If you have to regularly give your cat meds or otherwise interfere with them and you find they are avoiding you even for friendly contact, establish a password.
The goal is to use the word/sound to signal “no bad thing,” so they don’t panic and try to run away/hide.
For instance, Etrigan hates being medicated and will hide under the bed for hours to avoid it, and become evasive if approached, even though he is normally a VERY friendly cat.
I established “I’m gonna gitcha gitcha gitcha!” as something that means “I will be touching you but not in a bad way.”
This works.
Start by using the sound every time you love on your cat. Use it many times per interaction, not just once. Use treats to reinforce it at first if you need to, and practice often (as often as you love on your cat which is hopefully often).
Do not ever ever ever use it to fake them out. Respect it, respect the cat, always keep the interactions positive.
This is a virtually effortless thing to teach your cat (and yourself) and can make a huge quality of life difference for a cat who deeply resents pilling (or other necessary cat maintenance tasks).
It actually makes giving them meds easier sometimes because they aren’t ALWAYS expecting to be grabbed and pilled. They don’t have to be vigilant and wary of every single interaction.
Reblog to reduce kitty anxiety!
Good luck!
I’ve watched Etrigan do an immediate about-face on multiple occasions. I approach, he thinks I am going to do THE BAD MOUTH STUFF and starts to run away. I use the signal and he turns right around and lets me approach. This tactic can be super-duper effective.
This is good. Im new to raising my own cat so this is super useful to me.
My ex’s cat would get his claws stuck in the window screen and freak out/break his claws off when approached. I started saying “hey bud I’m gonna help you out” in the quiet soothing voice I used to love on my dog and was amazed at how he immediately relaxed and let me untangle him. He didnt even like me at the time but I guess he’d seen enough friendly doggo interactions to know I was going to be chill.
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a while back, ghostbong bought a very cheap, very used Roomba from craigslist. "so, you’re going to ‘hack’ this, right?“ said the man at the parking lot rendezvous. but we just wanted a vacuum. since then, the addition of the word “robot” to our casual, every-day lexicon is continually jarring, as if even living in the future will give you future-shock.
doing maintenance on the robot. the robot is stuck on a cord. the robot ate a sock. the robot ran out of power before it got back to its charging station. the robot knocked something over. it doesn’t help that the Roomba programmers saw fit to outfit the little thing with a series of Artoo-like MIDI scales and honks, to convey the mood of its message: docking successfully produces a tiny fanfare, and getting its brushes jammed on a foreign object makes it cry out in sad distress. do i verbally reassure the robot when i pull a wad of cat hair and bread bag tabs out of its works and set it back down on the floor? you bet i do.
but the larger point is that it is now possible for me to say (or type) out loud and without irony, sarcasm, or any kind of fictitiousness: “the robot knocked over the kitten’s water dish >:I ”
the future is here, and it is me on my knees on the floor yanking hairballs out of a domestic droid while it softly boops at me
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