operation kindness

[piranha]

today we had a breakthrough! the last few days i've been letting bacchus off the leash during the morning, but still kept walking around with him. usually cal keeps out of sight, but today she came out and watched us, and after a while, started to follow me, and lie down just a couple metres away whenever i'd stop. i stayed between her and bacchus, ready to unleash the wrath of ghoti upon him should he pounce on her.

but he never did. we spent about 3/4 of an hour ambling about and sitting and rolling in gravel (ok, i passed on that part), and they were always within a few metres of each other, and no altercation ensued. she is quite wary of him still, but she no longer behaves like prey, which makes all the difference, i think.

man, i am so happy. i was starting to despair. but patience and perseverance is finally paying off.

Comments

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

This is so cool. I'm very happy to hear. I've been reading about your adventures with the cats for a while, and it's had a lot more meaning the last week as we just adopted another two cats on the weekend, and the previous cat (see icon) is Not Good At Sharing. He is adapting, though, which is pretty amazingly fast for a nine-and-a-half-year-old who has probably never had to share territory before (he was a breeding male before we adopted him).

Our cats are all domesticated (and from the same breeder, who recently passed away, which is why we adopted again). I really admire your patience with wild, or at least undomesticated, cats.

catly adventures

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

thanks! i gotta say, i developed more patience than i thought i had, and than i ever had to use before. i've dealt with ferals before, but never with a grown tomcat -- i'd only caught those and delivered them to the humane society; this is the first i've kept. i am really impressed with him, because this has been such a huge change for him, and he's really dealing well, considering.

sounds like yours is pretty amazingly adaptable too; that's good. new cats can be a real source of unrest for quite some time. hope things continue to go well there! (cute picture :).

Re: catly adventures

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Selfishly, I'm glad you have been dealing with a feral grown tomcat, because I think it's been somewhat useful at figuring out what's up with our cat (Zeki), who similarly was a grown tomcat until six months ago. As far as we can tell, the problem now isn't so much that he doesn't like the new cats, but that he thinks he's supposed to mount them. He's certainly tried with the female (Amber) a few times and she's not having a bit of it, and he seems confused more than anything.

I haven't seen him actually try to mount Nemrut, but I've seen him plaintively approach, with kitten-like miaowing, while Nemrut is hissing and growling, basically saying 'back off'. Nemrut is otherwise the biggest soppy teddy bear of a cat and doesn't appear to be the type to insist on being top of the hierarchy. So that's my guess.

Otherwise, Nemrut is carrying a bit of a grudge, which isn't totally unreasonable since he's only been here a week, and Zeki didn't exactly welcome him with open arms.

I expect we'll be having some disruption for at least a month yet. You've been dealing with Bacchus how long? :-)