Rodney our Ragdoll cat

Our question this week was:

I’ve found you e-mails to be informative, but they are not exactly addressing my individual concerns, since we already have our cat, so
I’m glad to have the chance to write to you and hopefully you can answer some of my questions!

My daughter was asked to take care of Rodney, a very special male, 15-month-old, seal, bi-color Ragdoll purebred cat! His owner had to go out of town and was in the process of moving and taking on a new job that would require him to be away from the cat more than was fair to him. My daughter and I cared for him for that week and expressed how
much we liked him and would miss him, even though Rodney wasn’t overly friendly to us, mostly just shy. His owner asked if we would be interested in having him, he could see that we took good care of him, etc. After a family meeting and much thought, we decided to adopt him (free of any charge) the previous owner was just looking for a loving home for his special cat) but it was a great opportunity to have a purebred, expensive cat that we would not normally have been able to get at this particular time.

I did a lot of research on the breed and was really interested in it. As you probably know, they are known to be very “people oriented” and love to be around others a lot. We are a family of four, my husband and myself and our two children who are 13 and 18.

So…Rodney’s previous owner brought him to us in the next two days (along with all of his things, as he had to go on a business trip to Japan for three weeks, but promised when he’d return to send us his pedigree papers and his health records, etc. I trust he will do that when he returns to the country.

We followed all the steps of letting him in his carrier to come out on his own, it did take several hours, and made his room my daughter’s bedroom for his safe haven and for his food, toys, bed, scratching post/seat and litter, etc. He is making progress, but it’s been three weeks since we got him. He loves being petted but doesn’t hesitate to let you know when he’s had enough by turning his head and trying to nip at you a bit. He did some “hissing” in the first week he was with us, if we got to close to him, although he let us pet him a little. Is this normal for this breed?

We are very gentle with him and talk to him quite a bit but are wondering if this is just his way of communicating he’s had enough. He does not “meow”, he hasn’t so far at all. I’ve read that this breed isn’t very vocal, but is this normal?

He doesn’t seem to like to be picked up very much. He appears to be very healthy and we give him Wellness food, half dry, half wet diet. Is it necessary to give him extra vitamins?

His previous owner told me to give him a tsp. of Missing Link, dietary supplement, on his wet food daily. We are just anxious for him to crawl up on our laps and love us back like we love him but realize he is just adjusting. How long might it take for him to be fully comfortable with us all? I guess, what I’m asking you is…what can we expect of him during this adjustment period that is typical of his breed?

I understand all cats have different personalities and some might take longer to adjust to a new home, than others. He came from a one person home to a four-person home. He is definitely less shy of us all than he was and is eating normally and has been perfect with his litter box since day one. We are using World’s Best Litter, which is flushable, all of the same brands of food and litter that he was using before. Please suggest anything that will help Rodney’s transition along, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you for your time, for reading my e-mail and for answering my questions.

Sincerely,

Kay Chervanik

Answer

Hi – thanks for your email. Gosh, you have lots of questions. I appreciate that you are trying to do the best you can for your new cat. That is great. I admire pet owners that ask questions and really want to make their pets happy. Now, to try to answer your questions. I’ll try to make bullet points of them below: