Update on the Cats
Jun. 6th, 2019 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
Several months later, we are making slow progress with the cats who went to war over an Accident and a Misunderstanding. We were feeding them treats either side of a closed door for a couple of weeks, then we moved on to a baby gate with a semi-sheer cover over it, then after we returned from our travels, we removed the cover from the baby gate.
Boog no longer lives in fear of a random attack by his brother that was never going to happen, and he's more comfortable with being upstairs again. We had them touching noses through the baby gate, and everyone was fine with that. The problem is when Boog does move away, Kuro really wants to go after him, and then we escalate to a chase. We know that because we had an ‘oops’ the other week when Boog escaped. He ran upstairs, met Kuro, they touched noses briefly, and that was okay. But then when Boog trotted off, Kuro went after him, Boog ran faster, so did Kuro, and then we grabbed Kuro. Boog was mildly agitated at that point, with slight tail lashing, but he stopped running as soon as we got Kuro and he settled down with the catnip scratcher right afterwards, so it was a vast improvement over the reactions we’ve had from him previously.
So at this point, we're feeding them with no barrier between them, but we have Kuro on the harness. If Boog wants to come closer to Kuro, that’s his choice, but Kuro can’t go after Boog. We're having them interact together that way for five minutes or so several times a day, and it's all fine. Kuro has gently poked at Boog with a front foot a couple of times when Boog gets too pushy, because Boog has never had any concept of personal space or normal feline social boundaries, and Boog has backed off a foot or so but not been in any way upset by it, and then he's come back in for a more acceptable approach (ie saying hi to Kuro's face, not going straight to sniffing his bum).
It's still pretty obvious though that we can't have them loose and unsupervised together - things would go downhill pretty quickly if Boog wanted to get away and couldn't, or if he really annoyed Kuro by pushing too far - but hopefully we'll get there with a bit more patience.
Boog no longer lives in fear of a random attack by his brother that was never going to happen, and he's more comfortable with being upstairs again. We had them touching noses through the baby gate, and everyone was fine with that. The problem is when Boog does move away, Kuro really wants to go after him, and then we escalate to a chase. We know that because we had an ‘oops’ the other week when Boog escaped. He ran upstairs, met Kuro, they touched noses briefly, and that was okay. But then when Boog trotted off, Kuro went after him, Boog ran faster, so did Kuro, and then we grabbed Kuro. Boog was mildly agitated at that point, with slight tail lashing, but he stopped running as soon as we got Kuro and he settled down with the catnip scratcher right afterwards, so it was a vast improvement over the reactions we’ve had from him previously.
So at this point, we're feeding them with no barrier between them, but we have Kuro on the harness. If Boog wants to come closer to Kuro, that’s his choice, but Kuro can’t go after Boog. We're having them interact together that way for five minutes or so several times a day, and it's all fine. Kuro has gently poked at Boog with a front foot a couple of times when Boog gets too pushy, because Boog has never had any concept of personal space or normal feline social boundaries, and Boog has backed off a foot or so but not been in any way upset by it, and then he's come back in for a more acceptable approach (ie saying hi to Kuro's face, not going straight to sniffing his bum).
It's still pretty obvious though that we can't have them loose and unsupervised together - things would go downhill pretty quickly if Boog wanted to get away and couldn't, or if he really annoyed Kuro by pushing too far - but hopefully we'll get there with a bit more patience.
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Date: 2019-06-07 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-06-08 02:40 am (UTC)