‘She follows me everywhere and grooms my beard’: Wildlife biologist spends weeks trying to tame a terrified kitten—now she won’t leave his side

Author image for Laurent Shinar
Laurent Shinar • Writer and Editor
Jul 3, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

You know, it is rather funny how people complain about how difficult it is to train an uneducated doggo. And sure, while it is no picnic, doggos are amenable enough to eventually respond to commands and therefore make tangible progress.

While when it comes to cats, they do not care what you have to say, in fact a lot of what we have to say can leave them in a rather salty state, and in the best case scenario they learn to feel safe in the environment you have given them, mainly thanks to the food we put out for them. It is a journey of pain, persistence and perseverance, and only the toughest of the tough can make it through to the other side and bond with their babies. Much as this wildlife biologist did and we could not be prouder to share his story with you.

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  • 01
    Backstory: I'm a long time cat owner, and I'm also a wildlife biologist. I have well over 10 years experience in trapping, handling, and releasing lots of bitey mammals -- and you better believe I'm grateful for my rabies vaccinations and lots of different thickness leather gloves! I've been
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  • 02
    a cat owner for over 30 years. The best cats I've adopted have been older. I've adopted four kittens over the years, and have had mixed results: some turn out to be amazing, loving, social animals. Some are aloof. Some have bonded with my little girls (which is totally cool). A couple of
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  • 03
    months ago, my elderly mother broke her femur and I had to take care of her ~6 month old kitten for some time. My mom's cat totally bonded with me, and the feeling was mutual. It killed me to have to give her back! My wife decided to keep an eye out for a little female kitten for me, and eight days ago she found one.
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  • See, this is the problem. Even if you come to the adoption process with the best of intentions you simply cannot know what is waiting for you on the other side. This hooman has more experience than many of us put together and still, this story became one of the most challenging of their life.

  • 04
    So, eight days ago we took in an unsocialized 7 or 8 week old kitten. She had lived in a colony and had been kept in a pet "play pen" for around two weeks. In
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  • 05
    December 21, 2021 December 21, 2023
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  • 06
    that time, she was "free fed" - -- allowed to graze whenever she wanted to from a bowl of kibble. I knew that step one was to stop free feeding her, and to get her to associate me with being fed. I now feed her a can of high quality wet food twice a day, and she picked up on the sound of the can opening almost instantly.
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  • 07
    I keep this kitten in a pet "play pen" in my office, where I'm moving around and on the phone all day. My hope is that this will desensitize her to my voice and my movement. I've spent the last eight days trying to calm and socialize her, and I've had some successes. I've also had some pretty traumatic setbacks:
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  • 08
    • Day 0: She was terrified and had been free-feeding. I talked to her but mostly left her alone. I did see how she'd react to my hand (I was hoping for a sniff), but she reacted very poorly: lots of energetic hissing and biting.
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  • Dang, what a rough start to this. Like, for a cat to hiss and actively bite you over a hand sniff attempt is kinda over the line. It takes so much patience and understanding to stick it out and truck on regardless of the blood that has been drawn from this person’s hand.

  • 09
    • Day 1: I started feeding her canned food. She got comfortable coming out of her "hidey hole" (a transport crate) and eating while I talked with her. She tolerated eating only a few inches from my face (on the other side of her playpen).
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  • 10
    • Day 2: She accepted food out of my fingers. Day 3: She started to tolerate gentle stroking on her face and back, with a minimum of hissing. I named her "Poppy".
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  • 11
    • Day 4: More progress tolerating gentle pets while eating. She was still retreating back into her hidey hole, and freaked out if I reached inside it. I know
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  • 12
    they don't like to feel cornered, so I took off the top of the traveling enclosure. This didn't go well -- she went absolutely nuts, jumping around in her enclosure, growling and crying, and kept throwing herself at the mesh trying to get away.
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  • 13
    • Day 5: After yesterday's setback, I gave her a little more space. She's still ok accepting food from my fingers and being lightly touched, but won't leave her (now open-topped) hidey hole to eat.
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  • 14
    Cheezburger Image 10524685824
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  • 15
    • Days 6 & 7: More of the same. She still trembles most of the time when I'm touching her, but she does seem to forget to be scared while she's eating. I've started gently lifting her up while she's eating -- not completely off the ground, but to get her used to the sensation of being picked up. When she forgets that
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  • 16
    she's scared, she gets a look of pleasure/relaxation on her face when I scratch her neck and behind her ears. But as soon as I move, she goes back into terror mode.
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  • 17
    • Day 8 (Today): Another setback. She ate well and tolerated gentle pets and stroking. She also ate a little more out in the open. After getting no reaction to lifting her up gently, I actually lifted her off the ground.
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  • 18
    She flipped out -- gave me a nasty bite and got out of the enclosure. I had to throw a towel on her to trap her, which she hated. I tried to hold her wrapped up in the towel to see if she'd calm down, and she went nuts -- huge growls and full-on "fight or flight" bites and deep scratches. My hands are a wreck. I eventually got
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  • 19
    her back into the enclosure after trapping her in a towel, but she's totally freaked and glowering at me in terror.
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  • 20
    I feel like we've already plateaued, and that my efforts to make progress have just left her more terrified of me than ever. I'm worried that she might have been too old for me to start trying to tame her -- she wasn't older than eight weeks, but she's so freaking terrified of me. She
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  • 21
    responds really well when she sees/hears or other cats -- she cries to them for help, which breaks my heart. I'm trying to keep her completely isolated from my other cats, since she has yet to be vaccinated and I would greatly prefer if she bonded with humans than other cats.
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  • 22
    After today's (Day 8's) setback, I'm really worried that I'm doing more harm than good -- maybe this is a cat that will never bond with humans, and I worry that the stress/trauma of trapping her in a towel to get her back into her play pen is erasing all of the small gains we've made. I'm a big guy (5'11"; 250 lbs) with a deep voice, and I'm also clumsy. I kind of
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  • 23
    worry that I'm too big, too male, and too scary to successfully socialize this kitten; I'm a total cat fanatic, but cats that aren't my own tend to be terrified of me. I've handled hundreds of bats over the years, including species that are known to be, for lack of a better word, "psychotic" when handled. (Eptesicus fuscus and Artibeus lituratus I'm looking at you). Even these tough bats calm
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  • 24
    Cheezburger Image 10524685568
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  • 25
    after a few minutes of handling (while I'm measuring them, taking tissue samples, etc.). My little Poppy appears way harder!
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  • 26
    Two years ago, I posted looking for help socializing a feral kitten rescue named Poppy. I was having a really rough time of things with her, and advice I received from this group to *slow down* and let Poppy dictate the pace of her socialization worked wonders.
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  • 27
    Poppy is doing amazingly well, and we're deeply, deeply bonded. Seriously, I've owned something like two dozen cats over the past 35 years, and Poppy is in the S- Tier of all time best cats.
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  • 28
    She follows me around all day, and sleeps on my tummy every night. She won't let me pick her up, but I'm okay with that -- she dictates all the terms of when, where, and how she's touched.
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  • 29
    And because she trusts that I won't do anything that she considers scary or unpleasant, she spends more time with me and enjoys a steadily-growing variety of interactions. She *loves* me, and I haven't had a cat who *loved* me since 2009.
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  • 30
    I can't overstate how much it means to me to have Poppy seek me out every night at bedtime for a long purr session, followed by her "grooming" me, followed by falling asleep on me. She even falls asleep when I have both of my hands on her, something that I've never had a cat tolerate before.
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  • 31
    I could gush and gush, but the long and short of it is that the support and advice I received from this group helped me socialize one of the best cats I've ever had.
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