Greetings Fabulous Felines and Hoomans of Hivelandia and surrounding communities!
We realized earlier today that our most recent additions to the feline household — Shangri and Nala — are coming up on their 2nd birthdays.
At the favorite sunny window spot!
While they both have become sweet and loving cats and are integral parts of our little household here, they retain some "interesting" habits that suggests they weren't just from an "ordinary" litter of kittens that were brought into the animal shelter.
We rather believe that they were actually feral kittens that were brought in, or at the very least they had some kind of serious trauma in their early lives.
Nala and Shangri as large kittens, August 2024
They are very comfortable here, and they sleep on the Hoomans' bed every night and they hang out and sleep peacefully in their beds next to the Hoomans when the Hoomans are working, and they come running for snack times and they like to be petted and picked up but there are certain things that we still don't fully understand.
For example, everybody will be perfectly happy but then a heavy truck hits a bump out on the street and they immediately abandon what they're doing and run for safety under a bed or at the back of a closet.
Still very tightly bonded!
Whenever such a thing happens, it used to be that it would take them several hours to come back out, while they now only take a couple of minutes to come back out... but nonetheless, anything noisy or unexpected still causes them to run for safety.
Even something that is as frequent as an Amazon package delivery at the front door — which requires that delivery driver to come up the front steps — sends them running back to one of their safe spaces.
Playtime on the stairs
The Dad-Hooman says that he has really only seen behavior like this in feral cats. He should know because in a distant past he helped take care of a feral cat colony with 50+ cats!
While some of those cats became very loving and trusting, they always ran for the bushes if any unexpected sound or movement happened.
September 2024, not long after their arrival
All we can do is keep loving them and reassuring them that there's nothing dangerous that's going to happen to them, and it does seem to be slowly setting in, as they have gotten much better than they were even just a year ago.
For comparison sake, neither Shadow nor Smudge pay the slightest attention to noises out in the street or the Amazon delivery person at the front door.
Sharing some cat grass!
It doesn't change how we feel about them, and they are treasured members of the household... even with their skittish moments.
Thanks for coming to visit our little cat blog, and we hope to see you again soon! If you have feline friends in your life, why not share some photos of them for Caturday on Saturday?
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