New Cat — Two Week Update
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how the humans were bringing a new cat into the house, and some of the strategies they were going to try to use to integrate said cat. I thought perhaps all you nice humans would like an update (and hey, if you want to throw some treats my way for sending you an update, I wouldn’t say no!).
Location
New cat, whose name still isn’t decided because apparently the humans don’t think her given name fits, is in a spare bedroom upstairs. The door’s been closed basically the whole time, because the few times the humans tried to put up the baby gates (they might be rushing it a little bit if you ask me, but of COURSE they didn’t), she’d hiss at the rest of us. But she’s getting pretty bored and lonely being stuck in there, so they’re trying the baby gates again. That means during the day, she’ll have Larry to interact with, and at night, she’ll have the rest of us.
Time and Patience
Every day, the humans go into the room and hang out with the new cat for a couple hours. Sometimes it’s the female, sometimes it’s the male, and then at night it’s both of them. The male human’s even slept in the room with the new cat! So they’re spending a decent amount of time with her, getting to know her, but not pushing her.
What they’ve learned so far is she’s really easily over-stimulated, so they can’t pet her too much, she squeaks when she talks to them, she likes to lay next to them but not necessarily on them (and if she lays on them she doesn’t want to be touched), she likes playing with the feather stick, she enjoys catnip (who doesn’t?!), she wants out of the room but is still afraid of getting out, and she eats way more than they expected. Basically, she’ll fit right in with the rest of us.
You know, the humans are big fans of letting the cat choose the human. All of us chose the humans, mostly because they smelled like food and gave decent pettings. But the new cat didn’t get to choose — they just took her (I’m fuzzy on the details, but it sounds like it was a tough situation). So the humans have to be really patient with her. It’s kinda like that old human, Maslow, used to say, where basic needs have to be met first — food, water, warmth, rest — and then you can work on safety and security. New cat has to know her basic needs will be taken care of first, then she has to know she’ll be safe, and *then* they can really work on being friends. I get that.
Smells
The humans have two pheromone plug-ins in the room to help calm her down. They’ve also put a blanket in the room that smells like them, so she can get used to it. They haven’t tried the toy swap yet — they don’t feel like she’s quite ready, but maybe this week? I dunno.
She’s basically made the rooms hers, though. She came with her own cat tree, and cat bed, and cat toys, and she’s spending a lot of time in her tree. And when nobody’s in there with her, she seems to spend her time rubbing herself on, like, everything (as if she could magically erase the pungent odor of me! Hah!)
How do the humans know that? They’ve got a camera in the room to spy on her! That’s so devious and sneaky…I love it!
Flexibility
Everything the humans are doing comes down to being flexible. You can’t rush stuff like this. Every cat is different, and every cat is going to move at their own pace. And for the humans who work full-time, it’s hard to make time to interact with a new cat while still making time for all the…well, I don’t want to say old cats, because that’s insulting, but you know, the “original” cats. The humans are having to talk a lot about who’s going to spend time with her when, and what that looks like, and whose schedule has flexibility to be up there, and stuff like that. I guess maybe it’s good for their relationship, because they’ve gotta talk more about things, and from what I understand about humans, talking is a good thing?
That’s how it’s going. It’s kinda slow, and not super exciting (unlike me, who’s always exciting), but I have a feeling that once she’s *really* ready to integrate, things are going to move really fast (kinda like Mama when there are cookies around).
