Apricot Makes Great Strides

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Remember that mouse of his, the one he stashed inside his hideyhole? Well, to replace it, I brought in a stuffed brown bird with red feathers on its head. It was sometime late Sunday afternoon that I showed it to him, and made it do the toy mouse dance (I have a limited repertoire. All my stuffed toys for cats act like my toy mouse acted.) And then I left it on the cat stairs, really not knowing what to expect. He might stash it away with his mouse; he might ignore it for several days before I found it moved when I came home from work or woke up; or he might just not play with it at all.

In none of my potential scenarios did I include the one where he decided, apparently, that he was quite comfortable thank you, as long as I was in the room asleep, and that it was Playtime. All Sunday night. He bumped and thumped and sounded for all the world like he was literally bouncing off the walls. Like he was fighting with the stuffed toy and rolling into the walls for not knowing exactly where they were. He even launched over the bed a couple times, touching down once or twice on the way.

And to make things worse (as far as my sleep potential went, anyway) he decided the closet doors offended him, as they were closed, and should be opened promptly. They are sliding wooden doors and swing on tracks above, so a determined cat can get a paw underneath one and pull it toward him and then let go, and it goes thud-a-thud-a-thud-a against the other door. To be encouraging, each time said cat does this, the door may or may not move horizontally a bit, opening it just a tiny bit more.

I never woke up far enough to realize I could stop this by just getting up, opening the closet door, and going back to bed, but I woke up often enough and far enough that Monday I was incredibly sleep deprived.

By the way, I don't care if he's in my closet. The doors were only shut in the first place to make the room as small and non-threatening as possible. I opened them when I got up Monday morning. Usually when I'm not trying to not-scare a kitty, the doors stay open because I forget to close them.

Well, apparently my depression ganged up with my anxiety and took advantage of the sleep deprivation to have a beat-up-on-me day. I nearly dissolved in tears several times at work. I convinced myself that I couldn't possibly do this again, and by "this", I meant I couldn't possibly let myself fall in love with another cat and then when he dies, as he will eventually, go through all the pain that I've been dealing with ever since Pippin died. I was going to cancel my kittens and take Apricot back and just be cat-less the rest of my life because I can't handle this much pain again.

Luckily I didn't actually take any action on these decisions, mainly because I know me too well, and I know that when I feel that over-wrought, it is best to wait to implement any decisions I make until several days later, if I still feel that way.

But Monday when I got home I wasn't feeling particularly in the mood for kitty cuddles, and while I dutifully went in and said hello and all that, he wasn't feeling particularly in the mood either, because my yard service had come that day and scared the living daylights out of him. (The lawn was mowed, the bushes were trimmed, and Apricot was coiled in a ball: not hard to make the connection, even if I hadn't been here at the time.)

I'm not sure what went through his head Monday night, but apparently he got over his lawn-induced scare and decided it was Playtime again. At least Monday night he didn't have the closet doors closed to make noise with, and I slept slightly better though not much. I was in a much better frame of mind Tuesday, in any case.

But at some point in the night I decided I couldn't deal with this (being woken by playing all night) anymore, and if he was so confident he was playing that hard, he could handle being in the rest of the house. So Tuesday when I woke up, I left the door open to the bedroom when I went for a walk. I used foam rectangles to make a barrier the height of a baby gate in the hallway, thinking that little scared Apricot would take the path of least resistance and just investigate the pink room, if he came out at all.

When I came back from my walk he wasn't in the pink room. He wasn't in the bedroom. I'd shut the door to the purple room (where the tv and cat-swallowing couch are) so he wasn't in there. I looked all over for him. Had I accidentally left him go out the door when I came in from the walk?

No. But I had startled him in the act of exploration, and he had resorted to the nearest hiding place he could find. He was behind the washer and dryer. (I say both because he was in the middle, which meant half of him was behind the washer and half was behind the dryer.) The washer and dryer are in a closet with folding doors off of the kitchen, which is where the outside door is as well (they're both in the kitchen, I mean, not that you walk into the laundry closet from the outside.)

