Armed with some great ideas from friends, I have started getting Feta over her fear of the tub!
We started trying the clicker training, but it was getting very complicated with the placement of the treats and cat and clicker, and she was very nervous about the whole thing. So, to get her feeling more comfortable, we turned to the one thing that always makes her happy: meals!
First, I put a rubber-backed rug in the tub so she wouldn’t slip. Then, we started off feeding her with a tiny trickle of water going from the faucet.
What I love about this approach is that she slides the bowl forward when she eats, so she is naturally pushing HERSELF closer and closer to the water. I am there the whole time praising her and petting her, also.
After a couple of repetitions of that, we increased the faucet flow a little bit. Now it was splashing up a little bit of spray, which ended up getting on Feta’s face as she ate. This was probably increasing the difficulty too fast, as Feta paused a few times to turn around and glare at me. So we dialed it back a little from there. (We want to stay at the edges of her comfort zone, but still firmly within them!)
Since the noise and spray were not a big hit with the cat, and on the advice of friends who pointed out that standing water would likely be less scary AND more applicable to the underwater treadmill, we moved on to stopping up the tub a bit. First, we started with only a little bit of standing water, so she could eat without getting wet at all. This was easy! We’ve been increasing it gradually since then, and she’s being so brave! Check her out today:
I think we may introduce clicker training again soon, to get her working on stepping into the water on purpose. But for now, for desensitization, this is working great! I am working hard to make sure that she’s not too stressed during the process, and whenever she asks to leave the tub, I take her out and bring her downstairs and turn on her space heater. The whole endeavor is a huge pain in the neck, but she’s had so much trauma already, if water will help her fix her leg then we are going to do it, but also make it a positive experience!
I’m very proud of this brave and patient kitty <3