Whisperer who’s blinking good with fraidy cats

Frightened by the changes she was facing following her owner’s death, the three-year-old domestic shorthair cat simply cowered in a corner.

But thanks to a pioneering cat whispering programme, she has grown in confidence and after a year at the shelter, where she became its longest resident, has finally been found a new home.

“As soon as she arrived, Penny hid away in a tiny corner where she felt no one could hurt her,” said Sara Atkinson, who founded Haworth Cat Rescue 20 years ago. “It was heartbreaking to see her so frightened.”

Staff at the shelter eventually decided that Penny would need more than the average amount of care and attention to bring her around and so put her through their cat whispering programme.

Mrs Atkinson said: “With great effort and time she became more confident and even started to let us to give her a gentle stroke.”

The brainchild of Mrs Atkinson, the programme was developed to rehabilitate cats in the centre who might otherwise be unsuitable for a new home such as those who were traumatised.

“It’s for cats who do not fit neatly into various niches, for example a feral cat, a cat who has never been domesticated,” said Mrs Atkinson.

The programme involves separating the cat completely from other cats and then putting them in a large indoor cage 
where they can feel safe and gradually become comfortable with people handling and stroking them.

The cats can stay in the cage from several days to several weeks depending on their background.

Mrs Atkinson said: “The whole point of that is to make them feel safe in a confined area.

“The most important thing for a cat is security/safety, because it is a small animal that can be eaten by a bigger animal so at an instinctive level we have to make them feel 100 per cent safe so they are not frightened of their location.

“The first period in the cage can be from a week to a month – they need to feel the place they are in is a place of safety and security. We do that by giving them lots of boxes to hide in. Any interaction with them is done very quietly and gently – lots of slow blinking.

“Blinking slowly at cats makes them feel safe; it tells them in cat language, ‘I am not going to eat you.’

“We will only open one side of the cage to get the litter tray and put food in so it knows we are not going to put our hands anywhere near it.”

As the period in the cage progresses the cat’s body language begins to change.

“It starts off making itself as flat as the surface as possible – eyes wide open and ears flat or back which demonstrate fear,” said Mrs Atkinson.

“The cat is on red-alert for danger all the time. As the period in the cage progresses the cat starts to interact and starts to relax, so you will see it sitting up. The cat may start to vocalise which it does not do when frightened. It will start to take an interest in what’s going on around it. It will start to sniff the food as you are putting it into the cage.

“The next stage is to put food on a hand and put the hand through a flap in the cage and the cat will gradually start to come and take food off the hand. In very slow steps you are telling the cat that hands are OK, they are safe things and will not hurt you.

“From there you gradually might start to tickle it under the chin or jaw. Once you get to that stage it’s usually quite quickly that the cat realises it misses being stroked. From there you stroke it more as the cat is wanting you to.”

The process can take as little as two weeks for a kitten to reach a stage where it is happily rolling on its back and purring but in older cats, such as Penny, it could take three months.

The programme has been developed over a number of years.

Mrs Atkinson said: “We have developed it ourselves with 20 years’ experience as a way of moving these cats on and making sure they are settled for the rest of their lives.

“The first ever cat we did was the most traumatised cat I have met in 20 years. It had got to the point where you had to wear hard hats in the pen because he would try to get out and if the quickest way was to try to bounce off your head that’s what he would do. Rocky now sleeps in bed with us.”

Penny and Rocky are among more than a dozen cats to have been helped by the programme over the past few years.