So, my whole life I have only ever had outgoing cats. I recently lost my beloved senior cat to cancer, and he was the most bold, outgoing, personable, cuddly cat you could possibly imagine. So, being the grieving lunatic I am, I went to a shelter and for reasons I can't explain I fell in love with cat that was super sweet, but super shy (which they were clear about). She has a tipped ear so I assume she was a stray or TNR failure of some kind. She was so sweet and so enjoying being held and pet that I couldn't leave her there, so I brought her home, and now I am freaked out.
I put her in my bedroom with food, water and litter and closed the door to let her acclimate. It's been almost 12 hours, though, and I've only been able to get her to eat a small can of wet food, she hasn't used her litterbox, and she's spent almost the whole time under the bed. The only way to get her out from under the bed is to baby talk to her like a weirdo, which she seems to love and takes as an invitation to slide on over for face rubs, which then leads to full-body rubs and me being able to pick her up and cuddle her in my lap for 5-10 mins. I know she enjoys it because she purrs and rubs against me like crazy (and the last session she even did a little grooming session on both of us), but afterwards she goes right back under the bed. And if anyone else enters the room during one of these lap sessions, all bets are off and she runs and hides. She's shown zero aggression, she's just soooo skittish.
I know this is massive progress for only having her half a day, especially for a shy former stray, but . . . how long should I expect it to take before she eats/drinks and uses the litterbox normally? What if this goes on for days - at what point is it dangerous for her health? For those of you with shy/former stray cats, how long did it take them to act like "normal?" Or were they always skittish and it never went away? I mean, if this is how she is I will learn to live with it, but . . . I'm just a little taken aback because I've never had a shy cat, and I don't know what to think or expect for the future. Any advice/hope that she might come out of her shell would be much appreciated!
P.S. If this is who she is, that's just how it will be. I won't return her just for being shy.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/k71833/cat_adopters_tell_me_your_success_stories_with/
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