Kitty update

[mamajoan]

The good news is that Chubby did start to warm up to me a bit. I worked from home yesterday, as I think I posted, and by the end of the afternoon (i.e., right as I needed to start getting ready to go pick up the kids), he came out from his hiding place and started following me around meowing and begging for petting. So that was good. He hid again

Comments

[sandykidd]

If I can find my blacklight, you can have that to locate his secret pee spots after dark with all the lights out. And also, if I find the blacklight it will be with the stuff we used to use to train our cats against that sort of behavior and then I'll be able to give you a link to the website we bought it from. I'll look tonight.

[mamajoan]

That would be awesome, thanks. I definitely suspect that there are some "traces" of our former kitty around, and if I can eradicate those, hopefully, Chubby will be willing to stick to the litterbox.

[mamajoan]

Apparently it's like glued to the floorboards or something. And there's a possibility of asbestos underneath as well. The guy I hired to remove the carpet in the rest of the rooms took one look and said that I should just leave it. I figure some day I'll have money and will hire an actual floor expert to come and evaluate the options...some day....

[emrinalexander]

Don't panic - he's nervous, still not trusting his new environment, and marking behavior under those conditions is instinctive. I found by trial and error, when getting a new cat, the best thing is if you can start them out in one area where they're isolated, then gradually, as they relax, let them into the rest of the house. It really seems to reduce the peeing problem. If you can find a product in your pet store called "Nature's Magic" it really works to remove both the smell and the actual residual that we humans can't smell (which is what attracts the cat or dog back to the same spot(s)). You'll love it because it has a very faint, fresh odor that obliterates that horrible cat pee smell, and even better - it obliterates it for your cat too *G*.