My Cat Avoids Me!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] what's up everybody jackson your cat daddy here welcome to another installment of let's go around the world and get some questions about cats this time we're going to brazil jump on a board we're expecting you the cat plane over to brazil let's talk to talita telly to take it away hi there jackson i'm talitha from brazil i live in an apartment by myself with four cats two of them are social and two or two of them are scared i wanna talk about one of these scared cats with the other one i could work things out and now she allows me to touch her sometimes she's still she's still scared and runs away from me sometimes but the other one i kinda gave up because it worked it was more difficult this cat that i'm talking about is named kadu he usually spends all the time under the bed or outside on a box that i put like in a tall place so he can stay and feel safe i never touch him because he doesn't allow me to and he always eats like at midnight when i'm sleeping when i'm like passing to go to the bathroom he runs away and get under the bed he and the sister that is the other scared cat for more than six years you know i'm gonna show you my cats right now this one's kira this one this guy is aisha this one is safira the other scared cat kadoom this one is kadu and he always is very scared about me and i wanna know if after so much time i can still work things out with him and what can i do so he can feel safer and maybe live a life that he likes i'm i'm grateful see you bye bye so talitha i think that what we're trying to do right now is to just gather up clues that you've given me about your life with your cats so talitha let's take your points one by one two of them are social and two or two of them are scared with the other one i could work things out and now she allows me to touch her sometimes she's still she's still scared and runs away from me sometimes okay so here we're talking about the second scared cat which is safida i think you said her name was safida you said you've been able to get somewhere with what is it that you were able to do with safida that brought her along because let's not forget they're littermates so there's a lot of their early experience that they share in terms of what made them more fearful along the way and if there was anything with safida try everything that you tried with her and just do it in a more concentrated way with him think of those things i mean was it a certain type of play that you were able to get her really active for or a certain kind of food or a certain way of approaching of petting so i guess the message there talitha is look for the buried treasure in kadu in terms of raising his mojo that safida has already provided for you all right so let's move on to the next point you made talitha he usually spends all the time under the bed or outside in my luggage on a box that i put like in a tall place so he can stay and feel safe so either he's down low or he's up high either but but he feels safe you know i talk a lot about bush dwellers and tree dwellers cats who find their confidence down low or up high that's not kadu he's doing those things because he feels just safe he he just he can be in no trouble he can make himself small and invisible and that's not what we want so we want to work on how to get him away from those areas and i know that that one of the things that makes you such a great parent to these cats is that you're just trying to give them comfort and and the more scared a cat is the more inadvertently we wind up catering to that fear because we just don't want them to experience the fear if this is making sense so in another instance it would be that you have a cat who hides in the closet all the time and in order to make them more comfortable you start putting beds in the closet you start feeding them in the closet you start making that den for them even more appealing which does what keeps them in the closet that's not mojo talita that's anti-mojo so in this case what we got to try to do is number one let him know that this isn't gonna work for him anymore that we gotta stop giving him access to under the bed and we have to start giving him not giving him access to these really high places anymore but try to find a middle so what we're saying is no we don't want you hiding and that means blocking off the under of the bed you can do that slowly you can use packing crates or something like that to start slowly easing him away from under the bed or you could just rip off the band-aid and block it and don't give him access to it and the same goes with that really high spot that's saying no but what's the yes part of this the yes part is finding what i call the confident wear and if you want to know more about that check out this video up here some cats you'll find that if they're sitting on a couch that that's their confident wear suddenly their body posture changes so think of it this way if cadoo is up in that little luggagey area that you're talking about he's probably down low he's probably doing this thing but if maybe he finds that spot on a couch cushion or something else where he sits up straight where his chest is out where his ears are up where he's just giving you that that little message that if he could talk he'd be like well hey talita how are you you know that kind of thing as opposed to don't touch me don't touch me don't see me don't see me you know what i would encourage you to do is just experiment while you're saying no to him with these areas experiment with with areas that may work wait a minute as a matter of fact you showed me that didn't you let's take a look at this kadoom this one is kadu what's that that is kadu with his sister safida and they are on this little couch which is lower than your bed but not under your bed this piece of furniture here which is kind of i don't know if it's like a cat couch or what kind of genius piece of furniture this is but let's use it man when he turns around right here right there but look at that boy ears up eyes open he's present he's confident he he was sound asleep but he wakes up just open that is an amazing sign let's think about cadifying for confidence and here it's about finding his confident wear and you just hit a jackpot area there so let's give him more things around that height and put him around the room make him comfortable if he's looking for something that's that's a little warmer because it's too cold in in brazil right now then put a heated cat bed on another area that's raised up off the ground a little bit just really entice him over there if if heat is what he's seeking then give him a heated bed there are heated beds that you can get that are originally designed for outdoor cats for feral cats where it plugs in it's all weather they can't chew through it it's just maybe two volts something like that but just enough to provide a little bit of that that radiant heat so that he stays there a little bit longer there are other beds that have a layer of mylar inside them and all that does is that when the cat lays on it their own body heat creates a nice little heated effect so you can look for something like that as well a bed like my clamshell bed which when you close it it just gives him a little bit of hiding space but not enough to be under the bed these are ways of catifying for confidence we want to remove the places that create small insignificant invisible cadu and the things that make him more visible but that he can hang with like this we just capitalize on it so before we were talking about catifying for confidence now we're going to take that same principle and bring it to other affairs in the house and as you just mentioned food is the next thing if you're allowing him to eat at midnight when you're asleep and the house is dark and now he goes all right the coast is clear