Remember Tiger? He’s the stray cat that just showed up one day while I was working outside about a year and a half ago. He was super friendly so I started feeding him every day. And of course he stayed pretty close to our house the whole time, sometimes sleeping under or on the roof of the van at night.
Another time, when the van wasn’t in the carport, I woke up in the morning to find him sleeping on my work table in a pile of sawdust.
Every time I went outside for work he would appear begging for belly scratches.
This little guy stole his way into my heart pretty quickly, and when the weather started getting colder in December 2024, I bought him a cat house and insulated it so he could stay warm at night. And I put it near the back doors of my studio so I could keep an eye on it (and him) as much as possible.
He had been neutered, so I wasn’t sure if he was someone’s lost pet or if he was found by someone who decided to have a stray cat neutered and then released him. I checked local lost pet listings online to see if anyone had lost him, and I even posted about him online, but no one called. After about a year, and as the weather got colder again last December, I started letting him inside the house when the temperature got really cold. Well, he has now become our cat. He hasn’t fully made the transition to being an indoor cat yet, but I really want him to. I’m just not quite sure how to do this final transition.
However, he was quite a handful. Weighing 17 pounds, he is the largest cat we have ever had. He is big, heavy and strong and weighs three pounds more than Felicity, our other cat. And he loves being the center of attention. When I’m working on a project, he’s right in the middle of it.
Felicity has always been like that, but she’s a little more relaxed.
When I’m working on a project, she stays as long as I let her, but as soon as I need to shoo her away to finish a project, she stays away.
Tiger, on the other hand, is not that easy. He’s always in the middle of my projects and when I try to scare him away he comes right back. Over and over again. So he’s a bit of a challenge, but he’s just so cute that it’s hard to get upset with him.
When he started spending nights indoors, I pulled out an extra comforter to make a bed for him on my studio countertop so he could be high enough so he wouldn’t have to worry about Cooper (our rather large and hyperactive dog) bothering him. Tiger doesn’t like Cooper at all and he hisses and hits every time Cooper gets too close to him.
When he first came in at night, I had just bought a new cat bed for Felicity. This picture makes me laugh. It’s like Tiger is planning to take over Felicity’s new bed.
And now he has managed to take over Felicity’s bed. Unfortunately, these cute little beds sold out before I could get a new one, so now they’re fighting over this one. But by eight pounds, Tiger wins every time. Don’t worry. Felicity has other beds.
So far, Tiger and Felicity haven’t gotten along well. It was a bit stressful in the first few weeks, especially because they both wanted to be near me in the evening when I went to bed. Matt and I always go to bed around 10pm and then watch a show before bed and both cats want to be on my lap. Every night they fought over who could sleep on my legs. This has always been Felicity’s nighttime routine, and when another cat was added, I felt guilty because Felicity sometimes got chased away by Tiger.
But it’s only been in the last week or two that this has started to happen. Felicity still has her normal spot on my legs and Tiger is nestled next to my leg, and overall they get along well since they’re so close.
I’ve even caught them playing with each other a few times in the last few weeks, but it always seems to end with one of them getting upset and hissing and hitting the other. I really think they’ll become friends at some point. Felicity definitely wants to be friends with Tiger, but Tiger is the one who is still a little aggressive when Felicity gets too close or wants to sniff him a little too long to comfort him.
I was completely amazed at how much food Tiger eats. We use cat food much faster now! We have always had fairly small cats, weighing between six and nine pounds, with Felicity being the largest cat we had until Tiger came along. And Tiger is the first cat we ever had. So I was a little shocked at how much food a 17 pound male cat eats compared to the small female cats we always had.
But the biggest challenge right now is that I really want Tiger as an indoor cat for two reasons. First I want to get rid of his sharp claws. I’m always a little nervous because he starts scratching around on the furniture. He’s been great so far. I’ve never seen him try to claw on the furniture and he only uses the scratching post. But it still makes me nervous, especially now that he has started sleeping on our new chair in our bedroom at night. So I want to cut his claws really short and blunt so he can’t do any damage, but as long as he continues to insist on going outside, he needs those claws for defense.
Also, almost every time he’s outside I see him running around the backyard with some wild animal in his mouth – a bird, a lizard, a field mouse, etc. I don’t like that at all. He gets plenty of food inside, so there is no reason for him to continue hunting and killing wildlife. Plus, it’s just safer indoors. The risk of him being hit by a car is zero when he’s indoors. There is little risk of him being attacked by a stray dog when he is indoors.
But he still wants to go outside during the day. If I don’t let him out by noon, he sits at the back door and screams at me until I let him out. But then, around 7 p.m., he’s ready to come back in the house and settle in for the evening.
This is my biggest challenge at the moment. How do I get this cat, who was probably born in the forest, spent her first year outside and is used to foraging for her food, to stay indoors? I let him stay inside for three days when we had a period of bad weather and I thought he might have made the transition to being an indoor cat, but when the weather cleared he was ready to go back outside. I was pretty disappointed but I feel guilty keeping him inside even though he obviously wants to be outside.
If you have any tips or tricks on how you can help an outdoor cat fully transition to an indoor cat, I would be happy to hear your feedback. I really want him to stay indoors where I know he is safe, well fed and well cared for and I really want to trim those sharp nails!
