Natterings From Nepantla

No, not an untamed riddle roaming the wilderness, a puzzle involving a feral cat.

Barbecue Cat has been increasingly indicating over the last year or so that she'd like to move into the house. Not because she's taking a liking to humans, though; she'd like to come in and hang out with the indoor cats. For years we've been leaving the back door a bit open, or open with the screen closed, so that cats can come up and sniff at each other, so everyone feels like they know each other. Barbecue Cat seems to really like other cats, but the only other regular we have right now is Shy Cat, who is not really into snuggling and mutual grooming and so forth. Whereas Phosphor has the same general like of other cats, and Monty has outright been trying to make play overtures at her.

All the advice out there on transitioning feral cats to indoor life starts with the assumption that the cat is warming up to humans, and you need to work on getting them acquainted with any cats already in the house. Here, the cats are already practically on a first-name basis, and we have find a way for the indoor cats to persuade the feral that humans can be trusted to behave themselves. She's willing to trust me long enough to come sniff my fingers for a moment when I'm putting food out, but we've stalled at that point for years.

So the first problem is letting her into the house without letting anyone else out. This can only be achieved by having me hovering near the door, redirecting the indoor cats away from it if they get too interested. Ideally we could just close the interior door to the back room so that no other cats would be present, but Barbecue Cat doesn't want to come in unless she's seen cats on the other side of the door recently.

On the other hand, we can have too much indoor cat presence. When she tries stepping in, one or more cats will walk up and start sniffing her before she's gotten very far.

One strategy that's helped is to open the door with Monty present, then throw a toy ball for Monty to chase into the next room. This not only clears the way, it demonstrates that we have toy balls in the house. Last summer, Barbecue Cat got hold of some kind of round unripe plant growth and was batting it around on the patio. When it vanished after a few days, I tried putting a toy ball out, and it got vigorously played with from time to time until the weather turned bad.

I tried putting some food and water near the door and inviting her in this morning, but Phosphor and Marlene chose to demonstrate that the food was safe by eating all of it. She stepped in anyway but didn't want to go near the food bowl with two other cats swarming it.

With persistence, we have at least reached the point where she will step into the house for a few minutes multiple times in one evening. She'll even tolerate being within a couple feet of me for those few minutes as long as I don't make any sudden moves.

I guess this is my stuck-at-home pandemic project.