Shadow Cat — Update 4
Jan 18, 2023 —Feb 28, 2023
Our last update finished at January 17, 2023.
Since that time, we have made some pretty good progress in socializing Shadow. We far from being able to pick her up and snuggle her, but we feel that we are doing quite well.
The interactions with Taffy have somewhat improved, but not 100 percent. They tolerate each other.
A new “normal” has been established. Bruce feeds Shadow, and I spend designated times playing with her. She seems to accept this and treats us both differently, according to our roles. Bruce also plays with her, but I seem to be her main playbuddy.
We now leave her room door open a lot of the time. She is free to come and go, but always has the option to return to her “safe place”. Taffy spends most of her time downstairs on the basket chair, sleeping or watching bird and squirrel activity through the plate-glass window. Shadow wanders through the house, but tends to spend most of her time upstairs.
I go into her room and sit and read. At first she ignored me, but has taken to coming down from her perch and trilling at me to ask for playtime. Once I activate the mouse on a string toy she becomes totally engaged. I usually keep the Chinese back scratcher and a brush close at hand in case she comes close.
In the first days in late January, she was a little cautious about approaching too close.
But the lure of mousey on a string proved to be too strong for her and she approached close to where i was seated.
She circled around, came close, stared then, circled again and rushed after mousey to where I had dangled it over her tube. She then flung herself to the floor and roiled about reaching for mousey and trilling.
During the past few months of trying to improve our relations with Shadow, we came across a rescue organization called FlatBush Cats. They specialize in rescuing and spay/neuter/return in Brooklyn, New York. They have excellent, short videos showing how to rescue, and how to socialize feral kittens (and some grown cats). One of the tricks they suggested was to force the target cat to come to you at mealtimes, and to begin to accept pats while eating, and to learn to trust you.
Bruce started to implement this method and it didn’t take very long for Shadow to comply.
This is where we are at currently. We will continue to work slowly at gaining Shadows’ trust. We’ll let you know how this is going in our next update.
