Last night I watched tv for the second time since Apricot came home with me and for the first time with the doors both open between the tv room and the bedroom. This left him a little skittish so I let the door open to the tv room.
During the middle of the night, Apricot decided same as the previous night that my catnap had lasted long enough and I should be getting up now. He meowed at me rather loudly from the floor next to the bed. I ignored him. He was less persistent last night than the night before, so I think we are making progress in the whole "I sleep all night" concept. At least he is still playing outside the room and not bumbling off the walls and keeping me up that way. His toy bird is moved every morning!
This morning he was under the headboard again and sleepy, but I actually managed to talk him up onto the bed with just my voice. I never got out from under the covers, and he curled up by my side, head on my hip, and just kind of snoozed while I played phone games. It was quite nice.
However, I'd left the door open to the tv room all day while I was at work, too, and I came home today to find that he'd been swallowed by the cat-eating couch. He was under the middle section which does not recline.
Well, this was a little bit fortuitous because I needed to rotate the mattress in the bedroom and I'd been dreading it all day, knowing that it would scare him to have his hidey hole under the headboard exposed like that. In fact, it was the absence of the pillows over the crack between the mattress end and the bookshelf of the headboard that had led him to search out a "better" hiding spot in the first place, I suspect.
So I rotated the mattress and made the bed and put everything back to rights. It's a funny thing how there were pillows blocking that opening to begin with: originally I hadn't put them there, but I'd discovered that as I slept, I moved up the bed, and I'd wake up with my head in the bookshelf. This often caused a mild headache because the bookshelf headboard isn't padded. So years ago I blocked myself with pillows, and as it worked, they've become a staple of the bedding. I didn't realize they were a staple of the hidey hole too.
After I finished with the bed I went and talked Apricot out from under the couch. I was afraid he wouldn't come, because, well, all I had was my voice. I could barely reach him to scritch his head and show him it was still just me. But he came out, except that the couch really had swallowed him and he had to figure out just how to get out. He ended up having to go the long way around from where he was and where I was coaxing.
Then he bolted past me and ran for the headboard hide, where he stayed till I followed him and crouched down to coax him out of there. But I didn't have to coax. He was a little wild eyed but came out readily enough. Apparently this is right and proper and petting should start with his emergence from under the headboard, nowhere else.
As in the past two days, this day I also managed to get him up on the bed (his own idea; no help physically from me) and then off the bed on the other side and into the living room. We walked side by side down the hallway with only a few hesitations from him.
Then I sat down to read, and he explored. He drank gallons from the water fountain and this time found that he could drink from the little up-twist of water from the pump below. He retreated to the bedroom for a short while but came back out again, licking his lips, and I think he went and ate food after his drink. He washed, and then explored some more, and this time he found what I think will be the spot.
The floor-to-ceiling cat tree that Max helped me unpack (which oddly I don't think I've written about) has a cubby hole with two entrances. They just happen to be positioned where a cat inside can keep an eye on two directions including the hallway, and a cat with his head just barely outside the cubby can see the whole living room.
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| The best spot in the living room |
Given that, and given that the distant thunder scared him into hiding yesterday afternoon, I think I am going to tell my allergies to deal with it another week and wait for next Saturday before vacuuming the house. I really think it will do him good to get a little more comfortable with the current situation before I cause a giant roaring monster to tear through the house with evil intent toward all things kitty. (That's his view of it, not mine ... I just think it's too loud and wish I could find a quiet vacuum cleaner to replace this one.)
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