i can go eat again we're catering to his fear allowing kadu to eat in the middle of the night will keep him small and significant and feeling like he can live a life devoid of uh social interaction with you toletus so the solution here pretty obvious stop letting him eat whenever he wants to eat move just to meal times all cats eat at a given time they eat together by eating with the other cats we're creating a sense of communal rituals he can then watch them do it he can watch safida do it they all have to eat at the same time and he'll be able to just sort of absorb just a little bit of not necessarily the confidence but it's just sort of acting as everyone else acts and they're all acting with confidence so it's almost like osmosis but in this case i think it's something that'll be really positive so you're seeing the theme that i'm going with here talita is that for everything that you allow him to do because you might feel sorry for him there's an unintended consequence which is remaining in the shadows so let's bring him out of the shadows now with food this one is kadu and he always is very scared okay so let's stop right there number one you say hello to him number two right here he looks at you very comfortable and you're looking at him he has no problem making eye contact with you why because you're sitting right now you're not looming over the top of him you're not coming at him you're not in any way a threat you're just sitting there so how can we take this moment and build it into something positive well we have what i have referred to many many times before as the cat i love you the slow blink check out this video right here but this is that that way of establishing loving contact with our cats that is just it's right there it's available to us it's just by slowly blinking right he looks at you you have that moment instead of staring at him that you just slowly blink to him allow him to try to soften his face and blink back to you work on that because when that moment comes where the two of you could have that eye to eye connection in a loving and trusting way him closing his eyes to you because he's saying i love you sure but also i trust you and from there you can do things like go to the go to the edge of the bed and start blinking at him there because from there you can hold out a hand in a very non-threatening way you can present a treat to him in a non-threatening way when i say non-threatening it's because you're not standing over him and and make it part of your daily ritual with him and start to try to establish that trusting back and forth with him that first its eyes and its voice then its hands then its the getting up and talita if you've been watching my videos at all alongside of all of this is play to me there's never been a more sure-fire way of getting our wallflower cats to come off the wall out from under the bed whatever it is and to enjoy the world than by playing with them as he finds the confidence to just hunt catch kill those those actions which awaken his most primal confidence you're putting that into action literally and figuratively and i would make that a part of his every day and what i would try to do is have separate play time just kadoo time it's okay to put everybody else aside and to just play with him for a little bit the more you can get him to bat at a toy in the middle of the floor or up on that that couch where he's at or even better to get him up on the bed and chase something there these are those small wins that you can capitalize day upon day upon day i want to know if after so much time i can still work things out with him and what can i do so he can feel safer and maybe live a life that he likes the the thing i want to reinforce for you talitha is you have given him a life where he feels safe but to to sum this all up what i think that we can bring to the table right now is that for you to be aware of when you might be over compensating because you see a scared cat you feel bad because he doesn't feel safe and then you overdo it in terms of giving him safety which as we've talked about is allowing him to live under the bed to live in a box up high outside for him to be able to eat in the middle of the night so our job right now is to continue to make him feel safe that's a given say no to that part that allows him to be small and insignificant and invisible but yes to a better life right now it's about what's in the middle what is a height that works where he might not be all together comfortable he's approaching that challenge line but we can praise him and encourage him to that challenge line and then past it same thing goes with his eating habits how social he is with the other cats how it is with you touching and how you get to that place of touching or standing over him and expecting him to just hang tight all of these things are encouragements and not pushing him off the cliff because that's going to make you feel terrible and it's going to make him more scared than he is today so we want to say no we want to say yes and sometimes we even want to say maybe uh but that maybe always has to be going towards the yes hopefully that's making sense all right once again i want to send all of my cat daddy love to you for for just allowing all of your cats to be who they are over these six years and and never giving up on what it is that you can do for your more scared cats and it's not just so that you can have the the satisfaction of cuddling or doing whatever but because as you said here you want them to have a life that they like but they feel safe where they're happy where they're safe you know that's that's what you want to give them and i think uh based on the the results that you've had with safita with the results you've had with your other two cats that kadu will follow along all we have to do is just gently in a loving way just nudge him up to that challenge line and one paw beyond and day on day you're gonna see a change in him as well i'll bet you and talita and everybody else just so you know i have not spent all these years around cats just idly sitting by i've been making products and i've been curating products that i think will like in this case with kadu bring out your cat's mojo in this case we were talking about different types of beds they are there to to accomplish the exact purposes i talked about also when it comes to interactive toys whether i'm putting my name on it whether i made it whether i put my name next to it go over to jacksongalaxy.com and check out everything that i stand behind all right telita thank you again and for all the rest of you guys if you want to ask a question all you got to do is what she did send a video right here and give me a video of you asking a question and then your cat's doing whatever it is they do and then send that on over and i'll see if i can answer it don't forget to pass this on if you've got some under-socialized scared cats that need some help and don't forget subscribe don't forget hit the bell uh all those things that make it so that i can get my videos out to you in the most efficient way possible efficient officious efficacious look see there it goes vocabulary bye bye words bye bye bye bye everybody light loving mojo to you take care [Music] meow

Channel: Jackson Galaxy

Views: 39,391

Rating: 4.9812732 out of 5

Keywords: jackson galaxy, cats, my cat from hell, animal planet, cat whisperer, cat guy, cat guy animal planet, cat expert, cat advice, cat health, cat behavior, pet care, pet, cat breeds, types of cats, cat care, cat training, cat supplies, cat toyskitten care, sick cat, cats and kittens, cat illnesses, cat symptoms, cat psychology, taking care of a cat, cat behavior problems, kittens, kitten videos, cat videos, kitten health, adult cat, adult cat videos, jackson galaxy videos

Id: nZRu8zlRTi0

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021