Over the years, I have rescued, fostered and nursed back to health dozens of cats from all sorts of situations of neglect and abandonment.
All of them had extremely different personalities, and all of them adapted differently to life indoors, some taking significantly longer – perhaps because they used to be feral cats at one point, or because the traumas inflicted to them by evil humans had all happened indoors. Some, on the other hand, absolutely loved the newly found comfort of a home from day one.
Regardless of the circumstances, I have always kept cats strictly indoors, because I have always lived in busy cities and I understand that it’s much safer for cats to not have access to the outdoors (there’s dogs, cars, people with awful intentions…).
This led me to learning how to adapt my home to each cat’s personality. Some needed cozy, safe corners or nooks to hide in, others wanted to sleep all day as close as possible to wherever I was, but a good few seemed to really come alive and show their personalities once I introduced toys, scratching posts, climbing towers, and the likes.
Of course, it wasn’t always possible for me to buy these products outright, especially because I had quite a frequent rotation of rescues at the time, so I did have to improvise with some of it – cardboard, paper, wrappers, all became my best friends to make these cats the happiest they could.
After all, cats might love sleeping, but they do have specific needs: they are innate hunters, so have certain instincts and energy requirements that they need to meet to keep them happy.
Even indoors, where mice for hunting and trees for scratching or climbing seem to be less common… 🙂
