Hunting in Tandem

July 30, 2014 Wednesday

We have had a most exciting morning.

It all started with a break in routine. Since Apricot started not staying in the bedroom with me at night, we have this thing where I get out of bed in the morning and then announce loudly, "Apricot, I'm up" (or "I'm awake", whatever) and he comes bounding into the room, ready for his morning petting session.

This morning I announced that I was awake, as usual, but he did not show up. I called him again. No kitty. Well, being me, now I'm all worried and envisioning the worst--did he fall off the cat tree again and hurt himself so bad he can't move?

I padded out in my bed socks and pjs, without my glasses, to see what I could see. What I saw was Apricot in the living room, staring fixedly at the curtain on the patio door. Or possibly the edge of the mantel. He wasn't consistent in where he was looking.

Where it all started

Ah ha, I thought to myself, happy to see he was okay. He's got another flying insect cornered, and can't get at it! I went over and peered around, but couldn't see anything. So I lifted Apricot up (this momentarily startled him but then he realized he was closer to his goal and was okay with it) to see where he'd try to reach out to.

Again, inconsistent results; he didn't start staring at anything in particular. Was the circle of light on the ceiling from the lamp puzzling him? Oh, perhaps the bug had found refuge in the folds of the curtain. That was more likely. I put Apricot down before going to the curtain and shaking it gently. I have previous experience that tells me holding the cat while flushing out its flying toy is a bad idea.

Well, I was right and I was wrong. The curtain was where the item of interest was, all right. But it wasn't an insect.

Did you know mice can climb curtains? And when you shake said curtain and the mouse falls out of it right in front of you, it can be quite startling?

Actually, when the mouse hit the floor it squeaked, making exactly the same noise as Apricot's squeaky mouse that his friend Lynn gave him. (I think it's an electronic recording of the noise a mouse actually makes, now that I've heard it for real!) And my first thought was, "How'd he get his toy up there?" followed by "it's MOVING" which was then followed by "eek, a mouse!" only by this time I'd passed the point of jumping because I was startled and the realization it was a live mouse was mostly just "oh, great, a mouse" rather than me hitting the ceiling.

Of course, had I been standing six inches closer the mouse would have fallen on my head, and I have no idea how I would have reacted to that!

Apricot's reactions are far faster than mine, and he knew what was up the curtain, so he was on the mouse at once. He grabbed it and took it to his special place, which is a piece of carpet in the living room no different than any other piece of carpet, but that's where he takes the feathers to play with them (if he can get ahold of them for long enough) and that's where he took the mouse, carrying it in his mouth.

Then he dropped it and began bopping it on the head (and probably other parts of the body--mice are awfully small, really) and it made all kinds of squeaky noises in response. When it stopped moving and squeaking, he lost interest. I could have told him it was only pretending, since the whole incident didn't last long at all.

But he let go of it, and it scooted off behind the litter box's box. ACK!

No, no, no, we are not losing track of this mouse! You're supposed to kill it, Apricot, what kind of hunter are you, anyway? It was headed toward the computer desk, and I had a sudden vision of the mouse plunging into the nest of wires behind the desk, and Apricot lunging in after it, and the chaos that would ensue. Not a good mental image. 

So I started moving furniture, pulling the box away from the door, and the square storage units beside it away from the wall, and blocking the mouse's exit so it had to turn around and go back. Apricot was put off by the moving furniture thing ... until the moving furniture thing produced the mouse, all running and back to squeaking again (once he caught it, carried it to his spot, and started pounding on it again anyway). 

Repeat the whole Apricot losing interest when the mouse pretends to be dead. The mouse runs off away from both of us this time, and manages to hide in the foyer behind the storage units there (yes, I lack closet space, moving on).

I actually thought about getting the phone from the bedroom, and taking pictures, and decided against it, since I'd have to leave the two of them (Apricot and the mouse) unsupervised. Yet at some point, here, I think, I went to the bedroom to grab my glasses, plus turning the lights on everywhere I could get to. I don't actually remember getting my glasses, or deciding to. In fact, later when I stepped outdoors to go for my morning walk, I was surprised I had them on!

Anyway, that was later. Right now I came back from getting my glasses (if this, indeed, was the point at which I got them) and moved storage units in the foyer, hoping the mouse was still there. It was, and Apricot got it again. 

But now it got away before he got it in his mouth to carry it, and it went behind the bookshelf on the other side of the foyer wall. That's a 200 pound bookshelf. When it's empty. And it's far from empty. No way can I move that. And I can see that mouse behind it, outlined against the light! What to do, what to do ... the swiffer! It's long enough and narrow enough. So I went and fetched it.

(The first time I ever used the swiffer I scared Apricot because I forgot he'd never seen it. When he saw me coming from the kitchen with it now, he looked a little apprehensive. But then I did things he appreciated with it, as you will see, and I think he may be getting along with the swiffer much better now.)

By this time Apricot had gotten the hang of tandem hunting. The minute I went to one side of the bookshelf with the swiffer, he positioned himself on the other side, ready and waiting for the mouse to emerge. Which it did, prodded by my handy cleaning tool.

Somehow after more chases and tandem hunting, we ended up in the kitchen, all three of us. Apricot aimed the mouse toward the dining room part of the kitchen, and it went behind the rolltop desk and filing cabinet that are there. When I pulled those away from the wall I found where the mouse has been staying (lots of mouse poop to clean up later). 

The mouse actually lost Apricot by climbing up the cat tree. Apricot is very much a floor kitty and didn't think to look up. However, the mouse didn't lose me and I made it go back down by shaking the tree a little. You know, possibly Apricot didn't look up simply because he knew we were hunting it together, and to him, I was in charge of the tall stuff, being tall myself.

