Adopted 13 yr old cat who has been at shelter since 4 wks old. Traimatized, cannot touch, aggressive. Hopeless?

Adopted 13 yr old cat who has been at shelter since 4 wks old. Traimatized, cannot touch, aggressive. Hopeless?

She is clean, eats well, uses litter box & has been check out by my vet. Have had 3 wks, but is not trusting me at all. Confined to one room at this time.

Was able to pat her under her terms, but now goes totally bonkers if she thinks I might touch her again. Climbs the walls, bites & punchers skin. Have I taken on an impossible task.

Vet says since she has lived at a shelter, she does not have social skills and probably never will. Is she a hopeless case? Should I try to return her?

Asked by Mistake 11 days ago Similar questions: Adopted 13 yr cat shelter wks Traimatized touch aggressive Hopeless Politics & Law > Issues.

Similar questions: Adopted 13 yr cat shelter wks Traimatized touch aggressive Hopeless.

That just breaks my heart that this cat lived in a cage at a shelter for 13 years! You are wonderful to have taken her home with you. But you are going to need to give her months, not weeks.It will take a long time, maybe a year or more, before she learns that she is safe where she is.

You have to look at this from her point of view: her entire life has been lived in a cage, with little socialization. Even being in a bedroom is terrifying to her. You may have already done this, but if not, make her some safe places, like cardboard boxes with a pad or cushion inside, where she can retreat.

And you are going to have to have a lot of patience. Can she tolerate you being in the room at all? I don't mean happily or comfortably, but can you be in the room without her attacking you?

If so, put a comfortable chair in there, or lie on the bed, if there is one. Maybe put a TV in there. Whenever you can, go in there, and read, or watch TV, or sleep.

Speak to her softly and kindly, but mostly just go about your business. Try tossing her a Temptation from wherever you are sitting, once in a while. But until you get her to the point that she stops being frightened of you when you go in the room, do not attempt to pet her or challenge her in any way.

If you are reading, try reading out loud, so that she gets used to hearing your voice while she is not being pushed to do anything that scares her. You may never turn this kitty into a lap cat. But you can give her a much better life for the time she has left, which could be years.

It will take a long time though, and your progress (and hers) will be measured in tiny increments. Once she is comfortable with your presence, get a "Da Bird" toy, and very slowly, try to intice her into playing with it when you cast is (like a fly fishing pole). Don't try to pull it close to you, and let her catch it a lot.

Take it with you, or put it away in the room, like in a drawer, so that she only sees it when you are in there. Please don't take this kitty back to the shelter! She so deserves a chance at a life outside a cage, but right now the cage is her only reality and her only comfort, and she is frightened and lost.

You have to give her lots of time. If I can help you any along the way, I will be happy to do that; just send me a message, OK? You have earned your angel wings adopting this needy little soul.

:)Katherine .

Thank you for your response and encouragement. I have not intention of returning Honey Bee to the shelter. I feel that it would cause more damage and make her a total outcast amongst the other cats in the room.

She is now my cat, I fell in love with her the moment I saw the picture of her and my heart broke when I read that she has never known life outside one of those many rooms at the shelter. It has been nearly a week since I picked her up and took her to the vet's for a checkup. It's has been like starting from day one of her coming home with me and we have progressed along about the same as her very first week her.

She is trying her hardest, I can see it in her little fluffy face. I spend a lot of time with her and give her praise and tell her how much I love her constantly. She recognizes my foot steps in the hallway and I hear her jump off the bathroom counter as I approuch.

I find her watching me from beside the little rocking chair, on the braided rug. Yesterday she watched my every move as I scrubbed down the bathroom, cleaned her littler box, swept the floor and washed it, gave her fresh water and food, plus did the normal bathroom cleaning. She stayed in one spot and did not feel the need to panic and hide.

