Someone (Steve Bloom) asked after the the foster cat. I think Riley is now pretty much living the life of Riley. He's adjusting quite well to home life, and is now awake and playful in the mornings, becoming more peaceful in the afternoons. He's more settled. Only in the last few days did he get brave enough to snooze on rather than behind chairs. Now he like to position himself rather regally, centrally positioned on a chair or cushion. He still does not fully appreciate that toys are for chasing and hands are not, which is not fantastic when he gets very excited. But he's improving. And is actually now not all that bad at playing fetch, considering that he couldn't do it at all a week ago. Shockingly, he didn't seem to mind when I slipped a harness on him today. Let me know if you'd like to adopt him! I reckon he needs an equally rambunctious cat friend as well as a new owner, but people tell me that cats often do not get on when newly introduced to each other as adults.
12 March, update: Good news! Riley has a new home! Someone visited yesterday and liked him tremendously. She's looking for an interactive cat to keep her and her husband entertained working from home, and also for her son. Apparently their last cat was barely touchable. They should enjoy Riley then! The other news, however, is that she can't take him until after Easter so we get to keep him for another month. He will have been here 3 weeks tomorrow but he's still changing; I write this with him sleeping on my lap, which is the first time he's done so...
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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 3/04/2015 07:42:00 PM
4 comments:
What a handsome fellow!
There's only one way this can end.
I hope the shelter is helping you by posting this cat's availability; if you have a color printer, post pictures there. Best luck with this.
> hands
Oh yeah, any tiny kitten that got "wrestled with" by someone learns to roll over and claw at the huge hand. And you end up with an adult cat that can rip your skin off. I learned to just completely freeze if I reach to pet a cat and it rolls over and starts to wrestle and very, very slowly remove my hand from the cat's reach -- and not let it happen again. Distraction with a puppet or doll sometimes works.
One of my friends successfully introduced two mutually hostile cats, after weeks of hissing and spitting, by rubbing both of them with "junk stinky" perfume -- she said they started frantically licking the smelly stuff off themselves, ended up licking each other, and settled in nicely.
Without that tactic, I've introduced new cats repeatedly by first allowing separate litter and food spots and waiting it out. Typically, a few weeks of hissing and A chasing B with B fleeing in panic; then one day B chases A through the house, and after that they're friendly.
count your blessings:
http://basicinstructions.net/storage/2015-03-10-barfpoop.gif
Bravo.
And as an old cat fart, so to speak -- I hope you'll encourage the new folks to come and quietly sit and read in some corner for an hour or two, as many days as convenient.
To whatever extent you can do that, then Riley will learn they're part of his dominion, even before he gets moved.
And that chin-scratch scent-wiping thing? This is where it's powerfully reassuring -- taking his scent home with them on their hands, or on some convenient bits of toweling, will tell him, when he gets there, that he's lived there all along.
That can make the next move be from one part of his world to another rather than a break and a loss and a new unfamiliar place.
If it's convenient for you all.
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