It was readily becoming apparent to me that Apricot had no intention of killing the mouse. He planned to keep it and play with it whenever he got bored, expecting it to stay put like his other toys do. I think at some point he made a decision that he was fed good tasting food, available all the time, and there was no need to waste a fun toy on things like food.

I was not about to leave the house with a loose mouse. I did consider for a second trying to keep it, but even in a large box with smooth sides that it couldn't get out of, Apricot would simply pick it up and carry it out to his special spot. So, no, the mouse had to go.

But I was also not about to kill it myself. I think mice are cute*, and I didn't want to kill it. I didn't really want Apricot to kill it either--I just didn't think I could catch it. I did consider opening the door and letting Apricot chase it outside, somehow shutting the door after the mouse left but before Apricot did ... yeah, I thought that plan was about as brilliant as you do. Then I'd be chasing a cat in the dark by myself rather than chasing a mouse in a brightly lit house, helped by a cat who was built for catching mice.

However, the mouse was getting slow from being knocked around and batted into the carpet so many times, and I thought perhaps there was a good chance I could catch it. In my fingers. By the tail. I'm not quite sure why I thought this plan was any better.

The mouse was running back and forth under the circular dining room table, trapped between Apricot on one side and myself on the other. By now the mouse had figured out we were both in on the hunting. It would hesitate when between Apricot and myself, and before it decided to run perpendicular to both of us, there was a moment of stillness. In addition, it kept running up onto the thick rectangle of foam I have on the floor under the table to rest my feet on.

I pulled the foam toward me, paralyzing the mouse with the sudden movement of the floor beneath its feet. This moment was where I could catch the tail between my fingers. And so it was. Only the split second I had a grip on the tail, I let go with this uncontrolled atavistic reaction of "mouse, ew!"

I was quite put out with myself, as catching it had been difficult enough, and now I had to do it twice.

Believe it or not, I managed to catch it by the tail again, (the foam block trick didn't work twice, but I still got the mouse again) and this time I didn't let go. I felt rather satisfied with myself as I held it up. No wonder cats like to catch mice. The accomplishment is quite thrilling.

Only I had visions of it climbing up its own tail and biting and scratching me.

Did you know mice freeze when held by their tails? Maybe it was just this mouse. But I was very glad of it, since this meant I wasn't going to get clawed up by a notorious carrier of disease. 

I showed it to Apricot, who quite honestly didn't seem to believe that the thing I held from my fingers was the mouse. I showed him that I was throwing it out the door. I tossed it as far as I could; it landed halfway between my house and the next one. I do hope it survives and tells all its mousy friends that this is a baaaaad house and not to go in there!

Shutting the door, I turned around, to see an eager kitty face. "Okay, where did it go now? Let's go find it!" Um, Apricot, I just threw it Outside. You saw me do it. (He didn't believe me.)

Even when I came back from my walk he still didn't believe the mouse was really gone. He'd been having so much fun! And so had I, really. It was fun hunting with him. Pity I had to be sensible and get rid of the mouse. (Don't worry, I scrubbed my hands quite thoroughly with cleanser after I shut the door from throwing the mouse out. And then scrubbed the floor with a clorox wipe where the mouse had been nesting.)

Evidence showed that he'd been chasing it for some time before I got up; including across the mantel where he'd never been before. He'd knocked off the lightest thing on the mantel--the cardboard tube that holds the extra feathers. It's capped, so no big deal.

It does account for all the squeaking this morning before I got up. I thought it was Apricot again (he does this before my alarm goes off sometimes) and I refused to get up, as usual. But my sleep-fuzzed state probably didn't do a good job of distinguishing between Apricot's squeaks and the mouse. Or possibly, just possibly, Apricot was trying to tell me that something exciting was happening and I should come out and help!

This afternoon: a happy cat

Interesting postscript: Tonight Apricot spent the time I ate supper on the floor under the dining room table, all stretched out and hot and tired from chasing Da Bird (we do that right before supper). He's never stayed in the kitchen the whole time I ate, and he certainly never stayed under the table at my feet (technically he was on the floor next to the foam block that my feet were on, but whatever). Perhaps all that chasing about under the table made him more comfortable being there. In any case, it was nice to spend the extra time with him.

*Mice are cute, I think. Mice are also one of the primary causes of house fires when they get into the walls and chew on wires and cause shorts. So, I don't want a mouse in my house.

Weekly Progress Report: Apricot is Happy

July 27, 2014

Every week Apricot changes a little bit more.

This is what he does to try to get pets.
He looks as adorable as possible.
It works.

Earlier this week I weighed him and he's up to 11 pounds. He's starting to get a smidge portly, but he's eating the same amount every day, and it seems to be mostly muscle that he's putting on. He has to go to the vet in August for his rabies shot, and I will ask them if I should be concerned about his weight. Right now though, I'm more concerned that he stays happy.

And happy he is. He doesn't like that I'm gone all day at work during the week, and he wants me to pay attention to him all the time when I get home. And of course I'm exhausted and don't want to do anything but sit (and he doesn't want to sit in my lap; he wants me to be on the floor with him). So that's a bit of not happy.

I made him sleep just by slowly scritching his head!

But for the most part, he's a very happy contented cat now. He spends his time when I'm home in the same room I am in, unless I'm sleeping, watching tv (still scary), or eating. Sometimes he hangs around in the kitchen while I'm eating but most of the time he's in the living room where he can see me in the kitchen. This is because during the week I play with the Bird right before I go make supper, and he's recovering from running around and isn't inclined to do anything but lie on the cool floor in the few spots that aren't carpeted.

