Saturday morning as I got up, I leaned over the crack between the mattress and the headboard and started talking to Apricot under the headboard. He came out and then acted for all the world like he wanted up on the bed, but couldn't quite reach. He was doing the same thing Pippin had done as a kitten, where he was refusing to jump and trying instead to climb up. Unlike Pippin, he was using claws to get a hold, but also unlike Pippin, he had far more than a foot off the ground to climb. My bed then was a waterbed, very low to the floor. My bed now sits on a framework of drawers and then has a mattress set on top of it. The top of the mattress comes to almost my waist, and even I have to hitch myself up onto it. (Makes it really easy to get out of bed in the morning, though--all I have to do is sit up and slide onto the floor and then wait for my feet and legs to realize they're expected to be in service now.)
So when I got up (Apricot promptly disappeared under the headboard again after I stopped leaning over the edge talking to him) I went over and moved the cat stairs next to the bed, for whenever he demonstrated a desire to get up again.
After I was out of the room starting laundry but before my walk, I came back in to lure him out for a morning's share of petting. This was received quite eagerly, but he was almost ... feisty. You can't really apply that word to him, but he was definitely more alert than usual. Petting wasn't getting the job done. I thought perhaps, just perhaps, he wants to play.
There was a stuffed mouse on the floor. I'd left it there all week, and it hadn't moved an inch. But yesterday I noticed that it had moved a couple feet, so apparently he'd gotten comfortable enough with its presence to do things with it.
I grabbed the mouse and started making it be a "live" toy mouse. My toy mice aren't like real mice. My mice are very bold and very scared at the same time.
The mouse approached Apricot cautiously, right up to him, and booped him on a front foot. Then, terrified by its own audacity, the mouse scuttled back to hide behind the closest thing that made the cat disappear (to the mouse's viewpoint): behind my bent leg. But then the mouse came right back out, danced over to Apricot, and bopped him on the foot again. And went and hid. The mouse was out of Apricot's sight, too, which was the point.
Unlike Max, where I only had to do this once and the lights all went on in screaming neon and I had to get my hand off the mouse fast because there was about to be carnage (and there was), with Apricot I had to make the mouse taunt him four or five times before he started coming after the mouse when it retreated. Even then he only came a little forward each time.
He started making paw motions at the mouse, sometimes pinning it to the floor by its nose (which isn't very efficient as the mouse simply waits for a "caught" second and then wiggles free), and sometimes biting it. Soon, though, he'd progressed past the point where the mouse could hide behind my leg.
So the mouse looked around and saw the cat stairs. My toy mice are not very bright, and they don't think cats can climb (or jump). With this in mind, the mouse retreated to the first stair and did a "na-na-na-na-na" dance on it, very taunting. Silent, though--I didn't add sound effects. Apricot's not stupid; he'd know it wasn't the mouse.
I did make comments urging Apricot on, letting him know that this was entirely appropriate and desirable and I thought he should "get that mouse!"
Apricot climbed up on the first stair to get the mouse! The mouse allowed itself to be caught momentarily, and then twisted free and retreated up to the second stair, confident that this stair was cat proof.
Apricot proved the mouse wrong.
In this way I lured Apricot all the way up the stairs and onto the bed, where he was allowed to finally "catch" the mouse completely. He held onto it and nibbled the ears and tugged on them with his teeth, lying in a comfortable curled up ball on the bed. I forgot to take pictures, I was so pleased with his progress.
But I had a busy day ahead of me, and I needed to get it started, so I headed off for my walk, leaving Apricot on the bed and, as he had disregarded the mouse after "killing" it by tugging the ears, put the mouse on the floor.
When I came back from my walk, I looked for the mouse to see if he'd played with it some more (Apricot had retreated back to the headboard hide again. He does every time I leave the room, no matter how comfortable he is or how sleepy I've left him.) I didn't see the mouse anywhere. I sat down and peered under the headboard to ask Apricot where his mouse was, and saw the mouse under the headboard with him. It was in the middle of the space where Apricot thinks I can't reach.
So far the mouse hasn't moved that I have seen, so apparently he didn't bring it under there to play with. (It's a day later that I'm writing this). I wonder if he brought it under there so it couldn't taunt him again, or if he brought it so that it would stay safe. The toys in the cat room at the shelter are regularly changed out, so a favorite toy would disappear after a while, and in addition, any toy that Apricot may have liked would also be played with by the other cats. I think Apricot "stole" the mouse because he liked it, it was his toy, and he wasn't going to risk having it disappear or be played with by someone else.
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