I said hello, in as calm a voice as I could manage, what with the worry he'd given me about maybe getting outside. He peered up at me through the cables and hoses and didn't seem too taken aback.

Well, I can't actually get him out from there without some major scare damage (I think my only options are moving him with the grabber device I have for reaching top shelves, or pulling the washer and dryer into the kitchen). So I just got ready for work and left, hoping he'd come out while I was gone.

Tuesday I came home briefly after work before having to leave again, and he wasn't behind the washer and dryer any more. I went hunting, and he was back in his old hideyhole again.

Someone called him a baby seal when they saw this picture

Except it didn't seem like it was a hideyhole, more like this was "the place to meet me" when I came in the house. Because he came out without any coaxing at all, even before I'd fully sat down. And boy was he a love bug. Apparently by mostly ignoring him Monday afternoon, I'd starved his love meter, and he was determined to fill it back up. He wouldn't let me stop petting him; if my hand stilled (because I was getting tired!) he'd shove his head underneath it and pet himself if I didn't get with the program. Purring like thunder the whole time.

And then he decided we should continue this petting session up on the bed, and leaped up there (disdaining the steps) and expected me to follow. So I did. I was actually quite enjoying all of this, though a little taken aback. I mean, I've never had petting demanded from me before, and never quite so cute-ly either!

What was that noise?

Although he'd heard the sounds of the house for a week now, they were louder with the door open, and every time the house fan went on full, he'd get all alert like this. But I wasn't to stop petting; if I did, he looked back at me with the classic cat expression of "why did you stop doing that? did I tell you you could stop doing that?"

I left reluctantly for my appointment, and when I came back, having had my head cleared of some things that had been confusing me, he was just as lovey as before.

I decided that Monday was just the sleep deprivation and the other problems talking. And that pain is part of life and, to (sort-of) quote a movie, I shouldn't be so afraid of losing something that I never have it in the first place.

While I made my phone call to Lynn (his shelter friend) to tell her about his progress, he decided once again to make more, and proceeded to explore the house with me trailing along far behind. He climbed one of the cat trees to the window, poked his head in the litter box's big box (these are both in the living room), climbed on top of the litter box's big box (it's carpeted on top and provides a good spot to look out the patio doors), came back around through the hallway where he glared at the closed door to the purple room (I was hard put not to laugh), and almost went up the cat tree in the pink room but decided not to because there was no point. This was because I hadn't been prepared to let him out so soon and had forgotten to put the blinds up on the window that cat tree looks out of.

Before we went to bed I showed him the red feather bird and placed it carefully in the hallway right outside the bedroom door where he could see it. And wonder of wonders, it worked! I slept through the night, and he played outside the bedroom, because the bird had moved in the morning. If he played in the bedroom proper, I slept through it.

Amazing how much better a good night's sleep makes you feel.

Today when I got home from work he was in the hideyhole, but instantly out to greet me. Sometime during the petting he acted like he wanted to go up on the bed but changed his mind, and before I could stop myself, I gathered him up and put him on the bed anyway, and then gently petted his head (his favorite spots on his head) while he thought about that.

He decided it was okay since he hadn't gone anywhere he hadn't actually planned to go, and it happened so fast. And after a while I climbed up on the bed with him, still petting, but getting tired. And after a while I put my head down and he put his head into my hand and we were like that for a while, with him purring up a storm again.

Head in hand, camera in my other hand at an angle.
Just wanted to reassure you that my house really is
horizontal, not tilted at an angle.

So it's nice when a cat is purring and wanting you to pet them, and it's nice when they're leaning into your hand like this. But what is really flattering is when they fall asleep with your hand on them (across their back, resting on their sides, whatever) and stop purring. Because that means they have gone to sleep so deeply they can't keep the purr going anymore because they're, well, asleep. And that means they trusted you enough that your presence, physically felt, was not enough to keep them awake.

Apricot fell asleep with my hand propped against his back and over his side, facing away from me, and he actually stopped purring for a very short while before he woke up again at some house-noise that startled him awake. I nearly fell asleep during this lovely interlude as well.