Just s further word of encouragement: our (Wini)Fred, to whom I refer as our former quasi-feral, took months to tame down. She had been abandoned at a few months of age in a trailer park, and foraged all summer until a tender-hearted coworker of mine worried about her in the approaching cold weather, and trapped her. I was brand new at feral -- or "hard stray" as they say on the ferals list -- handling and did a lot of things wrong. But we finally got her in a small room by herself, where, as it happened, the doorknob was missing and there was a wide crack at the bottom of the door, so that she and the other cats could hear each other and even interact under the door. At first she kept crawling up into the framework of the decrepit 50s overstuffed chair we had in there, but we sat down in the room and read to her every night (100 Greatest Science Fiction Stories) or watched DVDs and talked. Eventually she would walk over us as we sat on the floor, or come up on the chair arm for treats or pets. It's been a few years and we still can't pick her up properly (though last night I quickly picked her up and set her down and she didn't freak) but she's very loving and leans against your neck with her solid little body from the back of the sofa, or sometimes if you're laying down she'll flop on your face. So once the two of you get past this hard bit and she's out of the wall, be patient and persevere, bribe her with food and do the slow blink thing. It's very gratifying when they bond with you, and you've saved another starfish. ;-)
Diane R. >>bless you for giving this little one a home, even if she's not quite ready to accept it!