That's planned, you see, because otherwise he twines around my legs while I'm making supper and I have to be so careful not to step on him or bump into him hard with my legs. I know some people would say that I shouldn't bother to be careful, that he'll learn to get out of the way. Yes, but I don't particularly want to find out the hard way that he won't get out of the way until something bad happens, like I break a foot stepping on it. And then he'd never come near my feet again, which might be a good thing for some people but I kind of like him rubbing against me.

He is so very affectionate. He comes into the kitchen when I come home to greet me. He wants to be petted all the time, and since I often indulge this, because I want to pet him quite a lot too, he keeps coming back for more. When I'm home all day and I do other stuff (read, blog, etc) he hangs out in the room I'm in and sleeps or plays with his toys.

Asleep while I read.
Tempting toes were resisted.

Yesterday he fell asleep on the bookshelf that's right next to my chair. It was so sweet. I feel flattered that he wants to be near me. Remember, this is the cat who wouldn't let anyone near him if he could help it ... anyone but Lynn, who had to work for months to get him to trust her. So his constant engagement with me is actually still surprising to me.

My habit of taking pictures often annoys him.
That's the reason for the look he's giving me.

I found him in my chair for the first time yesterday, too. I was quite surprised, since he seems to prefer places that aren't upholstered and thus hot.

Another picture? Honestly, mommy.

And today I had multiple kitchen chores to do, and while I was getting my pills together for the next month, he decided to hang out in the cat tree in the kitchen. Although I've seen him there before, this is the first time he's stayed long enough for me to get a picture. Just like the cat tree in the pink room, he seems to think there is something not quite allowed in his being there.

He's doing so well that the times he gets startled by stuff are often unanticipated by me. He's learning what "oops, sorry" means!

And he's even getting confident enough to be annoyed with me sometimes. When you're scared all the time, you're terrified of doing anything to make the people around you not like you. But when you get some confidence, and some trust, you can show the people around you that you didn't really like what they just did, without worrying that they will get unreasonable and angry and mad at you and do bad things.

So in one way, I'm glad he can get annoyed with me now. And in the other way, of course, I don't particularly like having him annoyed with me, because often, I couldn't help it--I have to do it. Whatever "it" happens to be. Like turning off the alarm when I come in the house. He has begun to have the opinion that I should stop to pet him first. He wouldn't like it if I didn't turn the alarm off. Those beeps are just the warning signal. Heaven help us if the actual alarm ever goes off. That thing is so loud it's painful, and I'm not as sensitive as a cat.

We're still working on "stop nibbling on me," lest you think all is paradise over here. But he's starting to get a clue about it. I've seen him start to nibble and then stop himself a few times, and he gets praised for that a lot.

He also seems to be calming down some; the kitten behavior isn't so pronounced. With my luck, he'll be back to acting his actual age (whatever that is, but it certainly isn't six months old) by the time I get kittens, and he'll be all irritated with their antics instead of joining in happily.

Oh well, the two of us can be irritated together, then, and tell the kittens to "go play with each other" instead of trying to wrestle our heads!

Locked Myself Out of the House Again

July 27, 2014 Sunday

Since I stay up late with my friends on Saturday night, I sleep in on Sunday morning. (There is that whole getting up to go for a walk at 6 am, but I go back to sleep afterwards, and sometimes the walk seems more like a dream and only my walking clothes being used instead of in their neat pile lets me know I actually did go for a walk that morning!)

Apricot is getting used to the going back to sleep part and wasn't quite so mournful about it this morning, though he did make some token protests. That means he made squeaky hinge sounds in the bedroom for a few minutes until it became obvious I wasn't getting back up, and then he left. He didn't make as many squeaks this morning as previous Sundays.

It's summer, so it's hot outside. I needed to get groceries and I had a choice of doing it when I got up today (the second time) or tomorrow after work. This is a difference between 85 and 100 degrees, so I chose to go today when I got up.

Apricot was very affectionate and so I petted him and engaged him in return affections for a little less than an hour before I left for groceries. I mean, poor guy, I wake up, pet him a little, go for a walk, and go back to bed. I didn't want to get up, pet him a little, and go for groceries. He deserves more attention than that!

So, anyway, I leave, reluctantly, but every minute I spend in the house it's just getting hotter outside. I shut the door behind me ... and realize the keys are on the other side of the door. Really? I cannot tell you how many times I have locked myself out of this house. It's annoying. Perhaps I should get the door replaced with a door with a keypad, instead!

There is a complication here. I mean, I've locked myself out enough that I have a key hidden outside, but it's not to the kitchen door. It's to the patio door. And I've never opened that door since Apricot came here. He doesn't know it's a door.

And I learned with Max that cats do not appreciate having walls suddenly turn into doors. Granted, I'd be the one coming through it, not a total stranger (as in Max's case--it was my sister who I was giving instructions via cell-phone on how to get in because I was stuck at work). But still. This had potential to be a scary thing.

But I had to get back in somehow. I couldn't see through the patio door if he was in the living room or not, since I had sunglasses on. So I knocked on the door and said "it's just me" as I came in. The alarm started beeping and I headed for the kitchen to turn it off after I closed the patio door.

To my surprise, I met Apricot coming back into the living room from the kitchen. He had a very baffled and slightly annoyed look on his face, directed at me.

The only thing I can figure is that when I knocked, despite where the knock came from, he went with previous experience that said "knocks mean the kitchen door opens and someone comes in." It's always been other people--I don't knock at my own door usually!

