Taming feral cats – Tsu Dho Nimh’s method

This guy, Tsu Dho Nimh, is an excellent writer and I agree with much of his method – when I get through laughing at his descriptions, anyway.

Taming Feral Adult Cats: My Own Technique – by Tsu Dho Nimh, – associatedcontent.com.

All I Do is Ignore the Cat and See What Happens

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Given time, a feral cat can be socialized and become a good pet.

Credit: Bigevil600 | © sxc.hu/Bigevil600

I have no delusions about being a “cat whisperer”, but I developed this successful socialization method while working with feral cats. A cat has a powerful survival instinct that will drive it out of a hiding place to learn all about its surroundings, just in case it has to hide from enemies or hunt for food. I just act like part of the surroundings and let the cat make up its mind about me. It may take months, it may take years, the cat may never be a pettable, purring lap cat, but it’s easy. All I do is ignore the cat and see what happens.

Stages of Socializing a Cat

The Prisoner: Place food, water, litter box, scratching post and a couple of toys in a quiet room. Ideally the room should be unused for a few weeks.

When you bring Cat home, place the carrier on the floor facing away from the door. Open the carrier, and leave the room, closing the door behind you. Leave Cat there for several days. Tend the food, water and litter every day. If food vanishes and poop appears, Cat is still there. After a week, leave the door open and continue to check supplies and clean the litter pan. Cat will eventually decide it’s safe to leave the room.

The Invisible Cat: After you open the isolation room, Cat will examine every part of your house, locating hiding places and looking for danger. You will hear Cat prowling in the night, even feel feline footsteps on your bed, but you will not see Cat. During the day, you may see a tail vanish under the couch or an ear showing over a stack of books. If you encounter Cat in the open, stand still and let it decide what to do. Remember: Ignore the cat!

Separate Lives: Soon after the isolation period is over you will look up and see Cat staring at you. Say, “Hi Cat” and then ignore it. Cat will begin to appear near you and move from room to room with you.

This stage is like working in the same office as an ex-lover after a nasty breakup. Cat will wander around but make detours around you or turn into an open door to avoid you. Talk to Cat when you see it, but don’t approach it.

Signs of Progress: If Cat moves away but pauses to stretch, look back, or sit and wash it’s whiskers it means Cat is getting used to you. If Cat is sitting with its back to you it is testing you to see if you will attack as soon as it turns its back.

Cat crouched in the open with it’s front legs visible is a relaxed but possibly wary cat. The classic “meatloaf” posture with front paws curled under the chest is even more relaxed.

Close Encounters of the Feline Kind: Curiosity will eventually drive Cat to investigate you, probably while you are lying down. This is not an invitation to touch Cat. Hold still and see what happens. Cat may walk up to you, sniff, hiss, and run away.

After Cat has made some cautious approaches, lies calmly as you walk past, and doesn’t panic at normal household noises, it’s time to start moving the boundaries towards the cat. Instead of walking past Cat, pause, say “Hi, cat“, then continue. If Cat is lying on a sofa, touch the sofa. Slowly make the pauses longer or move your hand closer to Cat. If Cat holds its ground and hisses, move back a bit, say something and then leave.

Offer your hand to be sniffed. Alas, it may also get scratched so have a good supply of bandages.

This is a slow process. Day by day, inch by inch the distance between you and Cat decreases. Enjoy the small victories, one night waking up to feel Cat curled up on your feet, a month later having Cat join you for a nap.

Getting Physical: After Cat has consistently and calmly sniffed your fingers and appears to be at ease with your approach – it’s finally time to try touching. Do not try to touch the head – that end of Cat is full of teeth and claws. Start with a short gentle stroke near the hips, as far away from teeth and claws as you can get. If Cat hisses, withdraw your hand. Continue offering your fingers to be sniffed and try touching Cat again a few days later.

Slowly work your way up to two or three gentle strokes with one finger, then try leaving your hand in one place for a few seconds. This is the slowest part of the process, because Cat probably has very bad memories of hands grabbing it and shoving it into a cage at the vet’s. Don’t rush it.

What happens next? It’s still up to the cat. I have had feral cats suddenly decide that petting was great and become demanding attention junkies. Others became touchable but never sought out attention. One never tolerated humans touching her, but she accompanied them around the house, played fetch, and slept near them.

Important Cat Language to Learn

Vocal Clues: A “Go no further” hiss is delivered without growling and without a large change in the cat’s posture. Respect the boundaries by retreating. Growling is defensive. Whatever you did to provoke a growl was too much, too soon. Stop it.

Emo Ears: If a cat is staring at you, with its ears flattened sideways or back flat against the skull it means the cat is about to run away, about to attack, or both. Back off.

Running Away Can Be a Good sign: A cat that is running away isn’t always afraid of you or trying to escape. A cat galloping across the room with an exaggerated rocking-horse gait and arched tail is enjoying itself. A cat that looks at you intently, then fluffs its tail and bounds off is not frightened, it’s being a drama queen.

Do Other People Deserve Healthcare?

