BeeBoo

Admire, but don’t touch!

Actually, that’s probably not quite fair to BeeBoo – you can touch her, very carefully and briefly, or let her do all the touching, but you have to be very cautious. We’re working our way through a BeeBoo’s Victims Club…

Aggression in cats is one of the reasons they sometimes get surrendered – and very often it’s human-caused. In BeeBoo’s case her family said that she’d never been good with strangers, and though obviously she coped with the humans she knew, the arrival of a very tiny, noisy human who took all the attention was not a happy experience for this cat. Already angry and stressed by her perceived displacement by the baby, BeeBoo did not do well at the City Shelter and was transferred to the Sanctuary.

She actually came to us with the name BeeBee – but we already have a BB (blogged a couple of weeks ago) in the DoubleWide, so her name was adapted. There is certainly no way we can confuse the personalities of the two cats!

BeeBoo had always been an indoor cat, and when she came to us, she was put into the SingleWide, into an indoor environment. She spent some time in her cage, and even when it was open, she defended what she regarded as her territory. Warning signs were placed – we found that visiting her was best done with minimal contact – sitting and talking with her was generally acceptable, but touch could easily go too quickly.

Now that BeeBoo is out and about, we all need to be a little more wary. It’s second nature to reach out and pet a furry back, but even our experienced staff have received their BeeBoo markings. Usually we put a collar on an aggressive cat – the current back courtyard biter is a handsome tabby called Benji and he wears his collar with pride. But nobody really wants to think about the process of getting a collar on BeeBoo – besides which, a collar on a long-haired cat inevitably means tangles. In any case, she is a pretty distinctive cat – not easy to mistake for another one.

She has the markings of a Snowshoe cat – the white paws, the inverted (but sketchy) V on her face, and the blue eyes. But the typical Snowshoe is affectionate and attention-demanding; BeeBoo is definitely not affectionate with either people or cats, and though she appears to solicit attention, it only takes a few touches before she smacks hard! She really dislikes other cats; she will tolerate humans if they will play with her – and she does love to play (at arm’s length!)

We have had cats who have needed medication to deal with their anxiety –the late and much beloved Leland, when he first came in, was one, and I will be introducing Algy/Journey next week. In extreme situations, we give them a degree of isolation – the late “grumpy old ladies” of the Manager’s office did much better away from the other cats. What she really needs is a home of her own with a very cat-savvy person who is willing to commit to not having other cats – we’ve had our share of angry cats who changed with adoption (see Buster). But for now, BeeBoo seems to be settling, and though APPROACH WITH CAUTION remains the warning, we hope that she’ll soon feel more comfortable with us.

Blog by Brigid Coult

Photos by Joanne & Karen Nicholson, Michele Wright

BeeBoo

Cat Sanctuary

BeeBoo

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Daniel Feldman

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