nervous cat

[happycake]

I am looking after someone's cat this week while they're on holiday. She is incredibly nervous whenever I'm near her and hisses a lot, sometimes even when I'm putting her food out. She doesn't like to be touched at all. I don't have much experience with cats, but apparently she is like this with everyone, even her owners, so I know it's not just me.

I got some catnip but it doesn't seem to be helping much. I considered getting one of those Feliway plug-ins but they're quite expensive and apparently take a few weeks to start working.

I was really looking forward to playing with her, but have now accepted this probably won't happen. Still, I would like to make her life as pleasant as possible while I'm here, so is there anything I can try that would work quickly.to make her less nervous/afraid of me?

things you can try are sitting very still near her, looking at her and blinking very slowly this is a non threatening gesture to a cat, holding your hand out very still and seeing if she will sniff your hand, sitting still and totally ignoring her this gets a cats interest as your not looking at her, dont do ch ch ch noises as these are aggressive to a cat that dosent know you, you may have to face that she is just one of those cats that dosent do humans

Thanks issey, will try that.

Some more background information: she's about 9 months old, is an indoor cat, and lives with young children who I suspect mistreat her a bit.

She also doesn't have her own bed and tends to sleep on the stairs. She tends to hiss when I pass her on the stairs, so I think she may have territory issues. Would getting her own bed be any help at this point?

maybe put a nice soft blanket somewhere she is used to say the top of the stairs landing might make her feel secure,

mind you saying that mine have a full 3 piece leather suite to lounge on and one of them sleeps on the landing and whiskey before she went used to sleep half way up the stairs,

i think the stairs thing is because the cat has a good view of whos coming and going from the stairs, one of my friendly ones the half siamese thug swipes me as i go down the stairs, so for some reason cats get territorial about the stairs lol