And then the kitchen door didn't open, and he heard me in the living room, and came back into the living room to find that, sure enough, I was there.

So how did I come in the kitchen door without him seeing me and end up in the living room? This did not make sense, and he was not pleased that things were not making sense. Thus the bafflement and annoyance.

I apologized and explained, but I think he still doesn't know the patio doors open. Not quite the sequence of events I was expecting, but hey, it's better than scaring him!

Apricot's Big Boy Clothes

July 27, 2014 Sunday

All this week I've been slowly getting Apricot used to wearing his harness. Only I call it his Big Boy Clothes and say all kinds of admiring things about him while he's wearing it. That lets him know I think he looks nice in it, instead of embarrassing. Honestly, if you get a harness that fits a cat and isn't uncomfortable, their biggest issue with it then becomes the fact that they have dignity and this isn't dignified.

I took a picture yesterday to let you know what a figure-8 harness is, and how it works. My normally camera-shy Apricot decided to help demonstrate.

Apricot helping to show you what his Big Boy Clothes are like.

Okay, a figure-8 harness is rather like a mobius strip. The two circles above are one long strip of harness fabric, with the silver thing on the left side of the largest one being the clasp. I don't like this type of clasp--it's like a human belt buckle instead of a snap-together harness clasp--and it's difficult for me to make work. I'll probably be getting a different harness for him eventually. Any thoughts on colors? I knew black would go with anything, so it would look good on him.

I'm getting side-tracked. Okay, his paw is on the part that goes around his head like a collar. The other loop goes around his chest right behind his front legs. The join part is an independent loop of harness fabric with a D-ring so you can attach a lead to it.

The cool thing about this arrangement is you can enlarge the collar part to where the body loop is very small, slip this large loop over the cat's head (which is generally much better received than a tight loop which compresses the ears and whiskers as it passes over the head), and then tighten it, making the body loop bigger so you can put that around his chest.

I am not very swift putting it on him, and I have a tendency to get stuck trying to get the belt buckle connection fastened. So not only does poor Apricot have to learn to wear a harness, but he has to learn to put up with my clumsiness in getting it on and off him.

At first, he'd only put up with it for a few minutes and then it became something dreadful that he needed to wash off his fur immediately. That's when I'd take it off. (I found this response--trying to wash it off--to be unique and hilarious, but I didn't let him know that I thought it was funny.)

No, no, go on without me; I can't make it. Remember me!

After a few days, he left it on longer. Unlike some cats, he didn't act like the harness cut the nerves from his brain to his legs and become a helpless furry slug on the floor. He was walking around with it even the first time I put it on him. It's walking around, though, that makes him more aware of it on him and makes him start to get nervous about it.

He walks with a funny kind of bounce while he's wearing it, although that is becoming far less pronounced now that he's getting used to it.

Yesterday I left it on him for about an hour. I took it off after that mostly because I felt like it and less because he was freaking out about it, because he wasn't. I've been giving him a Vetri-science treat afterwards. It's a functional health treat that promotes urinary tract health, so he can only have one a day. It's a monster sized treat; shaped like a fish. I would have been breaking it in half for him, except that I saw him eat that huge fly, and knew that not only could he handle having a large treat, but he actually likes to be able to tear it apart himself.

I think the treat really helps with the whole acceptance thing. He's actually wearing the harness right now, and sleeping quite happily on the cat tree as if it wasn't there!

Also the treat helps with getting him back to me. I kind of instinctively made him come back to me with just my voice the first few times when he was really getting scared about the harness, instead of trying to catch him. 

Blurry, but you can see he walks
just fine with it on, despite previous protests.

Something has always been off to me about trying to catch Apricot. It's like there's just a barrier there in my head about going after him, like I know deep down that will scare him even more. And if he comes to me of his own accord, especially when things are scary (like the harness) and I solve the problem, I become a solution to scary rather than a cause of it. Which makes perfect sense but it's not like I thought it through initially. I've always "gone after" my cats, but they were never this skittish.

Now that Apricot appears to have accepted the harness completely, I suppose I have to find where I put the lead and try that. I'm anticipating having a leash trailing from his harness is not going to be well-received.

You're supposed to attach it but let it trail loose, no holding it, at first. Of course, this means harness time will have to be supervised closely again--the last two days I've been kind of doing my own thing while he's wearing it. 

In fact, today, I'm beginning to think I might forget to take it off him if I'm not careful to remember!

No longer a big deal to wear it.
Outside is more interesting.
(No, I have no idea what caught his interest.)

The Weekend Again: Vacuum, Harness, and Mystery Motion

July 20, 2014 Sunday

The weekend has come and is almost gone again. It does that.

Apricot is no longer showing the rapid improvement of his first few weeks with me, but that's because he came so far that now he only has a little ways more to go, and he's taking his time.

I vacuumed again Saturday morning. Apricot followed me from room to room as I put things up off the floor in preparation for vacuuming, and didn't seem a bit unnerved by all the changes and movement. In fact, I began to see dawning realization in his body language, to the point where I called him out of the bedroom after I had cleared it for vacuuming and then shut the door when he was out, so that he wouldn't try to headboard hide from the beginning. That wouldn't work either, since I vacuum right up next to it! (Also, can you imagine how being in a small area surrounded on all but one side by wood would echo the sound? I bet it would be loud.)

So once I got out the vacuum cleaner, telling him what I was doing and letting him see it, he removed himself to the living room cubby in the cat tree. When I did the back half of the house and the part of the living room I can reach with the cord still plugged into the first location, he watched me carefully but not with any particular alarm.

