Day 3 — Mon, Dec 30th
Many successes today! We did two new things today. We cracked the pocket doors an inch and let them play footsie with each other. Gus puffed his tail briefly but then got super relaxed and playful. They did this again later and it went really well. We also did a “site swap.” Gus went into the quarantine room, and Marsh explored the rest of the apartment. They both sniffed what they needed to sniff and were quite relaxed about it all.
We have an airlock situation to prevent them from coming face-to-face while we shuffle them around for the site swap. This means there’s a new opportunity to play footsie under the door, and Gus has been very eager!
Marsh has a lot of moods. He’s been biting some, not bearing down, just putting his teeth on you. Gus used to do this, and we trained him out of it by always disengaging immediately. With Marsh, we leave the room entirely when he does it. He did that to my leg for no cause I could figure out as he was leaving from a very sweet cuddle session. His fosters have said he’s not a lap guy, and that’s true, but half his body was in my cross-legged lap! Gus doesn’t like doing that, so this was an interesting difference.
Marsh still really loves his bed.
Day 4 – Day 6
These days have been harder. Marsh is grabbing and biting us and the two cats really want to meet. We’ve continued to do site swaps and larger sessions with the door cracked so they can play footsie with each other. Their body language with each other continues to be relaxed. We’re gonna try letting them meet for a brief period today. We’ll start with a few short sessions a day as they get comfortable with each other.
Marsh was previously trained to jump through hoops and sit on command. The cat behavioralist says this would be a great way to tire him out and keep him enriched in the hopes that his misbehavior would calm down. So we’ve re-upped his clicker training and got him doing more interactive meals with us. It did give us a much better night on Thursday after a rough day with him.
Kat had the clever idea to make a hoop from the wheel cable of a u-lock.1 It took some really easy ones but Marsh is remembering what he learned. We lure him with a spoon of wet food and click when he goes through.
Marsh has so much sweet boy potential.
This blog remains on topic after all! ↩︎
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