I explained each move I was about to make and she kept looking at everything I was doing. When I do this routine, I then leave her to eat and rest in peace for at least an hour, then I return to the room and set with her and talk to her. She has not returned to the towel shelves that I picked her from last Tuesday.It has become an area that she is not comfortable with at this point.

It is where she had allowed me to pat her from for that previous week. I have introduced her to different forms of hiding things to sleep in, with walls and a cozy pad, but nothing has worked to this point. Today I placed a new cat bed on the rocking chair, hoping that she will curl up in that and lay on something more comfortable than the hard bathroom counter.

She is eating well, so I know that I am doing something right. It did not take me long to see what brands of food she did not like. I must say, she is being pampered in the food department.

Due to her age she is eating only Non Grain foods and prefers tuna, other fish and chicken .... beef just is not her cup of tea. Again, thank you for your encouragement. I am in this for the long run .... I just hope she lives a long life and all the years of stress have not weakened her little heart.

Mistake 8 days ago .

I would talk to the people at the shelter; ask them about the cats personality. Was she confined to a cage, all alone, for 13 years? This seems really strange.

Workers in shelters usually touch the animals, talk to them, and socialize them. Why was this cat not adopted out before, or not socialized, in 13 years? The decision on what to do would depend on what the shelter people say about the cat, I would say.Do they think the cat will eventually settle down?

Some cats become feral when they are out on their own and can never be fully 'tamed', but this cat must have seen people every day when it was fed and cleaned, I would guess? It just seems like there is something missing here. More information?

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This makes me sad. You expect her to be loving and touchy feely from the first minute you bring her home? And now you want to return her, doing further mental damage.

You have not given her enough time to adjust.

God Bless You! That was so kind of you to take a 13 year old cat in from a shelter. How long have you had her?

Maybe give her some time. The poor baby has been in a shelter her whole life.

I've had her since the 8th of November. Spent 2 months visiting her weekly at the shelter. She allowed me to touch her, but not pick her up on those visits.

She even purred for me on one visit and that was the sign I had been waiting for. I did not talk or touch any of the cats in the room, I was there only to see her. Thank you for reply.

I have been lost in my thoughts about what to do and I think I will find some answers from posting my question. Mistake 11 days ago .

Just try to play with her. Dangle a string in front of her or pull it across the floor. Do you have a cage?

If so, just sit it on the floor and leave the door open. She can go in and out as she wants to and she is not confined to it. You did a very wondeful thing.

Just give her a little time.

I tried leaving her carrier in the room with the door removed. She was not impressed with that at all. She spent much of her time giving it the evil eye.

I bought a cube type bed .... closed in with a circle opening on one side. That too was to her liking. She sleep on a braided rug, behind a little rocking chair in the bathroom.

She can hide completely for lay beside it and watch me with the safety of the chair. She is slowly coming back around again. We are back at the stage she was at after she had been with me for a week.

She made great progress during week two, so I am in hopes of being allowed to pat her by the end of this next week. It might take a little longer, but at this point she is not running in panic when I enter the room. She sets quietly and watches me move around the room.

I announce my every move and she seems to enjoy the viewing stand. Even my grown son is allowed to visit with her and she does not freak out. They met after her first week here ... he got down on the floor and talked to her face to face four times during that first visit.

Mistake 8 days ago .

Never hopeless....it took a year for my one cat to let me touch it. It saw me touching the other cats which it curled up with and eventually realized I was the person who gave food/touch/opened door and more. Just reach out with love and keep doing it.

Get it a cat toy....ring with ball. Eventually it may sleep with you. I have had many cats that eventually were fine in time.

Thank you for your support and encouragement. I know this is going to be a long and patient process. I never expected it to be a quick, love at first sight experience for Honey Bee.

I set with her often and I just keep praising her and telling her how much I love her and how good she is. She is a beautiful cat, well groomed and her fur is so soft. She has made some gains since the vet visit .... we are now at the point she was after her first week with me.

Her second week was such an amazing transformation of trust on her part. I was allowed to pat her for an hour at a time, but at her location and with her permission. She did not purr, but I often stroked her till she fell asleep with my hand on her.

