Quoted from Jenniebear:I just know what the shelter told me to go slow and give it time. I had her in a spare bedroom with a tall baby gate blocking her. Well she jumped it and ran into my basement. She doesn’t like to be picked up so I really at this point don’t know what to do? She hasn’t used the litter box all day, I relocated it to the basement. She hasn’t eaten either and that how she gets her medicine, in the wet food. I think she peed on floor somewhere. I can smell cat pee. So I just mopped the whole basement floor and wiped down the base boards. I’ve never had my cat go outside of the litter box before. Maybe that’s why they were worried about the new floors and not scratches like I thought. I’m a little over whelmed at this point.
FWIW, sometimes they just need time. Lots of it.
I picked up a cat from the shelter in 2007, about 4 years old that had a lot of miserable treatment before the shelter got ahold of him. When I got him home, he escaped containment, shoved himself under a radiator and we lived like that together for a few months before he'd even stick his head out. I just had to leave the room for hours or else he wouldn't come out to eat the food i left or use the box. Eventually started coming out if I was the only one around, shadowing me everywhere. 10 feet away at first and slowly closer. Another year before he'd let me or the other cat touch him, and a year after that before he'd let anyone else see him.
He then spent the next 12 years following me around. He'd let a few trusted people pet him if they really wanted to, but his favorite was people who would sit next to him, their hand outstretched petting the air a few inches away from him. A few minutes of that and he'd be purring loud enough to shake the walls.
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