Turning off the vacuum cleaner, I then grabbed its plug and switched plugin locations, and noticed that the kitchen was quiet. This meant my wash was done and needed to be put in the dryer. While I was doing this, when I was almost finished, I happened to glance out into the living room to see Apricot moving himself! He was headed into the hallway.

When I came out to start vacuuming the second and last part of the house, I checked up on him and sure enough, he'd stashed himself under the headboard. I gave him a thumbs up and said that I wasn't done yet and to stay there. And he did. After I finished, I put the cleaner away and then went into the bedroom and before I even got around the corner of the bed, started saying that "I'm done, you can come out now, it's safe."

And he met me halfway. Pattern recognition is a wonderful teaching tool!

Of course, later that day I did things unusual and strange. Since I have to leave my door open a crack now at night for him to come and go, the light from the rest of the house has been bothering me. I got a light-blocking curtain and the necessary hardware, and planned to hang it over the bedroom door. He already knows how to go in and out of a curtain covering a doorway, as the "door" to the master bedroom's tiny bathroom is actually a curtain.

If you're curious, I taught him to push the curtain aside and go through by pinning up a triangle of the bottom corner so there was visual room to walk. And then each day I lowered the triangle just a bit until the curtain was completely loose and he had to push it aside to walk through. Which he does admirably. I am doing the same thing with this light blocking curtain since it's a new location and it's a heavier curtain.

But in putting it up, I had to use a drill which makes noise, an unusual noise that he hasn't heard before. Plus I had to get out the two step step-ladder which makes noise when it's unfolded and set up and also when you put it away, and all sorts of other stuff (the curtain rod, the tieback, the box of tools, etc).

I unpacked the curtain and the curtain rod and the tieback in the kitchen. He watched very closely and even volunteered to help a few times. He seemed very interested and only a little skittish. And then he got bored and left, which is even better. Not that I mind him helping, but the confidence implied in walking off and letting the new stuff happen without him is quite an accomplishment of itself.

When I brought everything into the hallway, he came back to investigate. I let him sniff the drill while telling him it would make loud funny noises when I used it. He also wanted to sniff the drill's battery charger, and I let him, telling him what it was for. Not that I expected that part to be understood. He should be picking up on the words "noise" and "loud" by now, but expecting him to understand batteries is a bit much!

All this extra preparation seemed to be helpful, because when I climbed up and down the step-ladder and drilled holes and fastened screws and had to find a new screw for one of them because the cheap metal stripped the part you use to make it turn with the screwdriver, all of this didn't seem to faze him one bit. He just watched from various distances as required by the noise level, and even came by and sniffed at things once.

I was very proud of him. I was also very happy because I don't like scaring my cat and so when I do things I have to do and he's not scared, that makes me feel good.

Weekends are my chance to try all kinds of new things with him. The stuff I just told you about is the house related things. I also tried a couple new cat related things. First, I unpacked the figure-8 harness I got him and introduced him to it.

This involved letting him sniff it and do whatever he wanted to with it. Which was biting it and nibbling on it. Okay. Probably the smell of new on it. I left that on the floor for now.

Later, this morning, I draped it over him while he was on the floor on his side wanting pets and petted him around it. He was mostly just puzzled and mildly curious. So this afternoon, I put it on him, loosely and just briefly. This was most unusual and he didn't know what to think. He seemed to go with the theory of something had gotten on him and so must be washed off. I took it off after maybe thirty seconds to a minute. I will keep trying it on him for a few minutes at a time throughout the week, increasing the time and the tightness as he gets comfortable with it. Getting it over his head was interesting ... he wasn't deliberately avoiding it, but he wasn't holding still either.

I also got him something he'd like, I hoped. Have you heard of the Undercover Mouse? This is a circular motor powered by AA batteries that makes a wand go around and around, randomly changing direction and, if you want, speed. The motor casing is covered by a vinyl circle that goes out to the very end of the wand. At the end of the wand is attached a cloth mouse. So to the cat, the mouse is dodging around the edge of the vinyl, without the predictability that says "mechanical." (And technically, the mouse and the wand are one piece; the wand attaches into the motor part.)

Well, I was going to get him an Undercover Mouse, but as I was ordering the figure-8 harness on Fosters & Smith, and they had a spend this much get free shipping deal, I got him their version of the Undercover Mouse, which is called a Mystery Motion and has feathers instead of a mouse. According to the comments, it's supposed to be sturdier than the Undercover Mouse, so that's something. Unfortunately, the Mouse is motion activated (it doesn't go until the cat approaches it) whereas the Mystery Motion you turn it on and off. And it's noisy, so it's not a toy you leave on while you're out of the house, which is what I wanted it for.

However, it's a big hit with Apricot, so that's the important part!

Got it!

At first he stayed back, put off by the noise it made. The motor makes noises as it moves the feathers back and forth, plus the feathers and the wand make noise moving under the vinyl. But he couldn't quite make himself leave. The feathers were just too tempting.

Over the next few minutes he crept closer and closer, watching and analyzing it. Had I gotten this toy even three weeks ago, he would have been terrified, but now he's got a good enough sense of human machine noises that I think he rapidly figured out the noise wasn't going to hurt him. I emphasize that because I think he also rapidly figured out the noise changed pitch and tone with the changing direction of the feathers, and started to use that to predict when the feathers would hold still long enough to make a grab worth while.

After a while he was close enough that, like the picture showed, he could grab the feathers. They stop moving when they are impeded in motion, so they won't rip out of his paws. But the split second he lets go, off they run again, round and round. He was utterly fascinated and loved every minute of it. I even took video, which if I can ever figure out how to get this blog to upload video (instead of choking on it and saying connection terminated) or figure out how to upload to youtube (what's a channel anyway and why do I have to have one?) I will link to it or put it up here.

