I would start by saying I have had cats all my life and was very fond of them all, actually a bit obsessive over one boy who was unfortunately hit by a car last year.
Nine months after I lost my boy we took the plunge and got two four month old kittens, brothers. We got two as we thought they would keep each other company and be less involved with our older, very nervous girl cat.
They came from a house with a lot of cats around but not necessarily handled very much as kittens. They are now 14 months old and I am struggling with them.
Neither of them are affectionate (unless they are hungry). They don't like being touched at all really. They act like they want feeding a lot of the time but are ridiculously fussy eaters. DH is on a mission to find them food they like, we currently have about twelve different brands of food on the go (reindeer anyone?). They will gobble up something new, great, then refuse to touch that variety again. They seem to take great delight in picking food up then spitting it out and I come home to dried up bits of cat food all over the kitchen floor. They follow anyone who goes into the kitchen, refuse to eat whatever is put down and then get in the way of everything else. They create havoc in the house, jumping over the furniture, running around like loonies, fighting and breaking anything not nailed down.
I feel like I'm constantly wiping the worktops and tables down. Nothing like washing or papers can be left out unless you actually want it covered in muddy footprints and hairs and spread out over the floor.
They are destroying the wallpaper in the hallway. We have about six scratching posts/trees and have even screwed scratching mats up on the wall where they have scratched. They just ignore the scratching mats and move further along to a fresh bit of wallpaper.
Over the last couple of weeks one of them has taken to peeing in the corner of our bedroom. They have free access outside and the litter tray I kept is untouched. We live in a 'semi-rural' area - lots for them to do and explore outside.
I know it's in their nature but I can't cope with discovering their latest kill. Yesterday we came home to a dying pigeon one of them had left in the hall and this morning DH 'rescued' a pigeon with two broken wings. These two incidents have had me in tears. Last week, in the middle of the night, a family member trod in a pick of sick which, on closer inspection, had a mouse tail in the middle of it.
One of them is trying to 'play' with our older cat and she doesn't want it. That, coupled with her being attacked by next door's cat, has made her a nervous wreck and on edge all the time. I have to feed her separately and the logistics of keeping them apart and making sure she's calm enough to eat is painful.
I just feel like it's all aggro and I get nothing back from them. Returning to the house is now is always with a sense of foreboding of what I'll find. I'm not enjoying them and whilst DH was on board with getting them, we've never owned such unfriendly and destructive cats and it does cause problems between us.
I have no intention of rehoming them but how can i learn to like them?