Trying again with Elli

Recently, we heard that the family that took Elli and Nappi in after our family experiment started implying that they didn't want Elli anymore. Unfortunately, Nappi is no longer with us, but Elli is still a healthy senior. We discussed a lot of options and it started to look like Elli might be better off staying with us, so we decided to give it one more go.

Starting slow

Elli had a long, all-day journey to come to us. We put her in a room alone so that she could eat and get some rest. We did visit to give her pets and treats but other than that she was getting to take her time to investigate the room. She was very quiet and happy in the room until around 4 AM the next morning. Then she started making a bit of noise indicating that she was now done staying in the room and would like to see what was happening on the other side of the door. In the morning we started altering who stays in the "solo" room and who gets to roam around the other rooms.

No direct contact in the beginning

We know that all three cats hate that doors are closed. Elli and Osiris are much more vocal about it and both try to open the door. But we decided that we'll just have them protest but the door stays closed until they seem more at ease with each other's scent. Since scent is what cats mostly go by, it's important to give them a bit of time to get used to each other again.

We'll try to do some scent transfers and give them time to sniff things. It's starting to look like the scents aren't making them nervous anymore, at least not as much as in the beginning.

Remote working helps a lot

It is much easier to keep the cats ok with closed doors when we are both at home.

Unfortunately, our schedules mean that most of the work week it's just me working remotely. The biggest thing is that I need to figure out a good way to move stuff in and out of the room without letting the cat escape. If I can do that, then it becomes a bit easier to give attention to all cats during the workday.

Next steps

We don't have any idea how long it takes for the cats to be ready for the next steps, but we'll see how they act. We have to take things as slow as necessary, though I must admit that sometimes I'd just really like to go to the bathroom without a cat hassle.

Visual contact through a barrier

The next step after this is to allow them to see each other for a bit. We have a cage that blocks the width of the room's door, which can be used to control how much and how long they can see each other. The cage is mostly covered by a sheet.

We've now allowed Osiris and Elli to see each other very briefly a couple of times. It's good we aren't rushing things because they are clearly still reserved. Elli maybe even a bit more than Osiris, which was a surprise. However, that might partially be due to Osiris being very (and I truly mean very) motivated by food. So we got him to already eat food and treats quite close to the cage without him becoming scared or agitated. Elli wouldn't eat and she isn't that into treats so she got mostly pets instead. We'll continue with the brief eye contact possibilities for now and will increase the time slowly.

We've decided to start this process with Elli and Osiris because Lumia has her own schedule for things. It will likely be better if Elli is as ok as possible with Osiris before we introduce her to Lumia.

Being in the same space without barriers

If we ever get to the point of the cats being relaxed while seeing each other through the cage, then the next step would be to remove the cage and allow them to have quick interactions in the same room.

Especially because Osiris gets very easily scared, we can't rush to this phase. If Osiris is scared, he will make a lot of noise and that will then start scaring Lumia. And we don't want that to ensure Lumia keeps acting normally.

The biggest challenges

This will not be an easy project. Seniors aren't that easily accepting new family members. But we will try because we want to give Elli a chance to live her full life.

The challenge of space

A big challenge is having to have someone in one room only. While the room isn't that small and it does have everything a cat needs, it's still a relatively small space. And unfortunately, our apartment is not big enough that we would have had a completely extra room for Elli. So Lumia and Osiris did lose some of their usual sleeping places. They do have a lot of places in the other rooms to sleep, but it is something they now lost for a bit. Not optimal, but we really couldn't have Elli stay in our small bathroom either.

It would be best to have a bit bigger space for the isolation but unfortunately, that would likely be very difficult to organise (from both convenience and price perspectives). So we'll try with a single room first and see how it goes. If this is starting to look like a year-long project, then I assume we need to do something different. For now, we'll take it one day at a time.

Elli's challenges

Elli is a quite confident cat. She was very quickly fine with the room and the apartment. She also likes us humans. But the confidence is a bit of a challenge when you have a setup like this. If she were a bit less confident, she might not be trying to come out of the room all the time.

She lived with Nappi for over 10 years. Now she's been without a companion for a year or so. So it's been a while since she's been sharing anything. Can't really say how she feels about sharing her space with others again.

Elli's cat skills are a bit lacking when it comes to her tail. Elli's tail communicates being angry but in reality, she is very content. She also hisses as a protest instead of only as a warning. Which confuses the other cats.

Elli is also very demanding when it comes to attention. It isn't that much of a challenge in itself but Osiris is very much similar. We'll see if that becomes an issue.

Osiris' challenges

Osiris gets scared very easily. And when he is scared, he is very vocal about it. And if he is scared, he will also easily lash out at Lumia, which is obviously not a good thing.

Osiris is also very much my cat. He loves all humans but I'm his main human. Time will tell if he allows me to share my love with Elli as well. So far he hasn't paid attention to Elli's scent on me, so hopefully he can share.

Lumia's challenges

Lumia doesn't have proper cat skills. She stares, which is a threat in the cat world. But in her world, she is only watching - and usually quite curiously. But that is scary to cats who don't know how Lumia is.

Lumia doesn't also really understand hissing. She sometimes seems to get a bit confused if someone hisses at her. It might have something to do with the fact that she occasionally hisses at her human and immediately after it goes to purr and love the human. We don't really understand what she means by that but we have been trying to teach her that if she hisses, we go away from her. But I don't think she's understood that.

Lumia is also already not the best eater. She has her own schedule and sometimes she eats very little. So monitoring her eating habits can be challenging.

Lumia is also sleeping quite a lot and isn't really that interested in other cats. She just likes us humans. So getting her to get to know Elli on both their terms might be a challenge of its own. She has been curious about the door and Elli making noise in the room, so let's see if she is willing to meet Elli by the cage at some point. The problem with Lumia is that she isn't always motivated by anything. She isn't that fond of pets and she doesn't always want treats. So getting her distracted if things don't go well can be tricky.

Lumia also does get scared quite easily, though she is not vocal about it, she will just run away. She is probably the safest cat out of these three. She never bites Osiris and she is just a very mellow little fluffball. Unless we are at the vet, then it is a different story.

Osiris getting terrified while Lumia was away

There was one unfortunate accident on Thursday when Osiris and Elli were both by the door at the same time. Osiris was pushing his paw to the other side because he wanted to get out of the room. Elli saw the paw, probably got curious and jumped to play. But she used a bit too much force for the jump and collided with the door. This made a noise and freaked Osiris completely out. He was hissing and growling for several minutes because he was so scared. Osiris' initial reaction did scare Elli a bit. But Elli fortunately seemed to cool down very quickly.

It didn't help that Lumia was at the dentist at the time of the event and she came back smelling and acting weird. We isolated Lumia for as long as we could, and since Osiris was really scared of Lumia when he saw her, we isolated all three from each other for over a day. Now Osiris seems to be finally normal towards Lumia. I must admit that this was a rather tough four days trying to get them back to normal. 

The progress so far

Elli came to us on Tuesday evening. So she's been here less than a week. Considering that, I do think we've made good progress.

Whether or not we will succeed in getting the cats to live happily (or happily enough, it's unlikely they'll become great friends this late in life) with each other, we still don't know. But we are committed to trying. While this phase is quite tiring and sometimes even frustrating to us humans, we'll deal with it. Because if we get this to work, we'll have one more little fluffball in our home.