After ten minutes or so I'm afraid the sound was getting on my nerves so I wanted to turn it off. This isn't quite as bad as it seems; if the toy is only brought out for short times, he will be less likely to get bored with it.

I had planned to leave it out and turn it on when I got home.

Hunting the feathers down to the source

As you can see, that wasn't going to work. Even after I turned it off, he was still hunting. And what was the final blow in my plan to leave it out was the fact that he started investigating where he'd clearly seen me, twice, make it go and stop. He was trying to figure out how to push the button on the black circle you can see in the picture that makes it start or stop. It also changes the speed, which I had left on slow for this first time. I really don't want him being able to start or stop it at will. (Although if he did figure it out, and manage to exert the right pressure in the right spot, it would be hilarious if he turned it off and on for the kittens whenever they get here!) (No, I really don't want that sound starting up randomly in the middle of the night, however funny one cat operating a toy for another cat would be.)

So I have had to stow it away. I couldn't put it in the toybox with Da Bird; that would be confusing since I want him to ask me for what toy he wants. (I wouldn't know if he went to the toybox which toy he wanted.) But I have an end table that sits in the middle of the living room defying its stated goal as an "end" table, and it has a drawer which turned out to be just big enough for the Mystery Motion toy when it's disassembled. Luckily for me and my mechanical aptitude (or lack thereof) it is easily assembled with the wand part rotating onto the motor part like a giant screw and nut.

I haven't gotten it out yet. As soon as I finish the post I'm planning to.

As for other progress: He's getting more used to being picked up. He's also taken to asking to be picked up into the chair while I'm sitting there. He doesn't stay long, long enough to be petted and then he leaves again. But it's not a frantic "get me out of here;" it's more the kitten "I'm bored now, see you later." Which is often five minutes later. Makes it somewhat difficult to read!

He's also used the litter box while I was in the bathroom and watching. Not that I really want to watch him pee; but it's a good thing to watch your cat every so often while they are using the litter box to make sure they aren't straining or having other difficulties. And this is the first time he's actually been okay enough to continue what he was doing while I was there. 

Several times before this time he'd come in, walked into the shower stall where the litter box is set up, turned around and left, like, "never mind, it's too crowded, I'll come back later." Using the litter box is a very vulnerable time for cats, so it says something about his trust level that he went while I was still there.

And Da Bird is becoming more and more a strategy exercise. He won't attack it while it can still "see" him, no matter how much he wants to. It's so funny watching him crouch to attack, his butt wiggling in a quiver of orange fur, holding himself back. If the bird seems unaware of him, and stays doing what it was doing (ie, lying still on the floor) sometimes he will risk a charge. If the bird "walks" away and out of sight, then he'll definitely charge because it could escape!

In the confines of the hallway, he'll chase it full speed, up and down, doing these incredible acrobatic twists at either end. It doesn't hurt that sometimes he catches it out of the air. This only encourages his air dancing. And no, I'm not letting him catch it. It's all I can do to keep it away from him, and I don't always succeed. My reflexes aren't what they should be, apparently!

When he gets tired, though, he just wants to catch it and eat it, and if I want to continue playing, he'll huff and lie down. If he stays lying down despite direct provocation (the bird comes and dances over him), then I know he's done, and I'll try to lure him into "catching" it one more time (and this time I let him). After that I drop two treats by his head and take the bird out of his grasp. That's when he gets to eat his catch.

He knows it's a bait-and-switch, though, which I think is why he was so happy to catch and eat the fly!

With all this exercise he's getting stronger, but his arm strength isn't what a normal cat's usually is. This results in some hilarious events where he tries to chase the bird up the cat tree and misses by just a hair-width. While most cats, if they got a grip on the sisal post, could pull themselves up, he mostly just slowly slides off and falls to the floor, generally on his back. The first time this happened I held my breath, wondering if he was hurt, and he did act a bit put out, like his dignity had been injured. 

By now he falls so often (and I never laugh no matter how funny it looks) and he charges up the cat tree with such enthusiasm (which is why he falls so often) that it is becoming normal. He bounces up, going back up the cat tree sometimes by a different path, sometimes by the same path with a touch more caution. He appears to be made of rubber. 

Pippin was clumsy too, but he was far more cautious, even as a true (under a year old) kitten. Apricot seems to have no inhibitions about falling any more after that first time. He doesn't even try to flip around to his feet, either, just lands on whatever bit was going to land anyway, and then scrambles back up. I've never seen a cat do that with such inhibition. It's great fun to watch even if I can't laugh out-loud at him. 

(Why can't I laugh? Because then he'd get his dignity in a twist and stop doing it.)

Apricot Ate a Fly

July 19, 2014 Saturday

Yesterday when I got home I was totally exhausted. Not actually sure why as it hasn't been that bad of a week, but there you have it; some of us can and some of us can't, and yesterday I couldn't. 

When I get home now, Apricot wants pets and attention immediately. He lets me turn off the house alarm, but after that it's time for attention. And I give it to him, in between taking off my shoes and putting stuff away. If I ignored him, he'd soon stop showing up and asking to be loved on, so I don't ignore him.

Well, after the attention, then his mind turns to playtime. I can tell because he ends up rolling over on his back and he starts playing with my hands if I keep up with the petting. Yesterday we ended up in the bedroom because I have to put my extra clothing away (it's cold at work, so I wear lots of clothes; right now it's too warm to wear them on the way home, so I have a bag of clothes I have to put away.)

