Marianne

Had my usual friday-night shift at the Shelter, easy and calm.
This is Marianne - she came from a larger cat-colony in Stavanger which we worked with early this year (february-march). She was one of the feisty ones that took a long time to go into the trap - she was really sceptical towards everything human.
At the Shelter she got the usual vet-check, got neutered and chipped. After a while we put her in one of the rooms with another cat from the colony who we saw she liked a lot, Mari. Both of them sceptic towards humans, we always try to set another cat with them which is secure and tame and can help the insecure ones to learn from them that humans are not frightening.
But Marianne had other plans - she acted as Mari`s bodyguard, always shielding her and being rather nasty to the poor other cat and fake-attacking every volunteer that came into the room. She had such a great instinct to protect Mari that we had no chance but to separate them after 2 months of no developement. We had Marianne alone in a smaller room for a while but put her with Milky (the most social, fearless and a bit braindamaged mascot of the Shelter). And that was a breakthrough - she connected with Milky who needed no protection - he loves humans - he would play with her and groom her, sometimes bully her a bit. She got calmer, and more content around humans. Human touch is not allowed yet, but she has a playful side and I guess that will be the key to her trust.
-Backblipped on monday-
P.S. Mari got a lot of attention afterwards, and she lives now in a fosterhome and is making great progress :-)