We’ve had a new pair of foster kitties in our house for over a week, but I haven’t been able to get pictures of them because they’ve been hiding under the bed! On Sunday, Terry of F.U.R.R. (whose rescue kitties we’re fostering) came to our rescue and helped us move them to another room with fewer hiding spots.
Tonight we had our first real one-on-one (without Terry) interaction with the cats. These two — sister and brother Mango and Mandarin — are much less acclimated to people than our previous fosters and take much more effort to work with at this stage. They were hiding under a dresser when we came in and we had to gently pull them out — with much hissing — and make them interact. In short, as trained by Terry, you calmly follow them around until they get bored and allow you to pet them.
And don’t you know it, it worked! We got both kitties out and purring and being generally okay with us petting them. They were calm enough for us to get some pictures. Here’s Mandarin:
And here’s Mango:
They’re beautiful kitties, and actually quite docile once they’ve calmed down! If you know anyone in the vicinity of Charlotte interested in adopting these two, please point them towards Terry at F.U.R.R.! You can also donate to F.U.R.R. here.
Those are beautiful kitties! Yay, kitties!
I just wanted to add that they are really beautiful kitties and so soft. They are going to make wonderful pets for someone. We’ll continue to work with them to get them more socialized and better adapted to living as domestic kitties. Soon they’ll be spoiled monsters just like our batch of bad kitties.
FWIW, we adopted a badly-abused Savannah a year ago and she’s only now getting to the point where she’ll tolerate anyone getting close enough to touch her without inflicting pointed objections (not that we try to pet her, just that we now are allowed to be close enough that we could. If we have 911 on speed dial.) Patience pays.
Which is why I’m so freaking jealous right now.
Good luck with the Savannah! Patience definitely does pay, though it’s often hard to follow — I just want to scoop up our foster kitties and give them a big hug!
I just keep thinking, “arterial bleed.”