Reader question: How do I get my cat to trust me?
Here’s the message we got: “We took in a cat and 4 kittens about 10-12 years ago, not very trusting/friendly, one especially one; if I sit close to her, she moves or runs away. How do I get her to trust me?”
Ten years is a long time to still be the person a cat moves away from. Worth saying upfront, though, that’s not a failure on your part. Some cats just arrive more cautious than others, and a kitten wired that way from the start tends to stay guarded far longer than anyone expects. Longer isn’t the same thing as never, though.
Height is the whole problem, before anything else even gets tried
A standing adult reads as a genuine threat to a nervous cat. Crouch or sit whenever you want them to come closer, and the one signal scaring her most simply disappears.
A toothbrush
Strange, but it works. If a reaching hand sends her sprinting, stop reaching entirely and try a soft-bristled toothbrush instead, gentle contact with the bristles rather than fingers. An object just doesn’t carry the same weight as a hand.
Why does tuna succeed where kibble fails completely?
Because kibble sitting in a bowl asks nothing of her and offers nothing back. Something genuinely good, wet food or tuna, placed at a distance and inched closer over weeks rather than days, remains one of the strongest tools available for a cat this far gone on trust. It never requires her to feel cornered to take the bait.
She bolts, you freeze, that’s the entire move
Chasing undoes more progress than anything else on this list, instantly. Staying still lets her come back on her own schedule, rather than confirming what she already feared.
Somewhere above the chaos
A shelf. A cat tree. The top of a bookcase. Cats that feel outnumbered at floor level loosen up considerably once they’re given somewhere to watch from instead of somewhere to hide.
The bottom line
Ten to twelve years of caution doesn’t undo itself in a week, and it isn’t supposed to. Every quiet session where she stays instead of running is actual progress, even the ones where nothing visible seems to happen at all.
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