It occurs to me that it could be useful to readers for me to assess how two of our indoor cats have progressed from beginning as feral and now living domesticated. I'm going to talk now only about Tiger Lilly. Hopefully, I will remember to talk of Stripe's progress in another post.Keep in mind as I share - Tiger Lilly would never let us touch her - not even come anywhere near her - when she was living outdoors, feral. Now, Tiger Lilly loves to roll around on the floor for attention. That, plus meowing is her way of asking for someone to pet her. She totally loves having her head, ears, chin and tummy rubbed, as long as I don't pick her up. Tiger does not let either of us pick her up. If we initiate that, she runs off. But often she will climb into my husband Stew's lap .. it has to be on her terms. She can be quite insistent about being in his lap, even if he is busy with something on his lap at the time. Stew saved Tiger Lily from dogs attacking her. So they have a special bond. Her bond with me comes from me caring for her with medications, food, and changing her dressings when she was healing from surgery after the dog attack.
She is extremely food motivated. If I place food in front of her, then in front of our Tabby cat, Tiger will run immediately to try to eat Tabby's even if it is the same thing I just gave Tiger. I think it might be a residual aspect of starting feral - the fear that someone will take your food, so you aggressively take another cat's share - sort of a survival instinct. This habit drives my husband nuts. He thinks Tiger should be able to feel enough reassurance from 3 years indoors that this habit should drop away. I can understand how such a thing could be ingrained for life no matter how much the cat is given security. People have things that eat at them for a lifetime, regardless of how much therapy you get. Why not the same for animals?
Does anyone reading this have a cat which insists on leaving his/her bowl and immediately going to steal it from another animal in the house?
Here is a link to the story about Tiger Lilly's rescue.
http://homelesscatcare.blogspot.com/2009/06/tiger-lillys-journey-from-feral-to.html
She would still be outdoors if this had not happened. So I think her attack was one of the best things that ever happened to her. She recovered completely from her injuries (one back femur was completely severed). She runs and jumps now as good as any kitty!!
I don't have much time to post to my blog. But I intend to come back as soon as possible with some more links to useful information for my readers.
Have a great holiday season!!
Debby of Homeless Cat Care
11 comments:
Maybe Tigerlily had an tough past life just like our pawless Kenggy. Kenggy sometimes will push her way to eat. She gorges her food at times as if our human had starved her.
Mine are pretty good, though Derry will push Nicki out of the way for kibble sometimes. LOL. They get a very kibble-restricted diet.
But Chumley (my first adoptee) had food issues, as well as abandonment issues. Well, I think Chum was an emotional eater, if cats can be that. He hated that I would leave for work in the mornings, even though he had Annie for company, and would look at me, gorge on food, keep looking at me as I was getting ready, gorge on food.....
Really, though, how can you can expect shelter adoptees/rescues to be without issues? My current three all have their own, different ones, as do I. :-)
I'm very happy to know Tiger Lily is feeling more at ease now around you and that she lets you pet her.
And about the food related issues... We picked our dog off the streets when she was very small. Now she's almost an adult and she still can't help trying to pick up anything that looks like food off the street. I wrestled a lot of old bones and scraps out of her mouth. It's a bad habit, but I think it's an old survival instinct she can't let go of...
We are glad that Tiger Lily is enjoying her life now and left most of her feral ways behind.
I'm so glad to hear Tiger Kitty is settling in. We have two black cats who appeared in our back yard a couple of weeks ago. We've been feeding them but they won't let us get close to them. One is a male and the other a female, they may be litter mates because they are always together and look exactly alike, only the female is a little smaller than the male. He will actually scope out the area where we put the food and call to her, then she jumps the fence into our yard and he stands guard while she eats. I would like to get them into the house, now they are staying under our shed which does provide protection from the rain, snow and wind. We also put out a cardboard box with some towels in it closer to the house and under cover.
So glad to hear this great update on Tiger Lily!
Such good news about Tiger Lily!
Noticed your comment on Pet Blogs United, now following you! Don't let CindyLu fool you, we're huge cat people here...impressed with your work!
Tiger Lily is a beauty and lucky to have angels like you to care for her. We are so happy to hear of all that you do for these kittys!
Nubbin wiggles & hugs,
Oskar & Pam
aww... tiger lilly is so pretty! she looks just like the cat i had as a child :)
Oh it is so great that Tiger Lilly has come so far! And oh she is so beautiful!
As far as the food thing - this happens at our house, and other than Virgil, who was only outside for about 4 weeks after being born, none of our cats were born feral. Some do it more than others - Barney is good about not doing it, Gus and Stella are probably the worst (probably Gus the most), so I don't think it is always just ferals that do it. Gus was first born in his litter and was biggest for most of his kittenhood, but there were a total of 6 in his litter, and there are 6 here now - maybe it is partly a multicat thing - I am not sure. But they all do it at our house - even though they each get their own plates for breakfast and dinner - I call it "musical plates" because when one cat goes for someone elses food, the one usually will go try to get some from another plate - usually the empty one, but not always.
I missed this post somehow, that Tiger Lily is very pretty! I hope your Christmas was purrfect!!!
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