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Some cats are just skittish (or, as someone put it, semi-feral). It may have little to do with being abused -- more likely, it's that he grew up for the first few months/years without enough human interaction.
We have three brothers from the same litter (from a house down the street where they put out food for the cats but paid them little care otherwise). Two of them are quite gregarious, but the third is as I described above. For many years, he would pay attention to my wife, but run away and hide when I was around. Over the past few years, though, something odd has happened -- while he will still tends to avoid me in most places of the house, when I'm lying on the bed, he'll jump up to visit, purr, stretch out next to me, and give my hand a thorough washing. I don't know why he came around (to even that extent) after all these years, but I guess the key was not to force my attention on him, and let him approach me when he felt safe. Strangely enough, a new nickname seemed to do the trick, as well; his real name is Simon, but my wife started calling him Cub (as in "tiger cub") a few years ago and, since he seemed to respond to the name better than Simon, I started calling him that most of the time. Maybe he doesn't like "Achilles"...?
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