He started moving toward playtime, and went into the living room to try to get me to follow him. I was so tired. I sat on the floor of the bedroom where he'd left me, looked around in kind of a mental fog, and then lay down on the carpet. But the light in my eyes from the nightstand bothered me too much, so I got up, went into the pink room next door, and lay down on the guest bed in there, my back to the room.

After awhile I heard from below and behind me, "mew?" And several more inquiring squeaky noises. Apricot doesn't meow. He squeaks. He sounds like a rusty hinge, honestly. I mumbled something about he could come up if he wanted, I was just tired.

A little while later the bed depressed some as he jumped up behind me in the narrow space between my back and the edge of the bed. He falls off this bed when I get him to jump on it chasing Da Bird, and it doesn't seem to bother him, so I don't know if he slipped off or jumped off. He jumped up to where there was more space at my legs, but decided not to stay.

I heard him bumbling around on the cat tree, and playing with a stuffed mouse on the floor. He also was either quiet or left and came back several times. I think the latter. When I finally got up to continue my after work chores, the next of which was litterbox cleaning, I found a great big fat housefly buzzing around in the bathroom. I tried to kill it, but it evaded me and flew out into the bedroom.

Great, just what I needed; a random buzzing noise throughout the night to keep me awake. As if I wasn't having enough trouble sleeping.

But I underestimated my keen hunter. Apricot found the fly (if he hadn't known about it before) in the living room and was having great fun hunting it. I cleaned the litterbox in the living room and went to put the bucket with the dirty litter back in the bathroom. As I came out, I saw Apricot standing in the doorway to the pink room.

He was chewing on something that made quite a large mouthful. He rather resembled the way a dog chews peanut butter! I assume he was eating the fly (eww), as I haven't seen or heard it since. He looked very pleased with himself and very self-satisfied. I praised him and said complementary things about his hunting abilities. I probably should have said more, but I was still tired.

The fly turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because catching it provided enough playtime for Apricot that he didn't mind when I rested in the chair in the living room, talking to my mom on the phone, for another half an hour or so. In fact, he stretched out in the center of the room, a smug look of satisfaction on his face.

Sort of Retrospective: My Staunch Defender

Do you know what a camel cricket is? Some people call them mole crickets. They are small insects roughly the size of a quarter with a humped form body (thus "camel") and they jump incredible distances, like singing crickets can. Camel crickets also have serrated edges on their legs, so even if they're dead they can hurt you.

I hate camel crickets. I'm scared of them, and I hate them. I especially hate the way they jump so fast. I can't see which way they jumped and honestly, I think they can jump any direction from a standing start.

Once I had a camel cricket jump and "reappear" on my leg, inside my pjs. I have never shucked out of clothing so fast in my life.

Suffice it to say that I feel about camel crickets the same way some people feel about snakes or spiders.

Pippin loved camel crickets. They were great fun to play with, and apparently, good to eat. Sometimes I would come home and find nothing but a set of camel cricket legs. Gross, but better than finding a live one! Since I lived in the basement room, and these evil insects like damp and dark, they proliferated down there.

I would call Pippin's name in a quavering tone of voice, "here's another one, come help me!" and he soon learned that meant I had a wonderful jumpy toy for him to play with. I remember one time distinctly when I wanted to go upstairs and there was a nasty adult camel cricket, big old thing, standing in the middle of the doorway as if daring me to go past it. As if! I'd stay there all night if that's what it took (well, okay, the basement room had a door to the outside, so I'd go out that way and around the house to the back door and ask to be let in, no matter how embarrassing that would have been).

Pippin came running in, "where, where?" and I pointed. (This was something odd about Pippin; most cats do not get pointing. They'll look at your finger. Pippin figured out pointing fairly quickly in his life.) Oh joy oh rapture, a jumpy toy! And he kept the camel cricket occupied and out of the doorway long enough for me to get out and up to supper.

This morning, I was in the mini-bathroom that's off the master bedroom, when a similar situation happened. A baby camel cricket (and no, they aren't cute when they're small) appeared in the middle of the doorway. And of course I was actually in the middle of using the toilet, so I was a little restricted in my movement. The toilet faces the doorway.

I heaved a sigh of resignation. I was going to have to see if I could kill it while not actually leaving the seat. Small camel crickets don't react as quickly or jump as far as the adults, so I had some chance, at least. A wad of toilet paper served to protect my fingers while I tried to squish it. It jumped aside, easily avoiding me.

I'd forgotten Apricot was in the bedroom, hanging about as he normally does when I get up in the morning. He heard or saw me doing different things, and instead of being scared, he was intrigued. He came over ...

And saw the jumpy toy. Oh joy oh rapture, a jumpy toy! He promptly took over trying to kill it, and did a very efficient job of it, too. He didn't actually mean to kill it that quickly, but he managed to smack it up against the doorframe with his paws and squashed it. Much to his puzzlement and disappointment, which he later took out on a stuffed toy mouse.

So apparently I have an applicant for Staunch Defender Against All Things Camel Cricket. We will see if he continues with this the next time one appears. He might not get the whole tone of voice I have when I call him to come rescue me, but then again, he might.

You better believe I praised him up and down for defending me. Good Apricot, wonderful Apricot! Now there's at least a chance I don't have to deal with the horrid things myself. I think the worst part about living with no other humans is that I have to take care of all insect invasions myself, no matter how much I hate them or are scared of them.

The Weekend's Accomplishments: Claws, Vacuum, and All

July 15, 2014 (Tuesday)

Well, on Saturday after my morning walk I brought in the scratching post my sister had given back to me. I didn't even get it into the living room before Apricot walked in, wanting to say hello and get petted. He stopped when he saw me carrying it, so I put it down to allow him to investigate it.

