Socializing Barn Cats to Live Indoors

This week I helped a friend socialize her six cats so that all could live together in her home.  The cats were barn cats but when her husband brought down the barn it left the cats with no shelter so my friend thought she would bring them indoors.

The cats were accustomed to being with each other outdoors but indoors stressed them out. All of the cats were suffering from anxiety and had behavior problems such as marking outside of the litter box, scratching the sofa, climbing the drapes and fighting with each other.

We shopped for Feliway plugin diffusers for the entire house, extra litter boxes, one for each cat, catnip spray, toys, and a large scratching post/cat condo. Also instead of the clay litter, I suggested feline pine cat litter because it was similar to what the cats used outdoors.

Know that Feliway MultiCat diffuser is a synthetic copy of the feline pheromone from the mammary gland area after a mother gives birth to bond with kittens. By mimicking the cat’s natural pheromones, Feliway creates a state of calmness and comfort to alleviate tension and conflict between cats. As a result, Feliway can be used to help reduce tension and conflict in multi-cat households.

I set up the tree for her (in the living room) so the cats could be a part of the family put the Feliway diffusers in every room of the house, and provided each cat with their own litter box.

I suggested that she leave the cats indoors for 21 days, let them get used to the Feliway product and used to living indoors.  That they all should do fine but if she wanted to let them go outdoors after that, I recommended a cattery since cats free-roaming their farm was out of the question due to coyote and dogs in her area.

So it was a busy week and hopefully, all of my friend's cats will adjust to living indoors under the same roof with the humans that love them.