Hey Pet Parents & Pet Lovers,
It’s no secret that my cat, Kalista, is an absolute scardy cat. When we first met Kalista she kept trying to run away the whole time and hide in the cat bed the rescue had for her. It was the first time I really had a cat be so afraid of meeting people since Walker is extremely social, and Beau loves being around people.
We don’t have too many people over these days, just because both of us are fairly busy, so Kalista hasn’t properly been socialized. She used to see my parents weekly and got fairly used to my mom. She’s still a bit scared of my dad because he’s so tall and has a deep loud voice. We have had a couple of contractors over in the past few months, who Kalista is completely terrified of. It’s cute because Beau usually walks up to contractors and says hello to them, but he’s been protecting Kalista ever since she’s come home.
Kalista’s favourite hiding spot when new people are around is under our bed, which as you can assume, we don’t care for very much. I’m always nervous about being prepared if I need to take the cats and run. At one of our old places, the fire alarm would go off frequently and we trained Beau to run and jump onto the bed whenever he heard it just so we could gather him quickly if need be. Since Beau is terrified of his carrier, there was no way we could train him to run into there.
So, I’ve been working at finding ways to train Kalista to do something similar and while she originally loved sleeping in her carrier, she’s seemed to find more comfortable places to sleep like her cat tree or wool bed. So, the past few times we had people over (including a few days ago with the contractor) we’ve been trying to convince Kalista to run into her cat bed for safety.
So far it’s been working fairly well, although she did do a bit of hiding behind my computer. I picked her up and encouraged her to run to her bed and she immediately did.
Kalista spent the majority of the time the contractor was here in her bed. She slept all cozied up and ran out once when she heard me getting her food. It was at this time that Kalista decided to run under the bed again, even though it was nowhere near where I normally feed her. I know most people say never to take a scared cat out of their hiding spot, but I brought Kalista back to the office to put her into bed and Beau came and slept next to her.
Similar to before, it seems like Beau has a bit of a “big brother” quality to him. Whenever he sees Kalista freaking out, he sleeps by her or grooms her. It’s truly the sweetest to see them together.
Either way, hopefully, I can get both of these kitties trained to run to the same place if there’s ever a fire or a reason to leave the apartment quickly.
I’m curious, what are some safety measures you take when it comes to your pets? Let me know in the comments below!