Slow but steady progress

June 10

So last night while I slept, Apricot Marmalade managed to summon up the bravery to find the litterbox and use it (poop and pee) and also eat food, and, I'm assuming, drink water, because he left a pee in the litterbox that I cleaned when I got home after work today.

I am very pleased that his digestive system is back up and working. I've gone through this before with Pippin, where he'd just shut his digestive system down completely when he was nervous or scared. And while Pippin's always came back up running properly as soon as things were back to normal, it's still a little nerve wracking waiting for it to happen.

Of course with Apricot Marmalade I wasn't sure how long it would take him to get to feeling safe enough, and it's nice that it only took twenty-four hours.

Also his food is very noisy; he woke me up going crunch crunch crunch. But I wasn't sleeping well anyway.

This evening he almost came out from behind the headboard while I was petting him. My arm is getting quite used to wrapping around the corner! He came with his head all the way in the entryway, almost to the very edge.

From Sunday evening to Tuesday night; I think he's made a lot of progress. He purrs when I pet him, and gets all loose and floppy which is cat for content and happy. Unfortunately I can get him all stretched out and purring, leave and come back five minutes later, and he's coiled up in a ball again. Sigh. But I shouldn't be too disappointed. He's made amazing progress since Saturday when he couldn't even let me sit within five feet before moving to the other side of the room.

He's also done a very odd thing a few times, like once or twice every other petting session. He's taken the end of one of my fingers into his mouth, from the front, not the side of his mouth. Almost like nursing but without any sucking. And it's not really biting, because he's not applying pressure, and my finger is between his canine teeth (do you call them canine teeth in a cat? You know the ones I mean, the long pointy ones on either side of the front of a cat's mouth). He's kneading the carpet like crazy when I pet him, so perhaps he's also making nursing motions? It's weird. I've never heard of a cat doing that. Especially not a grown up cat.

Of course I still don't have pictures of him at home, because being under the headboard is rather dark and there's no way I'm startling him by using flash. We'll both just have to be disappointed in the no pictures problem.

June 11

So yesterday or monday sometime I showed Apricot the scratching post, which he can see without coming out of his spot. The scratching post is a vertical tower of cardboard packing squares, so it's a vertical tower of corrugated cardboard, like the horizontal scratchers you can buy only tall instead of flat.

I scratched my fingers down the corner of it and told him that this was a good place to scratch, see, and if he wanted to scratch something here's where you do it, and isn't this nice? And concealed my wincing, because if you've ever done the fake scratching with your own fingers, you know that it actually hurts!

Apparently I succeeded in concealing the fact that it hurt me, because last night it wasn't food crunching that woke me up, it was the sound of energetic scratching on the post. I wanted to roll over and watch, but I didn't want to scare him away, so I restrained myself and went back to sleep. So pleased that he found and used the scratching post!

Especially since his claws were ow-y very sharp, like needle points. This morning when I petted him, they were nice and blunt. Obviously their sharpness had been bothering him, too.

Another thing last night: I heard him talking. He made these little pitiful sounding mews. Very small meows. Since I was half awake I talked back--this consisted of me making "hmm?" noises and trying to match his meows in both volume and tone. The first time I did it, he quit talking instantly. But then later he started up again, so I answered back, sleepily. This time we had a short conversation before he quit talking and I went back to sleep.

(Yes, I don't sleep well. I wake up a lot. But I don't wake up completely and go back to sleep quite quickly, usually.)

And I'm not worried about the fact that his mews sounded pitiful. Pippin's talking mews always sounded like he was complaining and pitiful, and he wasn't; he was just making comments to himself about stuff. So I figure Apricot Marmalade was either talking to himself or wanting to know if I was there.

He also ate quite a bit. There was a cat-faced shaped hole in his food!

More progress: This morning when I came back from my walk I went and petted him before getting dressed and got him all sprawled out and comfy. Then I went to the other side of the room and got dressed (and since I'm cold all the time and my workplace is also colder than normal, I dress in many layers and it takes probably five minutes to put everything on). After I got all the clothes on, then I went back to give him one last goodbye pet.

He hadn't coiled back up in a ball! This is progress; before, even if I hadn't left the room, he coiled back into a ball like he was on springs.

Also I have started dragging him. Not out of the hidey spot, just a few inches along the carpet inside the hidey spot. I did it once last night, and then this morning when he seemed to want to come out but was still too unsure of it to try, I dragged him so that I could get my face to the top of his head and I gave him a goodbye kiss. This meant he was at the very edge of the tiny corridor that leads out of the hidey spot.

I have hopes that he will come out in my presence by Friday at least.