Adopted Stray Kitten Advice Please!

Firstly welcome and fair play to ya for rescuing. Really your doing everything possible if you hqdnt mentioned the feliway defuse i would have suggested that. She just needs time really i had a similar experience with one of our cats. Extremely fearful especially of people but good with our other cats. You didn’t mention how she is getting on with your Izzy ?

Make sure to put a t-shirt of yours in the room she is sleeping in. Even leave treats hidden in the t-shirt so she has to approach your smell and will associate your smell with food. If she gets on well with your cat that’s great and it wi comfort her somewhat.

In my situation Nutini who had a dramatic rescue at 4 weeks of age was so extremely nervous she wouldn’t approach anyone ever and it was only when she went into heat at 6 months that she calmed down a tiny bit even though she had constant 24/7 contact with me it took that long for her to adjust but she bonded with Buttons after only a day.

Just be as patient as you can. Some cats aren’t people cats at all Nutini is still half wild even though she is a strict indoor only cat and has been since we found her only the other day my bf tried to pick her up i told him it was a bad idea and i was right she ripped the inside of his hand open he was in quite a lot of pain but i had warned him.

Nutini is nearly a year old now and we have excepted to fact that she will always be like this but we can’t leave her outdoors because of a medical condition that means she will always stay the size of a 4 month old kitten she only weighs 5 pounds.

It sounds as if your kitten is very frightened and lonely, and is calling for its mum and littermates. (Since they haven’t shown up, the kitten thinks it just needs to call louder and longer.)

Since Izzy is behaving so well, I wouldn’t keep Izzy away from the kitten. She may turn out to be crucial to the kitten adjusting.

The kitten is exhibiting a fear response to nearly everything, according to the amount of hissing you’ve mentioned. Keep calm and patient. Try tempting the kitten with particularly enticing food – a saucer with a tablespoon of plain, unsweetened yogurt, perhaps. Set it on the floor, near a wall; then sit on the floor yourself, at least 4 feet away. Maybe bring a book with you. The idea is to have you not handle the kitten, hold or pick up the kitten… the idea is to have the kitten learn to associate you with something good (tasty food), while not being so frightened by your presence that it won’t come out for the food. So you need to make sure you’re out of arm’s reach, initially.

If you want, Izzy can come in, too, and lick up some yogurt (in which case, make sure you have more to put down). The kitten will be bound to observe Izzy eating the yogurt, but probably won’t approach as long as Izzy is near the dish.

Kittens who are very fearful are simply showing an instinctive behavior that normally, in an outdoor, wild situation, would keep them alive beyond weaning age. Sometimes kittens who are very fearful have already had scary experiences. Please be as patient as you can, and try to remember your kitten is scared of you, its new surroundings, its new kitty companion Izzy, and so forth. The kitten will need to develop trust on its own timetable, and that’s usually a bit longer with kittens who are frightened.

Good luck!

If you have a shirt or towel with your scent on it and maybe one with Izzy’s scent on it and leave it out to where the little one comes out and can smell it. Would you have access to Feliway or a plug in calmer? That might help with the area being easier for the little kitten, they have a spray if you don’t want to use the plug-in system.

Sounds like you are doing a great job. You may not want to be too fast to take the kitten away…..sounds like the older cat wasn’t hurting her, just communicating to her, as you noted.

Milly is a total cutie!