Advanced kitten training help

[akuma 天]

As some of you may recall I recused 2 feral kittens a couple of weeks ago. They've checked out clean at the vets and had there vaccinations now.

Now for feral kittens they are very tame, they are calm and pur once picked up, and can be hand fed with them willingly coming to up me for the food.

However they are still abit skittish about being approached and picked up in the first instance, however once captured/held they are cuddly as you like.

I was wondering if anyone had any techquies beyond the basic stuff you can find on the net to help ease this fear of being approached.

I know the main thing is time, but your advice is still welcomed.

[Antw23uk]

Do you still keep them penned?

I would still have them in an extra large dog crate until they had got over this

[akuma 天]

They are not penned, they were in the garage, but recently I've been letting them into the living room to play as its much larger and they can tear about at will.

I do pop them in a quavers box on my knee for roughly an hour or so an evening so they get used to being close to humans. Again catching them to get them into the box is tough, but once there they settle quickly and before you know it are purring away and lose the fear of approaching hands.

But as they are young kittens (vet guesses 12 to 14 weeks) they bore easy and prefer to tear about like nut bags and break things and chew wires! (espcially expensive surround sounds wires!)

[Shell195]

When we tame feral kittens we never leave food down for them. They are given food by hand to start with then in a dish held by a human. This way they associate food with humans and come running when hungry. Weve never had one fail yet.

[Antw23uk]

Ahh right, in the garage, cool

My experience of feral/ untouchable cats (there is a BIG difference, lol) is to keep them very much contained if you like (dont think there is a nice sounding word for it!)

The idea being that regardless of how they feel they can never run and wonder/ think (in human terms) 'blimey, if i hadnt run, what 'could' have happened to me, thank god i run away' .. so what your doing is kind of forcing them into a situation where they want to run but cant so you take away that 'what if' for them and they are .. for want of a better word ... forced to realise that nothing bad happened or is going to happen to them.

Does that make sense? I tend to ramble and come across as too harsh sometimes because of the words i use, lol