Oh YEAH! Lovely Kitty of doom! Just add a wee touch of black paint to its nose and it would be a clone of the CelynCat.
Mine was a bit less traumatic to catch though. Make friends…find that cat food suddenly keeps leaping into my shoping basket…when come back to cat, bring food…one day…persuade cat that this bag I am carrying is very very good and has a small container of tuna in it…when front end of cat is having great time in Celyn’s bag…shove in rear end of cat. Glad I did not have to argue with tthe three billy goats goth - teenagers are always bigger than me.
btw - isn’t playing the knight in shining armour for maltreated moggies rather too sweet a form of behaviour for an Ogre?
Oh, sorry. As for her ferality, she’s still a skittish little girl. If you pick her up and pet her, she calms down and gets sweet. However, if you get up and leave the room for a couple of minutes, she invariably finds a small, safe space to hide, and hisses at you when you go to pet her again.
Very few teenagers (or adults, for that matter) are bigger than me, and I got to act like an ogre while I was being a softie about the kitty, so I think I managed to retain my cover.
My greatest cat catch was when I was about 11.
We had a stray kitten living under our house trailer. He was pretty wild, but he would come out onto the porch to eat the dry food I left out for him.
After a while, he’d even let me watch him eat from a safe distance.
I asked my mom if I could keep him and she said I could, if I could catch him.
So I got a big tea pitcher, put a nice juicy hotdog in the bottom of it, and laid it on its side right by my feet.
After a while, the kitten would come sniffing at the pitcher, look at me and zoom back under the porch. This went on for about an hour with him getting a little bolder each time.
Finally, he went for the hotdog, expecting to snatch and run.
Just as soon as his hind legs were just about past the top of the pitcher I scooped him fully in, put the lid on, took the tea-kitty inside and announced we had a new cat.
I’ve socialized more than 100 feral kittens and the tricks are: 1) Don’t let her roam all over the house or even in one room. The more she can hide, the longer it will take to tame her. The best thing to do is to put her in a cat playpen or the smallest, least-furnished room possible, so that she can’t find any dark safe corners or under-dresser havens. 2) Pick her up a LOT. A real lot. All the time. I have found - especially for the claw-y ones - that wrapping them in a towel, holding them close to my chest so they can feel my heartbeat, and walking around while talking soothingly really helps. 3) When not holding her, visit the place where she’s confined all the time so she gets used to you. 4) Try to feed her by hand (I don’t mean out of your hand, but you want her to see and know that YOU are the one feeding her).
The holding-in-a-towel is the best. I haven’t had a failure yet. You can google “taming feral cats” if you want more suggestions.
I’ve been letting her have her safe spot under the dresser because of my other cats, so far. One seems royally unconcerned, but one gets violently hissy with her. She hasn’t attacked (and she may not), but she gets that musky cat-fear smell, lays her ears down, etc. Not good. I’ve been afraid that if she gets into trouble with the kitten, the kitten can just go run and hide in her safe place. Bad idea? What do you recommend?
Hmmm, well of course you don’t want DOOM kitten to get eaten by some big scary monster. However, she’s not going to tame up, or it will take a long while, if she can run off and hide all the time. Is there any way you can keep your other cats away from her for a few days? Most likely they are hissy because she’s “new” but usually adult cats will accept a kitten without too much difficulty.
Is the other cat not able to get under the dresser too? I’ve seen cats squeeze through some REALLY tiny holes - if she can get under, and DOOM is under there, then DOOM will be trapped.
You might try putting the hissy cat in a carrier and then putting the carrier in the room with the kitten - this is a good way to introduce two cats to each other: you put the dominant one IN the cage and let the newcomer free. Cat psychology or somesuch. Start off with a few minutes and increase time as the hissing and aggression decreases.
P.S. I think you’re going to have some fierce competition here soon - there’s a gal in another thread who just rescued a 7-day old kitten. Perhaps we could get a Dueling Kittens of CUTENESS contest going?
