Introducing Apricot Marmalade (Part III)

June 9th, 2014 (It's Monday as I write this)

Yesterday I went to Petsmart and got food and another food bowl. Through a series of weird coincidences I only had one food/water bowl (pick which one you want to use) because Pippin always drank from a coffee mug.

And then I drove up to the shelter again, carrier in the back seat, empty container for food (from the shelter so he didn't have to switch food as well as every other thing in his life) and another for water (an hour away the water might be different enough that it was worth transitioning him gradually). I still wasn't sure, but I was going to be prepared. I could always take it all home again empty.

I took the carrier into the cat room and was a little surprised at the reception I got. The other cats with Apricot all thought it was a great new toy. Every single one of them got in it for varying lengths of time. Tia, a calico female, spent a lot of time with it when the others got bored (in fact I had to extract her force-ably when the time came to go!). Zazzles was a cream colored card.

This is Zazzles

Zazzles is exactly the sort of cat I'd fall in love with. He got in the way every time when I was paying attention to Apricot. He wanted me to pet him all the time. He'd curve around my back and lean on me if that was all he could get. So very affectionate. But this time I'd learned. A cat that affectionate is also that needy--he wouldn't be able to tolerate being alone all day, and it's not like my kittens are even conceived yet, so it would be 5 months at the least before he'd have friends. And, like Max, he'd be jealous of anyone taking my attention away from him.

Zazzles inside, Olympus on top

Even the half-feral Olympus took a turn inside the carrier. And on top of it, which most of the cats tried as well, although being a soft-sided carrier this generally resulted in a slow squashing of the inside cat. Apricot was the only one who didn't play with the carrier.

He didn't remember me right at first, but it didn't take long before he showed signs he knew me. Little signs. He didn't do the slow chase around the room this time, just stayed on his shelf and let me pet him. And encouraged some petting by moving a bit of himself into better position for petting.

I was still not sure, but what tipped the balance was when he started purring under my hands. A rough, unsteady purr that I could only feel, not hear, but it was there.

So I took him home, but in a foster situation. He's mine as a foster cat for a month and any time I can call and finalize the adoption or take him back. Just depends on how we do. Because honestly, I'm not too awfully worried about him. A cat like that will thrive in the non-threatening, quiet environment of my house. And by the time he's confident enough to start getting lonely (instead of scared), then there might be kittens to horrify him. But there'll be two, so they can tackle each other and let him do what he did in the shelter cat room, which was watch the others play.

Par for the course, however, my anxiety decided to have a field day with all of this. I have been having an anxiety attack for the last twenty four hours. Apricot's doing better than I am!

When I got him home, I put the carrier in the master bedroom's bathroom (a tiny bathroom) where the litter box is located in the tiny shower of the bathroom, and I opened the carrier, talked to him a bit, and then left him alone. 

By the time I went to bed (in the master bedroom, which is separated by only a curtain from the bathroom), he was still in the carrier. On the drive home he hadn't said a word and had moved a few times from one end of the carrier to the other, but now he was wedged in a ball in the far end of the carrier and not coming out.

I woke up when my anxiety medications wore off, around 3:30 in the morning, and so got up to attend to what you attend to when you drink lots of water before going to bed, and checked to see if my half-dream half-awake ears had told me true. And yes, Apricot was out of the carrier and under the headboard. 

I told him approvingly that this was a good place to hide; Pippin hid there whenever he got scared, and that it was a sacrosanct hiding place. I won't drag a cat out from there unless the house is burning down. (And you see, by the time they get used to this rule, if there is an emergency like that, I'll know where the cat has hidden himself. Well, I think it's clever, anyway.)

He was still there when I woke up for the alarm clock, but when I left to go for my morning walk, he changed hideyholes. I couldn't find him when I got back, and I rather panicked. I couldn't leave for work without making sure he was in the bedroom, because if I shut the door with him on the other side of it (although I could have sworn he'd never dodged past me), I'd be shutting him out of the room with food, water, and litterbox.

I found him eventually, hidden in the cat stairs/cat tree I have so the kittens will be able to get on the bed. I hadn't thought of that as a hiding place (obviously). So I talked to him gently some more, and gave him some cat kisses (the long distance kind). He reluctantly returned one of them.

So for the last three months I've been able to leave work on time or even early. Today, the first day I have Apricot in the house, and I have to work almost two hours of overtime. Typical. All I have to do to create more business for my company is get a cat in the house. (It happened with Max, too.)

I got home, my anxiety running on high. I was kind of worried too that how do I expect him to calm down and be okay in the house when he can clearly sense that I'm freaked out? Even though I can't for the life of me tell you what exactly I'm freaked out about.

I mean, yes, he looks like Pippin--which means I'm constantly seeking out the differences, even without thinking about it. He acts like baby scared Pippin, which is something I instinctively respond to. So those are actually helpful points. I don't know where the anxiety is coming from, but it's bad. 

However, he was in the under-headboard space, and up at the edge where a hand can just barely reach him. So I petted and talked and he let me pet him, and then let me pet him some more. Once I left my hand not moving, and he wrapped his front paws around my finger for a moment, like a baby. And I got him all stretched out and relaxed, and it only took about ten or fifteen minutes to achieve this, which made me feel much better about him and his state of mind. Even though he still won't come out.

And then he started to purr. Not the uneven ragged purr barely felt and definitely not heard from the shelter. No, this was a purr like thunder. I had left the iTouch on with an app that makes a purring sound in the room all day, and that was still going. It was soft so it was imitating another cat, but even so, he drowned it out.

I think this means that he's not quite as unhappy and scared as I was afraid he was going to be, leaving the only home he'd known (for a second time). This is encouraging.

Now if only he'd come out from his hidey hole.

By the way, I don't have pictures of him in my house yet, mainly because he's hiding in places without direct light and I'd have to use flash to get a good shot. And scaring him with the flash isn't worth getting a picture, though I would have loved to get a picture of him upside down under the headboard, purring up a storm.