Apricot Descends From On High

My wary, scared, used-to-be-feral cat has initiated contact, of his own accord.

At 10:30 this morning (or thereabouts) both kittens suddenly stopped playing with their individual toys and froze, vision oriented on something behind me. The only time they did this before was when Apricot came out of the kitchen and accidentally encountered Thimble.

Could it be? Had he really emerged from his Observation Deck?

This morning, before I let the kits out, he'd come into the bedroom and had his breakfast when I called "Apricot, I'm up," which is the usual procedure and one he hadn't done since the kittens arrived.

But he'd stuck himself in his Observation Deck right after that, with kind of a wince and a grimace--okay, let them out. So I'd let them out before I went for my walk, which meant everybody was together unsupervised for an hour. There were no signs of disaster when I came back, but no signs of progress, either.

I turned around, hoping ... I don't know what, really. And there was Apricot, on the floor, coming around the edge of the living room entrance. His shoulders were humped as if against a blow, not the "cat-puff" attitude, and his eyes were hugely dilated. He was looking at the kittens, both frozen in place and staring at him, but he was also looking at me.

I'd begun praising him the minute I saw he was down on the same level as they, and of his own accord. He wasn't surprised this time; he'd known where they were. He seemed to glance over to his hammock, so I held my hand over it, palm down and cupped, the symbol for come pet yourself / come on over.

And warily, he did. He jumped into the hammock and lay down.

Well, this didn't last long, because Thimble never knows when to leave well enough alone. The minute Apricot lay down, Thimble came over, making slow headwinds against the low rumbling growl coming from Apricot. Thimble pretended he had no designs on Apricot but was instead fascinated with the fuzzy ball hanging off the bottom of the hammock. See, I'm just playing with this! I'm a kitten. I play, it's what I do.

Apricot wasn't buying it, and when Thimble wouldn't back off, Apricot did instead. During this retreat he encountered Colby, who for the most part was letting Thimble do all the hard work. Colby, unlike Thimble (who has yet to utter a sound in Apricot's direction) growled back at Apricot. Then again, I've also heard Colby growl while having a toy in his mouth; no one trying to take said toy, just walking around holding the toy and growling. Apricot cowered back, not appreciating being growled at, and I said frowny things at Colby and encouraging things at Apricot, turning my head and using names to make sure they understood who I approved of growling and who I didn't.

I don't know if Colby got the point or not, because this is when Apricot decided to retreat back to the cat tree with the Observation Deck. He didn't go into the Observation Deck, though; he went all the way to the top post, his Thinking Post, instead.

Again, Thimble won't leave well enough alone and goes after him. He climbed up on the cat tree, going from level to level up the tree. Apricot's growl got louder the higher he got. I told Apricot that if Thimble tried to get close enough to swat, he (Apricot) had my full permission to bop him (Thimble) on the head.

Apricot stares down disapprovingly at Thimble

Thimble never tried to put paws on Apricot's perch, nor did he even rise up on his back legs and do "prayer cat" to get higher. He did, however, go all the way to the second highest perches, and there he stayed, pretending to be fascinated with the tree outside the window. Thimble waited, looking out the window, until Apricot gave up and stopped growling at him.

Thimble is pretending he has no designs
on Apricot. None whatsoever. 

At some point in here the two of them were looking at each other and they were both cat-blinking friendship signals, which may have been what motivated Thimble to try again ...

Thimble tried to approach again, one more time, and this time got hissed at quite indignantly. I think Apricot was saying, "look, you, I've told you time and time again to back off, when are you going to get the idea?!" Thimble crouched down and made himself flat and small on the perch when he got hissed at.

The hiss stopped, and Thimble popped back up like a jack-in-the-box toy. Apricot just watched him. And Thimble decided that, yes, he really had pushed things as far as they were going to go right now, and he made his way down off the cat tree, leaving Apricot in possession of it.

Colby, through all this, lay in a coil in the middle of the living room floor, watching.

So I could feel the tension (and in fact, said something like, "that was wonderful guys but let's not do it again for a little while till we can all calm down") and Thimble, to relieve his tension, went over and body pounced Colby, and the two of them had a rousing game of Head Tackle and Who's On Top.

Apricot actually put his head down and currently is looking from here like he's resting!

Wow. I didn't really expect anything like this for another day or so. I'm so glad I did all that research on Way of Cats' blog so I could tell what was going on between them. And it's funny how Colby is once again following Thimble's lead on everything.