Steady Progress with Timid Kitties

I have been continuing my work with a number of new timid kitties at Social Tees, and they are really coming along. I found out that the sweet shy kitten above and below, who I have been calling Jimmy, is really a girl, sorry about that! So I'm calling her Ginny for now. In the picture above you can see how beautiful her big eyes are, she is very dear. She still gets startled when I first open the cage, but once I start touching her head and stroking her ears, she begins to purrrrr and starts to rub herself against my hand. I was so happy to see her really stretch her body out as you can partly see below (she gets a little startled when I pull out my camera so most of these photos make her look more shy than she is when she is in mid TTouch). There is something so human-looking about her face. She still looks a bit sad but her body feels SO much more relaxed now once I start to touch her. Also, when I am doing TTouch on the other cats in the room, she sits at the front of her cage to watch.

Yesterday when I arrived, she had two new cage-mates, one shy kitten and one very un-shy kitten. The un-shy kitten was adopted shortly after we opened and the other shy cat remained. I did TTouch on both of them, alternating between one and the other, and by the time I finished, they were both lying down with their heads next to each other, a wonderful sign.

The three frightened ferals are really coming along and now I can take them one by one out of their cages, hold them and carry them a bit of a distance away from their cage while doing TTouch on them. They are still shy but even the initial growling which can happen when touching or picking them up is there less and less.

Also, the lovely light grey tabby pictured below is really coming out of its shell. It still will hiss when initially approaching with my hand but once I touch it, it begins to rub itself against me, and now it will allow more and more TTouch on its body than ever before. I started out with some strokes down her body using the back of my hand, then worked this into llama touches, then later turned my hand over and did other types of touches with the front of my hand. She began to walk back and forth, rubbing her body against my hand. We also moved her to a cage on an upper level, where she is more visible and is also further away from the dogs, so that was a great move. When I left yesterday, she was completely stretched out with her belly partially exposed, which was a big step for her.