I’ve always thought that everybody deserved medical care. Kids develop a sense of fair-play at an early age, and I’ve always based a lot of my values on what’s fair for everybody. Medical care can often mean the difference between life and death, so that placed it very high on the list of “must-haves” for people.

When I first started working full-time, I remember meeting a nurse and finding that she did NOT have sick leave. I found the irony of a healthcare worker not being provided paid time off for illness/injury to be both bizarre and unsettling — I was learning that the world was not fair. I knew that already, of course, but I just kept finding new ways that lack of fairness would surprise me.

Lots of people would tell me that I’m wrong to even want fair-play for everyone because people should only get what they DESERVE and many people don’t deserve medical care because they haven’t worked hard enough for it. Others would explain that medical care costs money and has to be paid for by someone and if it is provided to people who don’t have the money to pay for  it, then the money has to come from other people — and it would be UNFAIR to make someone pay for something that is given to someone else. Well, that does sound unfair, doesn’t it — to make someone pay for something they don’t want to pay for because they’re not going to get any benefit from it?

The first time I ever heard about people being mad about paying for someone else’s medical bills, I was surprised and kind of embarrassed that I would make someone mad. I never like to make people mad — it always upset me as a kid to do something that would make my mom or dad mad, and I tried hard to keep it from happening. So I pulled back for a moment (or longer); but then I thought How could anyone NOT want to help someone who needs medical care? Why would anyone NOT want to help someone who needs medical care?

Isn’t it simply a human instinct (not only human, but we’re dealing with humans right now) to help someone in need? If someone has their arms loaded with packages when they walk up to a door, don’t people open the door for them? When a person slips and falls, don’t people help them up? When a kid is crying because they are lost, doesn’t everyone try to help them find their mommy and daddy? Isn’t that the FIRST reaction to a person in need – what can I do to help?

I still believe that most people feel the instinctive desire to help anyone in trouble, but many folks have learned that they need to think about the consequences FIRST, instead of simply reacting with assistance. I’ve learned to do this also. I receive the mailings from the March of Dimes, the Disabled American Vets, the animal rescue groups, the foundations that raise money to fight cancer, heart disease, drug abuse… the list of people who need MY help can get very long, and doesn’t even include the people waiting in the ER because they don’t have health insurance and don’t have a doctor of their own.

Most people have someone they are responsible for – most people are parents and spouses and have promised to care for their kids and spouse “in sickness and in health”. They come first, and it’s only fair to decide to help others only when it doesn’t take away from your own family. So charity comes after paying for the family necessities – rent/mortgage, food, clothes, medical, utilities, ummm, well, gotta add the cell phone, the cable TV, the internet connection  – at home and on each of the cellphones, and food has to include eating out and clothes has to include the right names on the label, and food has to include fine wine, organic veggies, prime meats, and … there’s not really anything left overr for taxes (grrr!) let alone charity.

Okay, maybe we can cut the list of “necessities” down a bit, and then just deal with whether we need/want to pay for someone else’s visit to the doctor/hospital.

Does it make a difference WHO needs medical care? A smoker needs medical care after a heart attack (caused in part by smoking?); an obese woman needs care due to diabetes (caused in part by her diet?). There could be a long list of types of problems that might be brought on or exacerbated by a human’s bad habit – too little or too much exercise, overuse of drugs (prescription or not), failure to go to the doctor when they first felt ill, not holding down a job to earn health insurance, etc. …

Does certain behavior mean you no longer (or never did) deserve medical care?

What is the real question we should MUST ask?

Does this person deserve to suffer or die?

Do you deserve to suffer or die?

Do People love their health insurance company?

There have been a lot of angry people shown on the news lately talking about healthcare reform, and a lot of them say they are against the planned reforms. Some of them say a lot worse than that — “Obamacare is evil” or other words to show that they don’t just disagree with the proposals, but hate the intent behind the proposals.

Am I the only one who remembers how mad so many people were just a short time ago about what the health insurance companies were doing to them, or their family member, or their neighbor or friend or that little kid on the news last night?

Whatever happened to all those angry people who were trying to find donations for operations or medicine that their insurance wouldn’t pay for?

I think they are still around.

I did internet searches for health insurance companies, and then I did searches for “… sucks” websites – those websites devoted to gathering stories about all the bad things that a particular company does. Most successful businesses have at least one because, let’s face it, no one is perfect and the internet lets people share their complaints with little fear of reprisal. So, health insurance companies should be allowed their share of “… sucks” websites without thinking anything is really wrong with them or their services, right?

Results 1 – 10 of about 466,000 for cigna sucks. (0.46 seconds)
Results 1 – 10 of about 248,000 for blue cross sucks. (0.35 seconds)
Results 1 – 10 of about 35,700 for aetna sucks. (0.38 seconds)
Results 1 – 10 of about 53,900 for humana sucks. (0.34 seconds)

Whoa!

Does that seem like just a little bit more a LOT MORE than “their share”?!!

Like maybe a lot of people think there’s a PROBLEM with their insurance?

I wasn’t sure how many companies I should do a search for, so I tried a general category search and got this:

Results 1 – 10 of about 867,000 for health insurance sucks

Jumping Jehoshaphat,  we have a lot of reading to do…