[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by Schaumburger

On June 1 I adopted a 10 year old beautiful cat from a shelter near my home in suburban Chicago. Molly is much more shy and "skittish/nervous" than my former cat, Magic, who went to the Rainbow Bridge in April. For example, when I have the windows open in the living room, and a breeze blows the vertical blinds even slightly Molly will run downstairs to the lower level of my townhouse. I don't know a lot about Molly's former home life, only that her former owner left for college 2 years ago, and his parents recently lost their home in a foreclosure and gave Molly up for adoption. Two of her former family's dachshunds used to chase Molly. Molly is my only pet, so there are no dog chasing issues in my house.

Not realizing how skittish Molly is, I did make the mistake of trying to get her into the cat carrier last Saturday to go to the vet. After that unsuccessful attempt, Molly hid behind the sofa until the next day. Then two days ago, Chicago had terrible thunderstorms in the late afternoon/early evening, and when I came home from work, Molly was perched in the space between my kitchen cabinets and the ceiling, but she did come down a few minutes after I came home as the thunderstorms were over by then.

I understand that Molly is still adjusting to her home after being here for just under 2 weeks, and having me try to put her into the cat carrier last weekend and the thunderstorm a couple of days ago did not help matters at all. She now seems to spend a lot of time in the lower level of my townhouse sitting/laying on the carpet at the bottom of the stairs rather than wanting to spend a lot of time in the upper level where the living room, dining room, kitchen and bedrooms are. She loves chasing the laser pointer when I use it downstairs to play with her. She enjoys being brushed for a short time. When I come home from work at night, or when I am home on the weekends, when Molly is downstairs, I will occasionally call down to her in a soft voice and tell her how pretty she is (this was suggested to me by my cat sitter).

My former cat, Magic, would spend 90% of his time in the same room with me.
Any suggestions on how I can encourage Molly to want to spend more time upstairs with me? I know 13 days is not a lot of time, but any suggestions are welcome. Or do some cats just prefer not to spend a lot of time in the same room with their caretakers? Magic was my first cat, and he was very social from the moment I adopted him in 1998 until he went to the Rainbow Bridge two months ago, so I guess I just got spoiled.

Any suggestions and ideas on bonding with my new fur kid are welcome.

It took four years for one of ours once and then she started running the house.