I have so much work ahead of me, but it is going to be a slow and trust earning experience on her part. Mistake 8 days ago .

Thank you for giving her a home, you've gotten a lot of good advice here, 1 thing I'd like to add is try laying on the floor, don't look at her, don't try to touch her, but be on the floor at her level, she may respond to that and come to you. It worked with the 2 feral cats I adopted, You may never be able to hold her, or pick her up, but you can still give her a very good life. After a year, my first feral cat, jumped up on my lap on night, I was over joyed, but she didn't want to be touched, not yet, it took a few more months but she'd finally let me pet her, but if I moved in any way that she felt I might try to hold her, she'd be gone in a flash.

I had her for 15 wonderful years. Please don't return her to the shelter and a life in a cage, IMO it would be kinder to have her quietly put to sleep. Keep her, let her have her freedom in your home, give her time and she may just surprise you.

If she was just skiddish that's one thing, but that behavior is impossible. I'd return her but know that she will probably be euthanized.It's not your fault. The question should be why was she in a shelter that long?

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Read through my other replies and maybe you can see what she has been through during her 13 yrs and 5 months on this earth. Some people get a bad deal in life and I think that also applied to all living creatures. She was not born with horrible defects or ugly features.

She is beautiful, stands and sets like a prim and proper lady. She was emotional abused by the other cats at the shelter, children to it to each other and I do believe that other creatures do it as well. She is not hopeless.

She deserves respect and dignity in her senior years, as all seniors do. Cats often live to be 20 yrs old, she may just be one of them. Surely that would not be the case if left at the shelter, the stress level she experienced in their on a daily basis has probably already weakened her little heart.

The vet mentioned that her heart was pounding way to fast and her medical records showed that her blood work showed levels of great stress while there. We will probably never be lovey, cuddle buddies, but I want to give her the best rest of her life I can possible give her. She in return will give me something to make me smile a little more each day and someone to talk to when there is no one else around.

I don't know about other states, but I do know that the majority of shelters and rescue centers in Maine do not euthanize their animals. They make sure that they are all spayed/neutered and placed on an adoption site. None are ever listed as being so many days of being put down.

We just don't do that in this area. It's not her fault that life did not hand her the best life any kitten could possibly dream of. She was just brought to the shelter by someone who thought all the kittens would be adopted out immediately and live happily ever after.

People surrender their pets when they are in the middle of hard times, they don't think about what will happen to them, they assume they will find a loving home in no time at all. People who don't care, just open the car door at the end of their summer stay in Maine and drive away. They find a neighborhood that looks good and they drop their kids summer pets off.

I once found a puppy tied to a sign outside my home ... it's the right thing to do. No, it's not, but that's what happens. That's why we have rescue centers and shelters, but children want kittens and the older cats get over looked once they get to be over a year old.So they stay for one more year, then two more years, then 13 years.

The shelter has one room of adult cats from 2 yrs to 8 yrs, two rooms of senior cats ages 9 yrs to whatever. The kitten room can be FULL on day and a week later it is empty, then it refills and empties again. Black cats and kittens are the last to be chosen ... souly due to their color.

Humans have such a strange way of viewing other creatures and other people, don't you think? Mistake 8 days ago .

I did know a farm cat that would hiss everytime a human got near her. She never got over it. My last cat lived 16 years.

This cat you are talking about doesn't have a lot of lives left. What is the worst that can happen if you take her, she would be a solitary cat for a few years? Can you live with that?

Give her a place to work out agression.

Thank you for your response, I appreciate hearing from everyone and reading all of your stories. Honey Bee seems to only become aggressive when she feels threatened .... meaning when someone attempts to pick her up. I have no intention of trying to pick her us again and at this point, another vet appointment is several months away.

