Once again, I have reached a stumbling block with Ashley. I believe this setback occurred because last month she was so matted, I captured her up and put her in a carrier. We went inside, and I proceeded to remove every mat she had. Although Ashley looks strongly like a Maine Coon mix. I suspect that she has Persian in her because of how easily she mats. She gets these horrible mats at the base of her ears, and when I go to try to get them out gently with a seam ripper, she will bite me, growl, hiss, and show her claws.

Although I returned her quickly back to her established domain, she has not trusted me since. Yesterday I made a decision, and during a rare moment when God afforded me the opportunity, I scooped her up and put her inside the introduction cage. I will start working with her gradually. She will only tolerate mat removal for about 10 minutes max before she starts getting growly and hissy and very aggressive. I did manage to get her ear mats removed. I also checked her ears to see if perhaps she had ear mites and that’s why she was developing mats at that site. She does not have ear mites.

What she does have right now is a deep distrust of me, so over the next few weeks, months, however, long it takes, I will work slowly to try to reestablish my relationship with her so that she doesn’t feel the need to flee quickly every time I go out there.

Magoo on the other hand is doing great. He is out and about with the other cats,he sits on a ledge allows me to pet him whenever I want to or whenever he wants to be brushed he will come and give me a head bump.. that’s my cue to grab a brush, he  just loves it. I told him yesterday he needs to talk to his sister because she definitely does not like being brushed. Hopefully by the end of her quarantine, she will have a different reaction to being groomed. That is the plan anyway. Whether it evolves that way is really all up to her, as well as how I handle her aggression along the way. She ican be a formidable kitty.

I learned years ago, not to work with cats with PTSD or stray cats with feral tendencies with gloves..I found that it erodes the trust. They don’t get used to your smell, they come to fear the gloves and attack them. Right now I am feeding her canned food (tasty stuff that I normally don’t buy because nutritionally it’s not that great, but it is kitty crack. Once she loses the fear of my hands, I will gather up my courage, and I will start to pick her up, pet her, take note of the mats she has that I need to remove and make a plan.

Although Spring is showing on the pages of my calendar, when I look out the window, I don’t see the sun. We were just placed on another Winter Storm Warning yesterday! Snow is expected to fall by tonight. I know it’s crazy weather everywhere right now. I just really miss the sun right now.we are also supposed to get gusty winds tomorrow, I’m hoping we’ve had enough rain in the recent days to keep my trees rooted in the ground.

The good news about Ashley’s recent confinement is, she’s not screaming her head off in distress being inside the cage. This morning when I went in to feed, her brother, was sitting on the shelf near the cage, and she was on the top level next to him. They take comfort in each other. Magoo has turned out to be strikingly beautiful. His flames are getting deeper as he gets older. This summer I am going to have to put sunblock on his ears. Once the sun does return, it will raise the risk of him because of his light color, getting cancer from the UV rays. This risk also increases because that beautiful tree is no longer in the ground providing much-needed shade for the cats.