One of the most important things for anyone who is thinking of fostering feral kittens needs to know is that setbacks happen. You did not do anything wrong. You are not bad at fostering. You should not give up. In fact, YOU have nothing to do with it.
Feral fostering is sort of a two steps forward, one step back process. You are dealing with young kittens who see you as a predator that wants to hurt or kill them. It will take them time to trust you and realize you truly do not mean them any harm. Everything in your home is foreign to them. If they have been living in the wild, they have never seen your glass of soda or that book or even a blanket or cat toy. Every single being and item around them has to be evaluated as a possible threat. As you can imagine, living in that state of hyper vigilance makes it hard for the little ones to relax. Think of it this way - if a wild tiger came up to you in a safari park and dropped a Big mac at your feet, rubbed up against you affectionately, purred and walked away, you might be confused, relieved to get away safely and maybe even happy. But if you went back to the same park the next day and a tiger approached with a McDonald's bag, you would still be instinctively concerned about a wild predator approaching you.
This instinctive distrust is why setbacks happen. I had a minor set back with my two (as of yet unnamed) feral girls today. Last night when I left them, one was purring hesitantly at me. This morning both were in the far corner of the cage making it clear they did not want to be touched. Now, I rarely try and interact with my ferals during morning cage cleaning. From my point of view, I am reaching into their cage, moving stuff around, making noise, and in general messing with their stuff. I don't like when people wake me up and mess with my stuff, so why should they? If one approaches me for attention, fine, but I do not initiate it. (Have I mentioned I am not a morning person)?
When I went back in the afternoon, the girls still clearly did not want to be touched. Why? I don't know and don't really care. All I care about is that I respect their desire not to be touched. Something changed in their environment and made them more nervous. It could have been a loud noise. It could have been the fact that I was in different clothes and smelled different. It could have been the two year old having a temper tantrum or the heat turning on. There are so many possibilities that it is a waste of time to try and figure it out unless the behavior continues for a couple of days.
They clearly told me that they did not want to be touched. So I did not touch them. That does not mean that I did not interact with them. I let them smell my book to determine it was not a threat and then sat next to their cage and read my book. After about 15 minutes, I offered them some baby food and the braver of the two came forward to eat it. By the time I left about 15 minutes later, both kittens were up and running around the cage chasing toys - as long as I did not try to touch them.
So the moral of today's posts is set backs happen. Don't take it personally. Respect their need for boundaries and understand that there are days that you can push those boundaries and other days that pushing them will actually cause more harm than good. Remember, you don't need to win every battle to win the war.
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