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Foster Tiger

by Laura, Milan, Italy

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A dear friend of mine was to leave for a week and she has a 15 years old cat who recently had some health problems, so could she leave her at home with the cleaning guy coming every two days? No she couldn't... so here we are with this guest Granny Cat....

I knew that the lady has a character, but I had no idea she could get so much worse out of her territory...

Tuesday night she arrived, she hissed to all the cats, she hissed to me and... she even hissed to her mom when she caught her petting one of my kids. :-)

Then, as soon as her mom had gone she went to "our" bowls, sniffed the food and decided that she didn't like it but nobody had to eat it... and she didn't let anybody (including me) walk closer than two meters from the bowls.

Rule number one of cat psychology: confuse the cat: Forget food area as a socialization zone and move guest's bowls out of the protected area so that she doesn't know what to hiss at. :-)

So she got tired of protecting the bowls and made another territory... on my bed! She growled like a bear if i even tried to enter the room...

Rule number two of cat psychology: If you want to put a growling hissing scratching cat out of your territory... go after them with a broom!

After chasing her for 20 minutes with the broom, i got a very scratched broom and finally... her tigership in the bathroom, with a furry bed and all the bowls and a clean litterbox.

By then it was 2am.

She howled like a wolf until 4am, then I fell asleep, out of desperation.

Wednesday morning, the night before was such a nightmare that I had completely forgotten about the tiger in the bathroom. So I got a good-morning clawed paw at a few centimetres from my face, since the tiger had climbed on the shelf close to the door and she clearly does not want to be disturbed before noon. :-)

Wednesday evening I got home worried... but her Tigership looked sweeter... so I thought that, since she is a Persian, I'd better brush her as she was already knotty...

Rule number 3 of cat psychology: Grooming a cat helps socialization with the human, expecially if said cat has been used to this attention each day of the 15 years of her life. Unless the cat is a tiger.

Wednesday night went away trying to clean the blood stains from my clothes. :-(

But the tiger was sweet, she came close to me purring and let my cats sniff her... (is the smell of blood relaxing to cats??)

This morning she came to greet me with purrs, she put my paw on mine to say good morning and slept all day on the sofa without hissing at all.

Rule number 4 of cat psychology: Given one more day, it will be like having a fourth cat and everybody will be happy and cuddly...

Today the tiger's human called me and told me that she has been fixed a meeting tomorrow morning that she can't absolutely miss so Tiger is going back home tomorrow night. :-(

I wonder how cruel I have been to cats in a previous life to deserve all this bad luck...

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Editor's note:

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