She will need to have her nails trimmed every few months, so that will be the only reason for trying to get her in the carrier again. She is not due for any shots for another 12 months. I do not feel that 13 yrs 5 mos is an age that is anywhere close to the end of her life.My last cat lived to be 17 yrs and I believe that if I had not allowed the vet to put her under and clean her teeth for the first time at 16 yrs, she would have lived longer.

She was effected by that procedure and there was a noticable difference in her health after that. She lived for another year, but it was like someone had knocked the wind out of her sails. Messing with the teeth or gums for creature or human directly effects your heart .... as does any infection to the cartledge in your ears.

She is doing well at this point and working back to trusting me just a little more each day. We are back to the point that she was at the end of her first week of coming to live with me. I'm not really expecting her to progress as nicely as she did during her second week with me, but I can always hope.

I work with her daily and she is now to the point of not running off to hide in a corner when I enter the room. She watching me like a hawk, listening to me talk to her and taking in all my praise. Her 'evil eye' look is softening a little and she tends to stay in one spot and check out all that I am up to in her room.

This morning she even allowed me to slide the rocking chair and braided rug about a foot over the floor .... with her laying on it. That's is a BIG accomplishment in my eyes. She is staying right here in my home.

She deserves to be treated like a princess and she knows it's a lot better than the shelter. Way down deep inside her, I know that she realizes that. Where else can see have a bowl full of dry food, a bowl full of fresh water and her very own dish of cat food.

In fact, cat food that she approved of .... two kinds were ruled out in the first week and never passed her little lips again. Her litter box is clean and very private .... most often clean enough to hide in. She has accepted the sound of my washer and drier working away on the other side of the wall.

Her nightlite gives her the ability to see what is going on at night, the sound of the tv has been okay by her, my grown children have been allowed to visit her .... within her guidelines. Someday I hope to place her photo on my Christmas cards. Mistake 8 days ago .

My neighbor has an outdoor cat, he would come just close enough to him to eat and then back under the house or into the woods, then last March my neighbor fell ill , he is 83. He is now in assisted living and will never come home again, some friends are taking care of his affairs and for now the house is still his. I have been going next door to feed the cat.

He is very shy and at first would not show himself , I had to leave the food and go. Then little by little he would be in sight and then after a few months he would wait in the front yard for me, and scurry just a few feet ahead, talking to me , tail straight up-I could even reach down and stroke his tail -he would shoot a few feet ahead when I did but got used to it after a few months , I could stand a few feet away while he ate. Last week he came up my stairs to eat outside my front door, this past Sunday I opened the door wide and put the food right inside the entrance.

HE CAME IN! AFTER SEVEN MONTHS. He is still shy and very nervous about being inside but I stay at the other end of the room, he finishes the food and scurries outside to sit on the steps in the sun for an hour or so where he washes his face.

I am hoping on a cold day he will sit inside for a while as he grooms after his meal, with luck perhaps in a few months. I still cant pet him and probably never will, thats ok, as long as he feels a bond and knows someone it there to take care of him. Now you can go ahead and call that the fast track to partial trust, because it is.

Give this cat a year just to calm down, these things take a long long time, the cat will get used to you and its new home by then, but you must understand, this cat will most likely always be a bit of a loner, its just the way the tree was bent and how it grew. What will happen is the cat will spend the rest of its life in a good home instead of a cage - it will calm down, find its favorite sleeping spots, and even stay near you in time -well at least the same room where you will see each other, you have done a great thing, but really great things can take forever to accomplish. Keep up th good work.Jpg.

Thank you so much for your story about your neighbor's cat and how you have taken over it's care. You have a great soul and a loving heart and a cat that will never forget your kindness. I just love the photos that you have attached.

The last one shows how beautiful this little creature is and how easy it has been for you to take her/him in. Those are the eyes of a cat who is grateful for everything that has been done for it. Please continue to share photos.

We are doing well here. Please read my other comments from the responses I have received. It will give you a look into the progress we have made over the past week and of the old soul that is trying so hard to give my Honey Bee a better life for her remaining years.

