my elusive hairy bastid, Riff Raff

some of you may recall I had to order a feral trap over the internet last December to catch an injured stray kitten.....well, six months later I've made a bit of progress - I can pet him without him snapping at me although he remains exceedingly peculiar......for example, none of my friends have ever seen him because he throughly hides for as long as they are in my apartment. The coworker who fed my cats while I was in Europe for ten days only managed to catch a "two second glimpse" - when I suppose his curiosity got the best of him. With me, however, he is a little holy terror. :)

It takes a lot of time and patience to befriend a feral. I've had one for two years. It took me a year (and alot of tasty bribes) to get him into the house. He's fine with it now, but I can only pet him. I tried picking him up once--YEOW! I've learned to just let him come to me when he wants to be petted. He really is a sweet little guy; he can't help being feral.

he has been in terminal kitten mode since I got him - he plays non stop and I rarely see him sleeping. The vet guessed him to be about seven months old when I got him (LOL, I warned the vet this kitten is a bit wild and he said, YES, THE FERAL TRAP GAVE ME A CLUE)....so he's about a year old now. When will he calm down? It's like he's on speed and he has made a toy out of ANYTHING moveable in my apartment. And he has a lot of DOG behaviors - he SHREDS anything paper. :o

P.S. By the way, I can actually pick him up, but he remains stiff as a board and when I set him down he literally springs away from me as if he is escaping

that shred paper until they were about 3 years old. Unfortunately, most of the papers they shred were my law school syllabi. :(

I have a male cat who is 4 who still plays with toys from time to time & a recently adopted feral who turns anything into a toy as well.

One trick I've used with every cat I've had for decades is to rub their face with my face. Supposedly, cats do this with members of their tribe. It worked wonders on the recent addition to my menagerie & she calmed down a lot after a few rubs. The downside is that she likes to rub my face at 5:30 a.m. every morning. x(

dg

Riff Raff has shredded paper money and some of my bills. Right now if I rubbed my face to his he would certified bite my nose off but I will try these tricks as we progress. :)

Mine never shredded money. Bills, otoh, often met with the Wrath of the Cat. ;) And yes, you definitely don't want to start the whole "rubbing faces" thing unless you've got some more trust built up. :)

dg

He'll probably be a little loony for awhile. I have to keep my bathroom door closed because mine literally unravels an entire roll of toilet paper if I don't watch him. One thing I've found that calms him down a bit, and makes us closer, is playing with him. Most toys freak him out, but he likes something that dangles on a string, so he can jump for it. I make him jump really high so he'll get tired out!
Congratulations on picking him up! Who knows? Maybe someday he'll be a lap kitty!

his favorite toy is a bottle cap - he is obsessed with them. I work out daily and live in Texas so I drink lots of bottled water - I'm absent minded and it's like Riff Raff can smell the damn things.....I work nights and often hear the clickety-click sound - so I rise silently, find said bottle cap and toss it. Five minutes later, same thing. Five minutes later, again. Yesterday when I went put clean towels in the bathroom closet, there were NINE bottle caps on the closet floor; apparently they ricochet under there and that is the end of the line. :o

I have played extensively with RR but he never, EVER gets tired; he is like a friggin' machine stuck in the ON position.

Love them though

I have fed Riff Raff since before he was born - I fed his pregnant mother Spider, an extreme feral. I caught her in the same feral trap, got her fixed and released and she still stops by for chow although she has never gotten within ten feet of me. Riff Raff's siblings went to the pound and were adopted. I kept Riff Raff because I knew from his disposition that he, like his mother, was not adoptable and would be put to sleep.

have you tried putting their head in your mouth when they are kittens? This helps tame them...the theory being that they bond with you. Somehow they recognize this action instinctively as something their own mother would do...perhaps this is an old wives tale but, I did it with Levon and it helped him...

he was very squirmy when I would catch him so I'd pinch his neck fold and lift a bit and he'd go into a trance and then I would stroke his head

and at that point you can easily put their head in your mouth,
Do not bite down (DUH)....anyway this all looks weird on my screen. but, it works.

The look in his eyes tells one that he IS a rascal! I love how he came to be yours. What a good cat person you are!

