 Purred: Tue Aug 17, '10 8:27am PST |
 | |  | | I wouldn't be too preoccupied if she can stay in the same room and doesn't constantly hide when he's around. It might just be a matter of preference, and her dad will have to work on small changes slowly. We have two cats, and they definitely have favorites when it comes to their humans.
Boris loves me greatly, and can't get enough to be near me. He never ran away from my husband, but he most certainly doesn't really deal with him the same way he does with me. Boris wants to sleep next to me, love on me, and be the center of my attention all the time. His "daddy" is welcome to pay attention to him, but when he has a choice of company, he will always pick mommy. This isn't to say they don't have their warm rituals. Boris loves to headbutt his dad, and goes up to him to greet him when he gets home. He's also likely to go complain to my husband if he feels that mom forgot to feed him on time. 
Gracie is a lot better now at being warm and loving towards me, but for the first 6 months or so we had her, she wanted little to do with me. She was a total daddy's girl, to the point that she would cry when I held her, but melt in daddy's arms. Partly it was that "mom" was doing all the nasty medication stuff, whereas "dad" was the guy who played with her and fussed over her (Boris would get extremely jealous if I petted Gracie as a kitten, he'd growl at her! So that made it hard for me to give her a lot of undivided attention). Gracie didn't really start warming up to me until we spent three days together after her spay surgery. She wanted to be held and comforted, but dad wasn't around, whereas I had a long weekend off and could be with her 24/7. So we bonded a little then. Slowly and over time, I've been able to get closer to her, and now she sometimes seeks me out, which would have been unheard of one year ago (we've had her for 2 years)! She's still a little more bonded to my husband. Sometimes she'll cry for pets, and I'll go up to her to pet her (she likes to have people come to her, rather than take Boris' approach of "I'm going to get in your face so you know you must pet me"  ), and she'll sit there for a second and then hop off the surface she's on and go on with her crying. That's pretty much her way to say "No, I want daddy to pay attention to me right now, not you!". I used to take it personally, except that again, she does sweet things that are just for mom: she will sleep next to me if she knows that I'm not feeling well (but doesn't really do that to dad), and she lets me cradle her like a baby, whereas if my husband does it, she's expressed her displeasure at that.
I guess this is my long winded way to say that Esme might never treat the two of you the same way, but as long as she finds her own way to tell her dad she loves him (and it sounds like slowly but surely, she's getting there), then that's all that matters. |  |  | |  |
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