Gus and Marsh
We had a few too many introductions between Gus and Marsh that got too tense for our taste. They’re easy to distract and separate, but we had one interaction where they walked up to each other and got on their hind legs with their ears back. Gus was generally getting a little nervous and distant with him. So we took a step back in the intro process and built up their confidence with each other again.
They’re doing better than ever together now. We’ve been trying to ramp up the amount of time they have together and reward it amply. I think we made a couple of mistakes before: doing too many steps at once because they were doing so well together and not keeping them sufficiently distracted while together.
Marsh is still doing a bit of swatting at Gus when he gets too close to his treats (a situation we try to avoid in the first place). And Marsh will occasionally stalk him or try to play with him. Gus doesn’t seem as on edge about it as before and it looks like it’s going well.
One of today’s introductions included them booping noses, Marsh got a little feisty with him, Gus showed some defensive body language, and then Marsh backed off and let Gus walk away.
I’m pretty hopeful here, but it’s a slow process.
Marsh’s Behavior
We can go several days at a time without an incident now! It’s hard to know if Marsh is getting better at this or if Kat and I are just a lot more disciplined at avoiding his triggers. We generally stay out of his quarantine room unless we’re actively doing something with him.
He’s getting more comfortable in the rest of the apartment during site swaps. We’re still hopeful that being less confined will help with his behavior.
We saw a cat behaviorist, Mikel Delgado (whose blog I highly recommend!!), about the situation. She was excellent and gave us some good pointers for training. It validated that we’re doing the right things and should stay the course. She recommended fluoxetine as a possible tool for him. I feel like it will probably happen, but we’re gonna hold out a bit longer and see if we can keep improving. At her recommendation, we’re gonna teach him to sit on a mat, stay there, and try to desensitize and counter-condition him to us getting up while hanging out with him.
We also got him to the vet, and they loved him! He came back with a clean bill of health.
He occasionally shits outside the litter box. This is kind of low on the priorities right now, but we got him a larger litter box, and he seems a lot happier.
Really hoping we can keep making progress with him. He’s such a sweet guy when he’s not being aggressive.