it sounds -- St. John is so fast that he has several times slipped unnoticed into my father's room and spent up to an hour in there with Abby, and she doesn't seem to be as upset about him as she has been about our other cats... so they are at least acquainted. But still...
This will be a HUGE change for Abby, and we know she'll be panic-stricken. We have some Feliway and will spray the new room liberally. We also have some beech oil that seems to have a calming effect on two of our other cats, so we'll rub that into her eartips (and St. John's, too). We have a nice little kittyhouse shelter that Abby can retreat to. And Mom is prepared to sit up with them and try to keep things calm through this first night.
Questions:
Should we clip their claws today for their mutual safety (we do not normally keep up with this, since they hate it so much), or would that only add to the trauma?
Can you think of anything else we can do to help ease Abby into her new room?
Thanks for any suggestions you can provide...
All we know of Abby's background is that, at about 18 months, she was trapped and brought to a shelter, where she promptly delivered five kittens, one of whom is my darlin' Clyde. My mom and I volunteer at that shelter, and we tried to work with Abby as much as possible, to help her relax and become adoptable... but she remained terrified of (and hostile toward) everyone, human and feline alike.
After her brief and disastrous adoption to a crazy woman, we couldn't bear to see Abby go back into a cage, so we decided to foster her and see if we could make progress at home. My mom worked very hard at it, and has won an amazing degree of trust -- Abby plays with her now, and loves to be petted and brushed.
The catch is that Abby lives in my father's room, door closed, no other cats allowed. When Mom tries to bring her out to join the rest of the family, Abby hides. So Abby lives alone.
It's been three years now, and Abby is ours. The only way we would give her up is if we found her a quiet, one-cat household where she could be happier. But that's not being contemplated now -- the present issue involves my father.
My father is 85, and his thinking is going askew. He's confused and often angry, and he has come to profoundly resent Abby. So we have to move Abby out of his room -- the one place she feels safe -- and we have to do it TONIGHT. The only place for her to move TO is Mom's room, and that is complicated by the presence of our newest feline family member, St. John Dundee, a five-month-old kitten who was thrown out of a moving car at the age of six weeks. (He is miraculously unscathed, untraumatized... a wonderful little redheaded boy!) He is the first and only kitty ever to sleep with Mom, and she just can't put him out.
So the plan is for Abby to live in Mom's room, and for St. John to join them at night. This is slightly less alarming than it sounds -- St. John is so fast that he has several times slipped unnoticed into my father's room and spent up to an hour in there with Abby, and she doesn't seem to be as upset about him as she has been about our other cats... so they are at least acquainted. But still...
This will be a HUGE change for Abby, and we know she'll be panic-stricken. We have some Feliway and will spray the new room liberally. We also have some beech oil that seems to have a calming effect on two of our other cats, so we'll rub that into her eartips (and St. John's, too). We have a nice little kittyhouse shelter that Abby can retreat to. And Mom is prepared to sit up with them and try to keep things calm through this first night.
Questions:
Should we clip their claws today for their mutual safety (we do not normally keep up with this, since they hate it so much), or would that only add to the trauma?
Can you think of anything else we can do to help ease Abby into her new room?
Thanks for any suggestions you can provide...