Jan 7th – Jan 16th
We just crossed Gus’ two year adoptiversary on Sunday! He’s approximately 3.5 y/o now and his behavior has changed a fair bit since we first got him. He used to give a lot of small love bites or bites from overstimulation. These are all but gone now. He used to not even want to walk over our laps to get to a treat. Now he finds himself in our laps about once a day. He’s still not really a Lap Guy™ but the change is huge. Gus is super good about getting his nails trimmed and loves being pet all over. Honestly he’s kind of become the perfect cat. It gives us a lot of hope for Marsh!
Gus and Marsh
The introduction between Gus and Marsh is going great. They’re getting a bit more time together and Marsh is getting more time out in the rest of the apartment (with Gus in another closed room). We switched the way we do “site swaps” — we have Gus in a different room than Marsh’s quarantine room and we leave Marsh’s room open. That way he knows he has a safe place to go back to. We’ve also been swapping soiled litter between boxes. Gus gets super interested in Marsh’s litter box and loves to use it 🙄. But I think there’s already progress on that — Marsh used to be like !! why are you going towards my poop sand !! and now he doesn’t care as much, and can certainly be redirected from caring.
They’re both eating their wet food meals on opposite sides of a cracked door. They’re also happily eating their favorite treats in the same room inches away from each other
The introductions do get a little tense without the presence of treats. Marsh will sometimes get spooked about Gus and give him a whack. He has improved on some similar behaviors though, where he would bite at Gus or whack him as he went by. I am feeling mostly optimistic about their introduction. I’m a little worried looking ahead at meal times and general resource (litter box, water, beds, toys, etc) sharing in the apartment.
Play Aggression
We’re continuing to overfeed Marsh in an effort to remove one variable from his misbehavior. He eats a ton. It’s not sustainable — he’s eating about 450kcal a day. But we’ll see.
Unfortunately the overfeeding alone hasn’t solved the issue. Marsh has had two of his worst incidents towards us in this time. We talked to the shelter about whether this was the right home for him or not. It was an emotional day. We’re gonna keep trying with him though. We have a new protocol with him:
- We don’t spend time in his quarantine room unless it’s to play with him, feed him, or other caregiving duties. He’s yet to get full-on spooky outside of the den. So we’re avoiding the issue entirely. This has led to four days without an incident.
- If we do get into an incident and can’t redirect him then we will try to act in ways that prey wouldn’t. For instance, moving towards him instead of trying to slowly leave. Once we’re far enough along in an incident then we’re getting bitten/lunged at either way. There’s no way to evade it — might as well try an entirely different approach.
- We’ll do our best to not react to a bite (we’re pretty good at this) or lunge (this is really hard). We’ve stopped firmly saying “no bite” or getting up because this could be misinterpreted as an aggression from our part.
- I try to project a lot more confidence around him. Every time I start an interaction with him I go right up to him and offer him my hand for a sniff or pets.
- Trying to ramp up the amount of time he gets out of the den. This is somewhat limited by Gus’ comfort at being confined to a room and our schedule each day.
In positive news, he let me trim his nails while Kat kept him distracted with tube food (meat yogurt)!
Look at this sweet, sleepy boy cuddling his favorite catnip pineapple.
Marsh’s perma-“buh?” face.
He loves to sleep on the couch back and it’s hard not to go hang out with him all the time.
Letting them play footsie through the door! Sometimes they really get into it but it’s all play.
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