This week's Cats of the Week are my foster cats from PAWS Chicago, Colleen and Colette. They've just finished their stint as fosters in my house after about two months and they are ready to find their forever home!
Colleen and Colette are of course sisters if you couldn't tell. They are about 10 months old and they are absolutely adorable!
We brought them into foster because they are shy. The first two weeks in the house they mostly stayed this way, they hid in their kitty furniture and their safe spot carrier and didn't interact much at all and hardly made a peep beyond eating!
But as soon as we started cracking the door open to the rest of the house they changed extensively. They started to explore very quickly and had no issue running all over the house in 'army crawl' mode.
They were on the hunt to find out the best nooks and crannies to hide in and to observe from. They quickly wandered the whole house without issue.
Colette is definitely the more adventurous of the two and always leads the way. The second doors pop open she is the one to charge in and then potentially charge out. Colleen will then quickly follow after if she's in the mood.
These are by far two of the nicest most gentle cats we have ever encountered. No matter what we did it never once caused a negative response. Not that we tried for one.
But as any cat owner knows, loud noises take place from outside, things fall, you can startle a cat easily. Not once did it ever result in a scratch, a swat, a nip, anything. Instead they were more likely to run off and hide in a catbox or behind one of the many other boxes in the house
The worst thing we encountered with either of them was that they are very food motivated. That’s a pretty good ‘bad’ thing for a cat!
Though you do need to be careful when you feed them treats or snacks as in the attempt to get a treat out of your hand they may accidentally catch you with their teeth.
But only because they are so darn excited to get the treats! We found placing treats on the ground was by far the most effective way to give them snacks.
A few other key items worth noting:
- They absolutely loved our resident cats and our resident cat Lexi loved playing with them. The three of them chased each other, wrestled and played all the time.
- They are excellent at chasing flies. We had a few drain flies in the house and they went absolutely bonkers for them until they batted them out of the air.
- They love Cat TV. They will sit at an open front door (screened in of course) and watch the birds and squirrels for hours on end. They never pounced on the door.
A few other things they absolutely love!!!
- The laser pointer. They’d chase it all over and never stop!
- Wand toys. In particular the Rainbow Cat Charmer was a huge hit for them.
- Small little fluff balls about half an inch to an inch in diameter. They would bet them everywhere, chase them and even carry them around.
- Sniffing at the outdoor air. We got a few really nice days where I could open up the front door and let them sniff at the screen. The immediately joined our two resident cats and all four of them hung out sniffing the fresh spring air!
- No surprise, they love boxes. I have several boxes around the house and they loved going in and out of them all.
- Crinkly paper is a huge hit. We got a few boxes from Amazon that used large lengths of brown paper to help keep things secure inside the box. They loved this paper. They would run all over the house then jump right into it to make noise then rinse and repeat.
And a last few notes from my side:
- I think they'd do really well with a cat tree or cat castle of some sort available to them.
- They already learned to use both sisal scratching posts and cardboard lounges, they loved the cardboard!
If you're interested in adopting them please reach out to Chicago PAWS through the website. Their individual profiles can be found here: Colleen and Colette.
We at StuffCatsWant also thank Chicago PAWS and every other shelter organization for helping save so many animals on a daily basis!! Please submit your cat as cat of the week by emailing StuffCatsWant@gmail.com with 5 pictures of your cat(s) and a short description of him or her or them!
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