The progress is slow, but I expected that. Her sudden fear and terror just sent me into a tail spin last Monday and I was reaching out for encouragement to go on. I had no intentions of returning her to the shelter, I was just in shock at her reaction.

I have never experience that before, not to that degree. I look forward to the day that I see the look on her face that I see from the cat in your photos. You must be doing something right and it shows.

I am going to attempt to ad a photo of Honey Bee. If all goes as planned, you should be able to see why I fell in love with her at first sight. Keep me updated as to your progress.

Thank you! Mistake 8 days ago jpg.

This photo was taken while she was still at the shelter, hense the cage. She no longer has that look in her eyes. She can, an does look directly at me when I am at her level and speak to her .... praising her for how wonderful she is.

Her eyes open up and the frown seems to go away. I think she is beautiful! No .... I know she is beautiful, inside and out.

Mistake 8 days ago jpg.

Thank you for the pictures, YOUR cat will be OK. Time is the main ingredient to anything worth doing, and worth doing well. Fear is instinct, trust is learned, it takes what seem like forever to tip the scale from one to the other.It will, you sound like an experienced cat person so you know kitty will most likely never behave hand raised,( maybe -you never know with a cat -they do surprise) but it will bond to its home and to you, it will.

As I write this it is just past 6 pm eastern time, abby now waits outside the door, I no longer have to call him in the morning, in the evening I shake the jug with the dry food to wake him up from his nap in the wooded lot across the street. He is sitting outside on the steps resting; even napping a bit. This morning he even peeked behind the door and walked into the kitchen for a bit before he turned and went out after he ate.

He rubbed his chin on the door frame as he left. I am sure your cat is marking his territory every day, and will mark you too in time, keep up the good work with this pretty little girl, she will be fine and have you well trained and her name on the deed to your house in no time flat, keep us posted, TAKE CARE- b.

I have taken the photo above and made it a bit brighter so that the pretty details on this little lady show up a bit more. Jpg.

Just a little update from Tuesday. Honey Bee is still confined to one room and seems content. At the rate she is going, I will be leaving the door open into the hallway in the near future.

Entered the room this morning, as always, I was talking and praising her constantly. She did not jump up and rush to hide, she stayed put on the braided rug. She stayed within a foot of me the whole time I was with her.

When I do anything in the room, I announce what I am about to do. That seems to work for her. She is the silent type, so our conversations are pretty much one sided.At least for now.

My daughter and son-in-law came over and we were going out to eat, so I went in to tell Honey Bee that we were going out for awhile. She was sleeping in her litter box .... fresh and clean, thank goodness. Funny how she sleeps in there on the day I scrub it out.

I sat down, looked her in the eyes and reached my hand into the box and she allowed me to pat her. The first time I have been able to do that since our horrible experience a week ago Monday. Later I found her laying on top of the built-in dresser and she hasn't gotten up there for a week.

I'm so glad she is feeling a little safer now. I went in and sat in the little rocker, continued to praise her and tell her how beautiful she is and how much I love her. She was partially hiding in the corner of the room.

I was looking at a magazine the whole time, talking to her and I had my arm extended in her direction. I looked over and she was fast asleep. She is probably totally exhausted from keeping her ears alert for any movement in the house.

Who knows, one day I might actually see her spraul out on the braided rug and enjoy a nice nap. The 'Crown Victory' of the day was when I went in to talk to her, praise her and I placed my hand down near the floor and she stretcher her neck out to sniff my palm. She actually brought herself closer to ME!

Maybe that little pat I gave her earlier reminded her of how nice it felt to be touched and she realized she is missing it. Tonight is my first overnight house guest since she came to live with me. I sure hope she gets use to it, as the month of December is going to bring other family members for an occassional night here and there.

I know there are GREAT things in our future together! Hope your stray kitty takes a liking to coming in out of the cold and makes an attempted to take a nap for awhile.It's all in the magic of trust. Mistake 6 days ago .

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.