Snark-O-Rama

And those that have whiskers, and scratch...

Snark is a small previously malnourished morsel of a cat, dark dark brown with comical white whiskers, eyebrows, and gloves. She and a couple of siblings were found by a friend at her apartment complex in Hayward, being raised feral by a semi-wild mother. She caught the kittens and started taming them, and offered me one. Since the local animal shelter wouldn't take feral kittens, and Boojum needed a companion after I moved, I decided to take on the challenge of kitten-taming. After a few initial setbacks, Snark seems to be taming up nicely. She still spends much of her time under the couch, and is very skittish, but I recently was able to pet her for the first time (a small shoulder touch while she was resting against my knee on the couch). She came to live with me on Dec 21st, 1994, and was vaguely touchable by late January 1995.

Sept 11, 1995 Just a quick update-- Snark has been pretty darn tame for quite a few months now. She comes out readily when new people arrive at the house, and seeks me out often for cuddling. She has turned into a major love-muffin cat, and will happily receive infinite petting. If she's been petted for a while, she can be picked up carefully and hugged and will drape over a shoulder and purr. She still is very skittish about people moving around, and will dash for cover when I'm walking through the apartment or when someone comes to the door. But she will generally come up to new people and get petting from them, and in fact can be quite a little purry annoyance if we're trying to sit and chat or watch a video. When I was away for 3 weeks in June, she pestered my house-sitter half to death, but was endearingly cute enough that she (the house-sitter) survived. She got out of the house at the end of August, and I was afraid I'd lose her, but she was back the day after, very grungy, and she let me pet her from her perch on the roof and slowly pick her up. She started to panic a little in the 2 or 3 feet from the porch side to the door, but didn't claw and then totally leaped from my hands into the house. She reappeared a couple of hours later, cleaned up and very very very affectionate, and hasn't made a run for the door since. I think she's figured out it's nicer in here. :-)

Now that she's so tame, I tease her often, though she doesn't know it-- I'll be petting her and say, "see, now isn't this better than being wild, you should have listened to me when you were a kitten" and "you're so tame! if you ever get outside they're going to take away your cat license for being just too tame!". But all in all it's working out quite well. She'll always be a very small cat, but I no longer feel guilty about rescuing her from the outside. She certainly seems to enjoy soft couches, regular meals, and lots of cuddling, and no longer looks like a trapped animal darting about the house. She doesn't even get up from her nap when I dash to catch the phone, unless I'm aimed right towards her. Progress is a wonderful thing. At least, in kitten-taming.

Important: if you do adopt a feral kitten, take it to the vet before introducing it to your cat. Snark went from Cindy's cat carrier right into mine without so much as a nose touch with Booj, and then straight to the vet. If you're arranging a capture or handoff of a wild kitten, try to preschedule a vetrinary appointment, including overnight observation. Under no circumstances introduce the two cats before your cat has had its rabies & FeLV shots. If your cat is too young, you have a real dilemma on your hands-- consider boarding the wild kitten with a catless friend or at the vets for a couple of weeks until your kitten is old enough to have the shots. Luckily Booj already had hers, she was about 2 months older.

Be prepared for your current kitten to get sick anyway, with the kitty-sniffles or somesuch-- the feral kitten will have all the tough bugs from outdoors, just like your child picks up the latest cold from school. Also have the new kitty wormed, and possibly stay at the vets through the beginning worming cycle so that she won't infect the shared litterbox.

Kitten-taming Skills

I don't know how universal these are, but this is what has worked for me so far:

Make sure human voices and noises are commonplace

Play talk radio during the day, and/or regular stations. Get the kittybit used to human voices in the background so that you don't end up with a little shadow that disappears under the couch when anyone says anything.

Keep a low profile

Snark was consistently less scared during our interactions when I sat on the couch or on the floor. Thanks to my friend Paul for noticing this and pointing it out. People are very tall, especially when your point of view is about 10 cm off the ground!

The eyes have it

Eeek, you're looking at me! You must be trying to catch me! Learn to let your eyes slide off the kitty when she looks at you with those big gold-coin orbs. Partly closed eyes are a sign of affection with cats; try blinking at your cat with eyes mostly closed, then close your eyes and look away and before opening them. It's a sign of trust and cat-talk savvy. You may naturally want to imitate the comical round-eyed look of your tensing-to-flee kitten, but discipline yourself to drop your eyelids instead. You will be rewarded by a more relaxed cat.

Food is good

Throw little bits of good things towards your shy creature when you are eating. It will be nosy when it sees your other cat(s) eating, and will venture out more and more.

Food from the hand is better

My other cat recently had a respiratory infection and I gave her Nutrical, a tasty (to cats!) multi-vitamin supplement to kill the taste of the Clavamox. Snark learned to come up and lick Nutrical off my finger while Booj was licking it from the tube. She's been much less put off by Hands ever since.

Play with your kitty

Feathers, long bits of string, a string of toddler-safe plastic beads, rawhide shoelaces, and so on-- something long and interactive, so your new buddy can play with it from a safe distance away. Avoid overhead sweeping hand gestures that can look like attempts to catch the little beastie. If she runs away, keep playing, she'll be back.

Make yourself part of the scenery

Sit on the floor while you play with the kitty, and drag the string across your legs, over your lap, over your other hand. Get the little one used to running across you and treating you like just another object. Try not to flinch, they learn eventually not to use the claws for traction. :-) Use your hand as a toy, let your fingers be chased, etc. If you have long hair and don't mind some extra split ends, go for it.

I'm not chasing you, really...

Use exaggerated body movements when walking near the kitty, pointing yourself carefully in a tangent direction and/or looking away.

Nose!

Touch your kitty as much as you can without pushing it. Even a fingertip on the nose is good, provided that you are both reaching out to each other. Sometimes they will be curious before they are ready to accept you-- for the first 4 or 5 weeks I had her, Snark would sniff at my finger and then reflexively hiss at the human scent. Then she progressed to not hissing, then to letting me touch her nose for a moment and sometimes hissing, and now we do nose touches frequently. It's a process. If I have the chance to just run my finger along her back as she scurries by, or touch her foot gently when it sticks out from under the couch, I do. The point is that you are teaching that touch does not equal capture, and that it can be pleasant.

Never grab

I learned the hard way that catching your critter when you have the chance is ultimately an anti-trust-builder. You may get to hold her and calm her for a little while, but she will be even warier later, forgetting the petting and remembering only the panic of being caught. You might also end up with some nice stripey wrist decorations for your trouble, and cat scratches are easily infected. Peroxide is the order of the day...

And finally: Be Patient!

Don't give up too soon, your critter is not untameable if it's young enough (under 16 weeks) and if you are careful it won't be entirely a fraidy cat, though it may scurry under furniture often. When new folks come to my house, Snark hides for the first few minutes but then pops her head out from under the couch and tenatively joins in the socializing from a safe distance. It just takes time.

The Hunting of the Snark