Dear Pammy, Where did I go wrong?

A reader writes:

My girlfriend is a cat LOVER. As for me, not so much, but I am trying. Trying to be the good boyfriend I am, I wanted the cat to like me. so I started playing with it (the cat never wanted to play) getting it from its “hiding spots”, and just trying to be social with an unsocial cat. My question is, how can I get the cat to trust me and socialize with me? Have I damaged the cat for good? When I am not around and its just her in the apartment, the cat is perfectly fine. When I poke my head under the bed I tend to get hissed at. Thank you for your helpful information.

Dear Reader,

I appreciate the effort someone is making for their Special Person. Even more so… if it works. However, doing this badly will backfire on us, and now we are losing serious points in the Cat Department.

Playing and being social is a good thing, unless we drag the cat out of their hiding spot to do so. Now we are insisting, and the cat always prefers that Fun Is Their Decision.

And what kind of “play” was tried? If we get out a wand toy or a package of treats, we will get their attention in a good way. If we want to wrestle with them as though they are a Great Dane puppy, they will assume we are violent and/or crazy, and that is why we will get hissed at when we appear.

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What can we do to rewind this situation?

We will be sorry about it. To the cat. That’s right. We will apologize to the cat. We will explain we didn’t know any better. We will say their name a lot, with loving tones, and admit it was all our fault.

And it is. We didn’t mean it that way, but that is how it went over with the cat.

We will make it up. To the cat. Now that we know better, we will be doing things the way the cat likes. We will bribe them with treats, we will dangle tempting toys, we will bring over the finest catnip or the comfiest cuddliest throw, covered with our scent so as the cat enjoys our gift, they will think good thoughts about us.

We must spoil the cat as we have never spoiled anything before. But look at it this way: we are showing off our spoiling prowess, and might get more invitations to fuss and be fussed over. It’s not just cats who like that kind of thing.

We won’t mind making a fool of ourselves. To the cat. So we’re dragging a fake mouse across the floor with a length of yarn and talking baby talk. What’s the worst that could happen?

I know, the cat will like it, and then we’ll have to do it again. But we promised to do what it took. If the cat likes it, we will be making a lot of friends. Which is what we wanted.

For more on being friends with cats, read the post Making Friends with a Friend’s Cat or see my many articles about how to get the cat to love you.

We can get over a rocky beginning. Especially when we know that was the real problem all along.

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There’s more to raising and training a cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See my CAT TRAINING TIPS.