Is Apricot a Lap Cat Yet?

Last night after supper I was sitting in my chair, reading. Apricot comes over and makes motions as if he wants up on the chair with me.

He's hesitant and unsure, so I encouraged him verbally and kept my hands to myself. I have a tendency to be overhelpful in times like these and I wanted him to jump up from his own motivation. Eventually he did, and curled up on the blanket on my lap.

This was very nice and enjoyable and I thought to myself, perhaps he's coming to see the benefits of being a lap cat!

Only then I realized that the summer storm outside was doing growly thunder all around the house, not very loud, and it had been doing so for some time. Sigh. He wasn't understanding the benefits of a human lap; he was scared.

But hey, fairly big silver lining here. He was scared so he came to me for reassurance. Instead of hiding. And in addition to that, he was pretending not to be scared, all nonchalant and hey, let's curl up on your lap for a while, no real reason. Pretending not to be scared takes effort, and when you're really anxious about something, you don't have the effort to spare. So that means he's doing better with being an anxious kitty.

He stayed for about twenty minutes, until the storm was gone and then long enough to make sure it wasn't coming back. With classic kitty timing, he'd settled in about ten minutes before I finished my book. So there I was, book done, phone inaccessible in my pocket (which he had trapped), and nothing to do. I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the chair and held my hands curved around bits of kitty cat (a shoulder to the right, a hip to the left) and daydreamed happily.