Hello everyone,

we adopted two cats in December. At that time, both were about 9 months old and had been brought from Corfu to Germany. The first family backed out, and then we stepped in and adopted them. Both are neutered and vaccinated, in case that matters.

Gigi and Bella are our first cats. After a few days, we separated them because we thought they were playing or fighting too roughly. In the end, that turned out to be a false alarm; we just didn’t yet know how rough young cats can play. We reintroduced them after a few days without any problems, and they are really sweet together. In the first weeks/months, we didn’t do much “training” because we wanted them to settle in and feel safe first. Both were quickly curious, never really hid, and came to us for petting and cuddles.

However, Bella has developed somewhat “strangely,” and we’re not sure what’s going on. We’ve noticed the following things over the past few months:

• While Gigi wants to spend every free minute with us, Bella practically never comes onto our laps to cuddle. She rarely shows that she wants to be petted or seeks physical contact.
• Bella is also very hard to train. While we were able to break Gigi of bad habits, for example, scratching the couch by showing her where she is allowed to scratch, this doesn’t work with Bella at all. She knows she’s not supposed to do it but still scratches the couch, and before we can redirect her to an appropriate scratching spot, she runs away.
• Bella also isn’t really food-motivated. We can easily reward Gigi with treats when she does something good. Bella, on the other hand, doesn’t eat treats, she plays with them on the floor or only eats them with a lot of effort. She also barely touches dry food.
• Recently, Bella has started running away from us for no apparent reason. For example, she might be lying somewhere, and when we approach just to walk past her, she suddenly runs away or climbs up the cat wall—even if we didn’t even look at her.
• She is also much more likely to injure us with her claws. For example, when we pick Bella up or try to put her into the carrier, scratches are almost guaranteed. Even when we’re sitting on the couch and she walks behind us, you can never be sure she won’t suddenly swipe at you. Or if we’re sleeping and a foot is sticking out, she’ll attack it. It can be funny sometimes, but when it happens more often, you start to wonder what’s going on. Gigi almost never does this.
• Also, when we try to “examine” her, for example, if she has something in her eye, she barely lets us touch her. We had to give Gigi eye drops for a few days; of course, she resisted, but overall it worked well. If we had to give Bella drops, we wouldn’t know how to manage it.
• Gigi is generally a very talkative cat, while Bella isn’t. She only meows when she wants to complain, or sometimes she meows very “dramatically” for no apparent reason.

Do you have any tips on how we should handle Bella? Are we doing something wrong, or is this just her personality? That would be okay for us as well, of course, we would love it if she enjoyed cuddling with us, but if she doesn’t want to, that’s fine too. We would just like to stop the inappropriate scratching, etc.

We’ve taken both of them into our hearts and can’t imagine life without them.