Thimble Gets Himself Into Trouble

Thimble, bless his heart, is a born leader. Or at least he thinks so. Luckily he's got a born follower in Colby, who has no problem letting Thimble go first, be on top (sometimes literally), but still can be friends with him (Colby pounces on Thimble just as much as the other way around, and the washing happens in both directions. Thimble protests more, though.)

So Thimble wants to be friends with Apricot, which is good, but he wants to be top friend, which is not so good. Apricot would probably, eventually, let him. I'm not going to let that happen if I have a say so in it.

This is all to explain why Thimble got himself into trouble.

I went over to pet Apricot. He emerged from the Observation Deck (where he'd retreated to earlier today after the drama) and stretched. Thimble saw this and decided that meant Apricot was ready to receive visitors again, and ran over to introduce himself, again.

Apricot retreated back into the Observation Deck like a turtle into his shell, and proceeded to growl at the approaching Thimble.

Not daunted, Thimble climbed up the cat tree till he was on the same level as Apricot. Who hissed very severely at him. Thimble wanted to approach, but Apricot was having none of that. So Thimble compromised and stepped up onto the next level.

Apricot disapproved but not enough to come out and say so physically. (If Apricot was a human he'd be a pacifist.) So Thimble felt quite proud of himself, and sat there looking like he'd won something. I just waited for him to find out it wasn't quite the victory he thought.

Victory at last.

Colby, down on the floor, had been waiting patiently, lying in a curl, the way he has been doing when Thimble is "talking" to Apricot. Now, since Thimble wasn't discussing things with Apricot anymore (the growling had stopped as the situation was static), Colby got bored. His playmate wasn't around, but there were plenty of toys. He started playing quite thoroughly with a toy.

Thimble saw this and decided playtime would be a good idea. He went to leave, and discovered the flaw in his plan as Apricot noticed movement and started hissing like a steam kettle and growling like a steam engine.

Thimble was going to have to step down over where Apricot was in order to get down. And he really didn't think that was such a good idea at this juncture. So, reluctantly, he settled back onto his platform, no longer by choice, and watched as Colby had fun without him.

The slow process of getting himself out
of the trouble he'd gotten into.

Finally, as the steam ran down in the Apricot engine, Thimble mustered enough courage to step over him and down off the cat tree. He came over to me (I'd been watching the whole time) and I ignored him, instead going over to Apricot and crooning sympathies and praise to him.

This is how I'm doing my best to support Apricot; when they are interacting, he gets praise, and Thimble gets ignored or talked to in a warning tone of voice. I'm not sure how much I can do with this. Apricot thinks I'm a giant deformed cat, and is perfectly willing to defer to me. Thimble knows I'm a human and is still trying to figure out who rules the roost (he tries to groom me, I make him stop, but I "groom" him by petting him, which he enjoys).

As I was writing this, the rowdy boys are asleep on the settee where I had been before nature called, and now I am over at the computer desk. Apricot came down from the Observation Deck and came to me, stretching himself out as he went. This is about the time I usually come home from work and we have our routine of petting in the kitchen, so I went in there and sat down like I would normally, and he agreed that was an excellent idea.

He curled up against me and I petted and petted and he even mustered a purr from somewhere in his wary little body. And he did this knowing that Thimble and Colby were in the next room, albeit asleep. He wouldn't have done that even yesterday.

So he came back in the living room and was on the floor by the vent where he likes to be, and then the phone rang and Colby and Thimble woke up. Apricot decided he wanted to be safely on the cat tree and made his slow, cautious way across the entire living room to his cat tree.

Thimble, for the first time, left him alone and just watched. I think perhaps he learned something earlier.

Not entirely, because once Apricot was safely on the cat tree, Thimble went over and climbed it again, to see if perhaps this time Apricot would be friends. Also, he wanted to check out the Observation Deck that he'd seen Apricot spend so much time in. Apricot hissed and growled warning at him, so Thimble stopped at the Deck level and curled up in the Deck, to see what it was like. Apricot looked over at me with a kind of baffled, where'd he go? but then Thimble stuck a bit of himself outside the Deck and Apricot could see him again.

Thimble doesn't fill the Deck yet like Apricot does. Eventually he'll be too big to fit in there comfortably, although given what I've seen of what they consider comfortable, I wouldn't bet on it.

Well, Thimble decided it wasn't happening tonight and he made his way down and over to me where I was sitting and watching with Colby on my lap. Thimble wanted to be there so he simply sat down on top of Colby. Sometimes Colby puts up with it and sometimes he doesn't, and this time was a time he didn't. My legs weren't good enough to stay on down farther (no blanket across them to bridge the gap, you see) and after he fell off once in either direction, he decided that was a no-go.

Colby looks up at the cat tree with Apricot on the Thinking Spot, the highest perch, and I could visibly see him decide that if Thimble was doing it, so could he. And he went over and climbed up the cat tree, from one level to the next, till he got to the Ops Deck level. Apricot had been (pretending  or not, I don't know) snoozing but he saw him then.

Colby hadn't seen the view out the window yet, and he was totally mesmerized by it, forgetting why he'd come up here in the first place. He climbed onto the secondary perch, the one right below Apricot, and was looking out, his whole body absorbed in the view.

Apricot growled and gave a warning hiss over top of the growl. Colby flinched back and looked up, remembering, oh, yeah, the big orange cat, that's why I came up here. He tried to straighten up, but got hissed at every time he moved, so, unlike Thimble, he quickly decided this was a very bad idea and left. He didn't run, but he moved hastily enough to give Apricot the notion that he'd left directly due to Apricot's hissing at him.

Apricot seems rather pleased with himself. Thimble, who was on my lap this whole time, had tensed up when the encounter began, but relaxed once Colby left with no harm done. That's actually what I'm afraid of right now; that Colby will decide to push it, but without Thimble's fine-tuned sense of what he can get away with, he'll get himself into trouble with Apricot (like a smack, if Apricot actually goes there) and Thimble will launch into defense mode.