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Adjusting to moving

1522 Views 1 Reply 2 Participants Last post by  Carmel
My boyfriend and I currently live in a large 2 bedroom apartment with our 3 cats and dog. We just recently bought a townhouse and will be moving June 30th. I'm pretty concerned about 2 of my 3 cats in terms of adjusting to the move. A few weeks ago we brought home our latest addition, Sasha, who is a 6 y/o ragdoll. She hadn't been adjusting as well or fast as when we brought our kittens home 6 and 7 months ago, which is to be expected. She is finally coming out of her shell but gets very scared with change as she was a breeding/show cat before and was in the same house for her whole life until now. I am concerned that she will regress back. Like I said, we arn't moving for 2 months and just as she gets fully adjusted we are going to uproot her again.

I am also scared about one of my DSH(anna) who absolutely hates change as well. She is very skittish to new people and situations. We brought her over to bf's mom's house once and I have never seen her so scared in my life. She was shaking in a little ball crying. I picked her up and she was clinging to me for dear life. The townhouse is two floors as well as has a fully finished basement. I'd eventually like to leave the door open and put one of their litter boxes in the living room. I am terrified that Sasha and Anna will hide somewhere and we won't be able to find them. They occasionally do that here but this place is much small then our new place.

Oh another thing... both my DSH have never seen stairs before... I don't want them to be confined to one floor... how do I teach them to go up and down?

I know I am worrying prematurely but soon everything will be chaotic so I want to start thinking about this now. Any advice as to how to get them to adjust to a new and completely different environment is greatly appreciated.
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It may take some time for them to adjust to the move, same with any cats, but eventually they'll be fine. Start out by keeping them only in one room, it'll become their safe room. After a week or two, or a month, whenever they seem happy and fully relaxed in the room, let them start exploring other parts of the house but make sure they can always run back into that room if they get spooked.

As far as stairs go, they just naturally use them as long as they feel like it's safe to explore, no training needed.

I moved a 15 year old cat that had hardly ever been out of the apartment in his life (he'd pee everywhere in his carrier he'd be so scared and he would - and still does - run and hide from strangers, and a stranger was anyone he didn't see weekly for several months on end) ... we gave him the laundry room and it took him at least a month until he seemed fully relaxed in there. We made sure he had a nice closet area to with blankets to hide in and he adjusted eventually. He even got used to going into the yard, of course the first few times he peed everywhere he was so scared, but after that he slowly realised it was ok.
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