You should have named him "small furry animal, with whom I live a lie" instead of "bastid."

his name is Riff Raff, I refer to him as hairy bastid affectionately

My Evita was probably feral for about 3 years and was pregnant when she was trapped in a Cat Rescue gruop. I was actually there to adopt another adult cat but we couldn't find her anywhere (The rescue group has an indoor barn for all of their cats). While looking for the cat I wanted to adopt she asked me to pet this grey cat who got out of surgery just the day before to see if we could possibly tame her a bit and make her adoptable. Well, we couldn't find the original cat and this grey kitty was so adorable I decided to take her home. She was adorable and purred like the dickens in the little bed area I made in the bathroom for her (so she could get use to her new home without my other cat Abbott making her miserable). About a week later I let her out and she hide. She hide forever and I didn't even think I had a fricking cat I would never see her. I'm not sure how she even starved to death because I would never see her even to eat food or use the litter box.

But after awhile she warmed up a bit. I could barely touch or hold her unless I moved really really slow but she would sit on the back of the sofa near me. However she did start coming out for food (she'll eat dry food only if I mix a bit of wet food in with it). And it was there I would start petting her some just to get her use to me.

She was definately ferral but if I left the door opened she wouldn't even bother to escape. Oh and her time of living in doors she has managed to catch a bat, mouse and two birds INDOORS. No, I don't have a zoo, but the bat got in through a tear in my screen windows. The mouse who knows where it came from but it's an old building. But the birds, she managed to reach her paw out and snag the birds at a small opening she made near my window AC unit.

But two years later she has warmed up just to me. She's my alarm clock in the morning to let me know her food dish is empty and at nights she still sits in that same spot on the sofa but now she'll meow for when she needs a little attention (but she's not as needy as Abbott in that area). She gets massive elevator butt and we have fun when I scratch right behind her tail and as soon as she settles down I do it again.

But no one else can get near her or even believes she exists. In fact even Abbott has become more skittish around company because SHE does it

But here is my beloved indoor feral cat:

OMG catching birds INDOORS!!!

Hey is it me or does the feral look never leave their eyes? Evita still has feral eyes.

When she's in her snuggly mood she is absolutely stunning

both of my youngsters (not really youngsters anymore, I guess, 5 and 7 years old) were abandoned as kittens. Tootsie, my little girl, was about 8 months old when I caught her, and Pooky ws about two years old when I caught him. Tootsie is like Riff Raff. She hides if there is anyone else in the house and only comes back out when they are gone. Pooky has laid claim to me as his property, even chasing Tootsie off the bed at night when he wants to curl up by my head. She eventually comes back and once they are finally settled, it is impossible to determine where one cat ends and the other begins. They are a real hoot. Pooky still has moments when his eyes show a feral suspicion, but he is the most loving cat I have ever had. Kudos to you for adopting Riff Raff.:toast:

Riff Raff plays a game with me when I'm laying on the couch - he pops up by my side like a jack-in-the-box - then I grab him and say I HAVE YOU AND YOU CAN'T GET AWAY! - then I quickly let him go - he acts OUTRAGED, springs away from me, clean off the couch - yet five minutes later he'll pop up by my side again and it starts all over again. :D

Beautiful cat, Skittles.

I love that site "stuff + cat = awesome".....both my current kitties would be horrified by anything on them unless it's a brush and my arm is in motion, but my old cat L.B.- I once piled 600 pennies on him while his lazy ass was sacked. :o

"The darkness must go down
The river of nights' dreaming
Flow, Morphia, slow
Let the sun and light come streaming
Into my liiiiii-iiiiiife,
Into my liiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiife!"

Riff Raff is not very audible, more the silent, stealthy type :o

I have a "thing" for longhaired tuxies. :loveya:

he was limping from what turned out to be several bites on his side, and he had no fur on his toes and was so thin....I had no choice but to capture him and make him mine

i have a little feral man myself
also black and white but a bit shorter hair than your guy

we were fortunate to get him at about 9 months old before all the damage had been done

when my mom visits she is amazed at what a young man he is because although he is always on alert and sometimes goes into his instinctive anxiety and hiding mode he is usually very mellow and loves attention from those he knows
his older brother (orange and white who was adopted from the chapel hill shelter) has helped that a lot im sure

does your guy have any siblings

again i really want to thank you for sharing such love

got him at the pound 8 years ago...he and Riff Raff play fight a lot :)

though we have female cats (one who felix gets a bit weirded out around. in fact i have told him before that if he were out in the world im afraid he would get into some real trouble for being a creepy stalker)

thankfully we have a pretty well-ordered dysfunctional family unit

For that you deserve many of these: :hug: :hug: :hug:

I love black and white kitties.