That would be my two boys, Monty & Rolo, after giving me a very sleepless night last night. I've had them coming up for three weeks now, they're around 10/11 months old and lived at the adoption place since they were kittens so other than the courtyard garden they had there 'outside' is a bit of a foreign concept to them. I decided to start letting them have supervised excursions in my back garden - five or ten minutes before their breakfast and dinner of wet food. That worked well on Wednesday and yesterday morning, and I sat out in the garden with them for twenty minutes last night and they had a good old explore (but were cautious, and darting back to the kitchen a few times) before shooing them back in.
Where I went wrong was listening to them when they said they wanted to go out again at 8pm. They'd only eaten a bite of their dinner so I thought they'd go out for a bit and soon come back when they were hungry. But oh no. The lure of the exciting outside world was too strong and they were off and frolicking and over into the neighbours' gardens and very much refused to come back in no matter how much I rattled biscuit containers and tapped food bowls. Anytime I tried to shoo them in they'd dart under my decking or over the fence again. Thankfully I'd put a breakaway reflective collar on Rolo with a bell so I could hear him jingling and know he'd not gone too far. (Since Monty still isn't keen on being touched haven't tried with him yet!)
I decided to leave them be and they'd hopefully come back when they wanted to, but then it got dark, and neighbours' cats started prowling around and I was worried they'd be scared away (they boys seemed remarkably unbothered actually and sat next to the giant cat from next door on the decking - he seemed pretty blase too!), and then it started bloody thundering and there was lightning and rain and I was basically having kittens worried they would get lost somewhere or just never come back. Searching for black cars in the dark is a challenge...
I couldn't leave the cat flap on entry only since Monty had demonstrated he could use it but even showing Rolo several times he hadn't got it yet and I'd taped it open for him to go through, so I had to wait downstairs until he came in to shut the flap behind him. I dozed on the sofa until 3am and he finally deigned to come back and pretty much inhaled a whole pouch of food. Put the flap down on entry only and Monty followed at about 4am. After seven hours outside on their brief 'excursion' they're now temporarily grounded!
I imagine it was all just a bit too exciting, and the desire to explore took over. At least they did both come back of their own volition once they were suitably hungry, although already broken my promise to the adoption place that I'd keep them in at night (whoops). Once Rolo figures out the cat flap it'll be easier to switch it to entry only if they're out late and that'll corral them when they do come back, but hoping when the novelty of outside wears off they'll be slightly less obsessive about it. I'm quite tired this morning now.
It's a good job they're cute...
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The litter tray
Unrepentant little beasts
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givemushypeasachance · 18/07/2014 10:26
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