(That’s a lame attempt at a Star Trek reference by the way)
It’s past time I tell you about Gustav, or as we’ve taken to calling him, Goose. I’ve been putting off updating because I wanted to start out talking about Gustav and didn’t really know where to start. About two months ago I had it all planned out… Week one he did this, we did that; week two… etc., but That’s gone out the window as the weeks have started to blend together now, so I’ll just start out and see where it goes.
Gustav first came to the adoption center when he was nine months old. He was, without exaggeration, one of the most handsome cats I have ever seen. He is mostly white with patches of orange tabby markings on his head, tail and a couple on his body. His orange is a perfect deep orange and his white is so pure that it actually glistens. And its more than just that, he’s lean and muscular and carries himself with an air of confidence. It was almost impossible for anyone to see him and not instantly fall in love with him, which, sadly, but also thankfully is probably part of the reason he is still here today.
About thirty seconds after you fell in love with him, you would discover the trouble.
You see, Gustav spent most of his life in isolation, between bite quarantine and Upper Respiratory Tract infection (euphuistically called a “kitty cold”). He had no interaction with other cats and not nearly enough interaction with people. The staff person I work with uses him as an example of why kittens either need another kitten to play with or almost constant human interaction.
Gustav plays like a kitten, but the problem is that he is a large, full grown and very powerful adult cat. You can see where this might be a problem. If by some chance you haven’t seen kittens play with each other, I can assure you it is not an gentle ordeal. When kittens play, it isn’t just a game, they are learning how to fight, how to protect themselves, how to catch (an kill) prey, but they’re also learning boundaries. If they don’t get to play as a kitten they never learn when to stop; they never learn what means no.
Gustav played with every ounce of manic-ness that kittens play with each other, and he didn’t know when to stop. In fact, he would get so carried away that once you managed to wrestle your arm, or what ever part of your body he was playing with, away from him, he would begin attacking his own hind leg, every bit as violently and with every bit of force that he had been attacking you just moments ago.
When I first met Gustav, I was wondering who exactly was the genius who sent him to the adoption center, he wasn’t in the least bit adoptable. But he wasn’t irredeemable.
There was some debate over whether he was aggressive or not. It didn’t take us long to figure out that he wasn’t. He never hissed, never growled, his body posture didn’t seem territorial or angry, he just looked like a giant kitten. The advantage of this was that he could be restrained. If you try to restrain an aggressive cat you’re only going to make things worse, but with Gustav, it had the opposite affect. I quickly discovered that when he “attacked” I could scruff him,* pin him down “making sure to keep my harms and hands away from his teeth and claws, and he would calm down. I also discovered that massaging the scruff of his neck had a calming affect on him. once he was calm he was completely docile… until something moved in his range of vision and set him off again. At one point I had him calm and another volunteer came into the room and he promptly latched himself to her leg.
Nonetheless, by the end of that first day I knew that he was not a lost cause, but he needed time, and I wasn’t sure that time was something he had.
(Please note that I did not take these pictures. They are from the shelter’s website and had no credit attached to them. I absolutely love them though, and could not resist including them here.)
