I need a dog like Sprocket. Sprocket rescues lost and feral cats and helps his human take care of them. You’re all familiar with our brood.\u00a0 Lady and Tarzan were born in the parlor to Roxy, a kitty we fostered.\u00a0 Then there were the four ferals I trapped, too young to be spayed and neutered, and by the time they were old enough (I didn’t dare wait to try to capture them when they were old enough), they were too old to be prime for adoption and two still really aren’t adoptable, even at over a year old.<\/p>\n
The challenge we’re having now is with Lady.\u00a0 She has been resentful of the intrusion of her space by the four kittens (I’m sure she wants to be the only kitten in the household, no matter how old she is).\u00a0 Lady and I are a lot alike. But reality is, she’s not the only kitten.\u00a0 She’s been aggressive with all the kittens, but three have worked things through with her and either stay out of Lady’s way, or, in the case of Floyd, usually give her space but occasionally call her bluff and bat back at her.<\/p>\n
But Rossie is a different story.\u00a0 Rossie has become increasingly reclusive.\u00a0 Lady has been actively aggressive toward her.\u00a0 Mr. L is at the end of his rope with her and, as I feared, mentioned the dreaded, “Lady may not fit in this household anymore.” He’s concerned about Lady’s aggressiveness with Rossie, and he’s also concerned about how Lady will respond to the new Kitten (she will have a name — Kitten is a placeholder) still in quarantine (but about to be introduced to the household next week).<\/p>\n
I’ve been researching how to handle situations like this (they are very common in multi-cat households), and I fear we’ve allowed Lady to let this aggressiveness become a\u00a0 habit.\u00a0 And you know how difficult breaking a habit can be.<\/p>\n
Here’s my plan (if experienced multi-cat people have suggestions, I’m willing to listen):<\/p>\n
First, I plan to isolate Lady from the house.\u00a0 We have a second dog cage (this is a wire cage large enough for a St Bernard to stay in comfortably either standing or stretched out) I’ll set up in the garage with full kitty comforts — litter box, carrier for shelter with towels inside and over the top to give her a cozy place to sleep and perch, food, water, and toys.\u00a0 I’ll spend time with her a couple of times a day.\u00a0 She’s not being punished so much as getting her away from the stresses of the other cats.\u00a0 This serves two purposes.\u00a0 She will not be interacting with the other cats, so the aggressiveness will not be expressed.\u00a0 If Lady is the cause of Rossie’s increased reclusiveness, we should see her out and about more.<\/p>\n
If Rossie becomes more active about the household with Lady removed, that will indicate Lady was a part of the problem with her socialization.\u00a0 If that’s the case, Rossie’s confidence should improve with Lady out of the house.\u00a0 Assuming that works, we’ll encourage Rossie and help her become more confident and involved in the house.\u00a0 Once that begins to take place, we’ll consider the right time for Step 2.\u00a0 (If that doesn’t take place, we need to re-evaluate whether Lady was a part of the problem or not.)<\/p>\n
While the first step is taking place, Kitten will be introduced to the household.\u00a0 I’m curious how Rossie will respond to this.\u00a0 Kitten is outgoing but much smaller than Rossie.\u00a0 Will Rossie make friends and bond with the kitten, or will she be afraid?\u00a0 By the time we’re ready for the second step, Kitten will no longer need the cage in the house (we use the cage to protect the newcomer from any aggressive behavior during the introductory phase when we aren’t around to supervise interaction).<\/p>\n
Second, Lady moves back into the house, but she will stay in the cage to allow the other cats, especially Kitten and Rossie to get used to her being there.\u00a0 We can gauge everyone’s reaction to Lady being back in the house. I anticipate this taking at least a week. (The first step could take up to a month.)<\/p>\n
Assuming all goes well with the second step, Lady will be allowed out of the cage for brief supervised time out.\u00a0 If she misbehaves, she will return to the cage for a few days.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of variables to this plan, but I do not want to have to rehome Lady, and I don’t want a lot of other less than positive things to happen to her.\u00a0 I want her to be a happy healthy kitty, and I want our other kitties to be happy healthy kitties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I need a dog like Sprocket. Sprocket rescues lost and feral cats and helps his human take care of them. You’re all familiar with our brood.\u00a0 Lady and Tarzan were born in the parlor to Roxy, a kitty we fostered.\u00a0 Then there were the four ferals I trapped, too young …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117,77],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-6759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-pets","tag-lady"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16450,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6759\/revisions\/16450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}