Looking for advice on helping my new pal feel comfortable in our home!
I adopted a cat with my partner approximately a month ago. She's 8, no history of abuse/neglect that we know of, but has been through a few homes lately. She was originally living with a woman who later was diagnosed with dementia and became unable to care for her, and her family were also unable to take her on. She was surrendered and placed into a foster home. This first fosterer didn't interact with her much and so the agency she is with thought she would never be very affectionate and may be better suited to long term foster than adoption. Eventually she was moved to a second foster home, with a fosterer who made much more of an effort to approach her and pet her. This seemed to pay off and within a month she was begging for attention and pets and was quite vocal. This is when we called the agency and they told us about her - we adopted her the same day. However - she immediately escaped. Three weeks on, we got her back. So it's now been a week since she returned, and about a month since adoption.
She is currently sleeping for most of the day, and generally in quite hidden spots. Under sofa cushions, under blankets, and in her cat bed under the cushion are her favourite spots. When she does venture out with us around, she walks quite low to the ground, and seems quite timid. It's really rare for her to do this, though, and she prefers to hide and sleep. However, if we walk slowly and talk softly, she will let us approach her and pet her. Sometimes she purrs when we do this and she headbutts our hands and generally displays that she likes pets. We've filmed the living room overnight (where she's currently confined to until she seems more comfortable here) and she does walk around a lot and explore. She sits on windowsills, and doesn't really hide. She only eats/drinks and poops overnight. She does eat all her food. She doesn't really like cat treats, doesn't seem to beg for food, and doesn't respond to catnip.
I'm really just looking for advice on helping her to trust us more, or on if we should try something like approaching her at night. Similar to her last foster carer, we've recently tried to approach her a lot to pet her. We placed her on our laps last night and she laid down and purred while we pet her. She seemed quite relaxed for a while and eventually got up and walked off, and seemed less timid than usual and a little more confident. Given it's only been a week or so that we've had her back, and she's had such a rough past year or so, I'm definitely expecting her to need some time to settle in. I feel very grateful that she's already so accepting of pets and seems to enjoy them. But...this is also all very new to me. I have lived with cats before, but never adopted a cat before, and never dealt with an anxious cat like this. It feels kind of wrong for us to approach her when she's hiding and to give her affection in some ways, even though she responds so well to it and enjoys it. It goes against how I would've treated cats in the past. But I worry that if we don't do this, she won't ever learn to trust us either. How do we balance all this?
We think she's great and are so happy we have her, and would love any advice or anecdotes on helping cats like this to feel comfortable.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/jietb6/helping_my_newly_adopted_timid_cat_settle_in/
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