Hey all! My boyfriend and I adopted a one-year-old cat from the humane society a couple of weeks ago. They labeled him a "homebody" -- a cat who wasn't doing well in a shelter environment, but who would warm up at home. He seemed sweet and we felt bad for him. And I'm sure he is sweet! But it's been a bit rough so far.
We have a spare bedroom that was completely empty, so we've made it the cat's space. He has a tower, bed, litter box, toys, and a decent hiding space. We both spend about 30min to an hour a day in the room (one at a time, before and after work), just reading or working while we wait for him to eat or just hang out with him. We leave the door to the room closed - the hope is that he won't feel too overwhelmed if he just has the one space to get used to at first. We've also been spraying feliway on some of his things to help him get comfortable with them.
I know it can take weeks or months for a cat to warm up, but I'm just worried that we aren't doing enough, or that we're doing something wrong. He still often hisses when one of us enters the room, and the one time I got close enough to try to touch him, he scratched me. He hides in a corner during the day, but he seems pretty healthy - we can hear him bouncing off the walls at night and batting all his toys around.
The most we've been able to do is gradually get him to eat closer to us. We took him to the vet the other day because he was due for some vaccinations and I was worried he'd be aggressive to the vet, but he was perfectly docile. While he still seemed nervous, he was willing to let the vet touch him. No hissing, no scratching. It made me wonder if we were missing something.
Pet enthusiasts! Do we just need to keep being patient? Is there anything else we can try to help our cat friend warm up to us?
Thanks!
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/bocxah/recently_adopted_a_very_frightened_cat_feels_like/
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