Thursday, 18 July 2019

Adult cat transitioning from outdoors to indoors-only is going a bit too well, should I be worried?

Okay so this might seem a little weird but I am a new cat parent and the situation is a bit special.

Gadget is an 8 year old cat who belonged to my grandmother and he used to come and go out of her house as he pleased, although he stayed near the house after a bad fight with other cats resulted in him losing an eye. She died two years ago and keeping Gadget was impossible for me (no driving license yet, mentally in a bad place, my parents have dogs that absolutely hate cats...) but at that point in time it was okay because other relatives were nearly fighting over him. Yet they let him down.

He was briefly adopted for days at a time before being brought back to my grandmother's empty house (the bathroom window stayed constantly open for him to come and go into the garden and my dad came twice a week to fill his food bowl) because he constantly asked to be let outside, because he peed everywhere, because he hid all the time... One of my cousins had him neutered before bringing him back to the house.

Gadget spent two years alone in that house with only a few hours of human company a week.

My own situation changed and allowed me to try and take Gadget in, but there was a big condition: he had to become and indoor cat because I live in a flat, in a city, and it's too dangerous in my opinion to let cats outside. Plus I still go to my parents' home for holidays (I'm a student) and he'll have to stay inside. Knowing how previous attemps went, I was a bit worried. I still brought him to my flat three days ago.

But Gadget took to indoor life like a fish to water. The first night he woke me up to ask to be let outside because when my grandmother's was alive he used to warn her when he needed to go pee, so I put him in the litter, again and again, until he peed inside.

I've never had to put him in the litter box again, the next time he went on his own. He's never had an accident.

He's never asked to be let out again. He's not particularly interested in the balcony door, nor does he try to dash out of the door when I need to go out. He doesn't even hide, he just sleeps next to me at day and explores the flat at night. The only thing I'm a bit worried about is that he doesn't drink and eat as much as I'd like him too but he was recently treated against worms so I'm thinking this might have something to do with it (plus the fact that this is all very new for him).

He doesn't beg when I'm eating. He doesn't even meows when I leave the flat, only when I go to another room and have to let the door closed (I want to be sure he's litter trained before letting him in all of the rooms so we're both staying in the living room for now).

So in my opinion this is going perfectly well... which weirds me out knowing how previous attempts went. Should I expect backlash in the next few days? Do you think once the novelty of it all wears off he might start with bad behaviors? And how will I keep him from being bored, seeing as he doesn't like treats nor toys (and I've tried A LOT)?

tl;dr: my adult cat is taking too well to indoors life and I'm worried this is a sign of future problems

submitted by /u/Sabtael
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/cerqxo/adult_cat_transitioning_from_outdoors_to/

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