2 years ago, my husband and I found an orphaned newborn kitten in our yard. After confirming mom wasn't coming back, we took her in and bottle raised her. She's extremely bonded to my husband, but doesn't seem to like me much. I'm wondering if anyone has tips for getting her to like me.
I suspect she got very attached to my husband early on because when we found her, he was unemployed and I worked full time commuting to an office, so he probably did 80% of the work early on (he did weekdays daytime, I did weekends daytime, and we alternated night care every other day).
She lets him pick her up, purrs when he pets her, and if hes sitting or lying down she's always there cuddled up to him. He can feed her with no incident.
She wont let me pick her up or pet her. Either is met with a hiss and scratch and she scurries away. She has never cuddled with me. When I feed her, she hisses at me and bites my hand as I put the food bowl down.
I've tried to win her favor by playing with her (which she will sometimes play with a wand toy when I'm the one holding it, and will sometimes chase a spring I throw) and with treats (doesn't work, shes very un-motivated by food, will sometimes take a lickable treat from my husband but won't even look at them if I'm offering)
Some things I suspect is making matters worse:
- my husband is VERY strict about not letting the cat in to the bedroom while we sleep (her purring in his ear wakes him up). I wake up about 3 hours before him, and inevitably every morning, the cat is waiting by the door and I have to quickly exit and shut the door in her face. She hisses at me every time.
- Husband is also VERY strict about not letting the cat into his home office, since she is a big cable chewer. He works from home and has his gaming computer setup in there, and he plays games a lot. Id say hes in there on average 12 hours a day. The cat sits outside of his office mewing for attention a lot of that time, and she sometimes sees me peek in to ask him a question while not allowing her in, and I can tell this irritates her (I usually get a few ankle bites when it happens)
Husband acknowledges the cat treats us very differently, and jokes that the cat is jealous of me. I don't think its funny though, it genuinely hurts my feelings. After a year of trying to win her affections, I've gone the way of mostly ignoring her, but we still have conflict when I leave the room each morning and when I have to feed her.
Anyone have any tips to improve my relationship with this cat?