This is a new thing he's starting to learn: that when I do something new or bring something new into the house, I'll ask him if he wants to investigate it. Which means that it's safe to sniff around it and look into it. What's he's really learning is that this is how I say something is okay, and he's learning to trust my judgement about things.

The Bird has taken to roosting on top of the
new scratching post. Apricot doesn't often
jump up this high for it, though.

Within thirty seconds he was sniffing the scratching post directly and within a minute he was sitting on it. Yes! It didn't scare him. It didn't even scare him when later it turned up in the living room because I moved it to its final location after I'd vacuumed.

Yeah, about that, the vacuuming. I forget if I said before how Pippin would race me back to the vacuum cleaner so he could pretend to be all indignant about me making this horrid noise around him, when I'd gone to all the trouble to move him to the previously cleaned end of the house. Last week when I carried Apricot to the other end of the house, he'd stayed. Well, technically he'd changed rooms so he could hide under the headboard, but he'd stayed in the clean end of the house.

So this Saturday I vacuumed half the house, changed the plug over, and then moved Apricot out of his cubbyhole and into the pink room again. (Hoping he'll get the point that the pink room is safe, and that he doesn't have to hide under the headboard ... so far no luck getting that point across, but hope springs eternal and all that.)

Anyway, does he stay where I put him? Does he go hide under the headboard? No! The silly cat races me back to the living room! I hastily started the cleaner (I got there before he did) which stopped him in his tracks in the hallway just before the living room. And there he stayed, watching, seeing if maybe he could get to his cubbyhole in the cat tree.

He finally decided I was getting too close with the vacuum cleaner and ran. I'm glad he ran before he saw the horrible things I do to the cat tree. I vacuum the base and then lift the cleaner up (and it's an upright, so that's the entire cleaner I'm lifting) to vacuum what bits I can of the tree platforms.

When I finished cleaning and put the vacuum cleaner away, I went into the bedroom to tell him it was safe and he could come out now. I started saying that as I rounded the corner of the bed, and he was out and up to me before I could even get to the headboard corner. I was so proud of him!

Later that day we were in the pink room on the floor, and he was walking around me, and I grabbed with an arm (not a hand) and managed to do it with just the wrong timing. Instead of pressing my arm against his chest/side, which would have been like petting and probably would have gotten me a puzzled look but nothing else, or getting his tail between my arm and body (which would have gotten me an exasperated, patient sigh--he's already starting to get the idea I have a thing about cat tails and you might as well put up with it); no, I catch him right before the hip bone.

Which he did not appreciate, and I didn't expect him to. He was behind me at the time and I couldn't see where I was in relation to him. He lashed out with a claws-out paw, mostly just a warning, but he managed to catch me in just the wrong spot on my finger and drew blood. I wasn't mad, or anything, but I did have to get up and go put a bandaid on the spot so I wouldn't get blood on stuff.

So the next day, I got him when he was all sleepy, and clipped his claws, since obviously there was a sharp one. And guess what--I managed to get all his claws, including the back ones! And in all eighteen claws, (five on each front paw and four on each back paw), there was only one sharp enough to have cut me. Seriously? What are the odds? (One out of eighteen. Yes, I know.)

I brought my sister-in-law over for a brief moment after supper before we headed to her house for board games, and although Apricot retreated to the bedroom, I was able to coax him out from under the headboard at least before we left. And it wasn't a run-for-the-hills flee, more like a strategic retreat. I'm trying to get him used to the idea there can be other humans in the house and that they are nice humans. So it's okay that he didn't come out to where she was in the living room. Simply not-hiding completely while he could hear someone else moving around in the house was enough for now.

(Apricot currently wants me to play bird with him and is pestering me in between being patient. He is pestering by threatening to jump onto my lap (which has the laptop on it, and causes me to move the laptop every time he pretends he's going to jump up) and also doing things he knows I don't like him to do, like pulling on the blanket on my feet or biting the edge of (yet another) carpet. As he is currently playing nicely with one of his toys, I shall go reward him for it by getting out Da Bird. Back in a while.)

Now that he's all tired out and flat on his side on the wooden floor that isn't covered by carpet (not an easy thing to find in this house), I can continue.

Oh but it's fun playing with him with the Bird. He has moods where he likes it to do different things. A while back it was racing around and around in circles in the living room (nice because I can stand in one spot and simply rotate). Lately it's been chasing it up and down the hallway (nice because I can stand in the doorway of the tv room and make the Bird go from one end of the hallway into the pink room at the other end). He doesn't like it to go out of sight, and if I'm getting bored with his stalking (which is slow and nothing much happens so I do get bored) I can simply take the Bird for a flight where it ends up around a corner, and poof, running Apricot.

But I digress. What I meant to tell about was what happened on Sunday, after the claw clipping but while he was still in his afternoon snooze time. (Unfortunately for me on the weekdays, this snooze time happens between noon and four-ish, so he's waking up right when I get home, and raring to go.)

I was reading, in my chair, and cold. The cold isn't because of the house, although in deference to the little person with the permanent fur coat I did change the temperature to be 77 instead of 78 (that's F not C). Being abnormally cold is just something I have to deal with as part of my chronic illnesses. (Yeah, that's plural. Let's not go there; it's boring.)

My sister-in-law gave me this lovely fuzzy red jacket, a rich red and a wonderful fuzzy in both directions. (You know how sometimes you stroke a fuzzy piece of clothing one way and it feels good but the other way it feels weird and unpleasant?) Anyway, this one's lovely fuzzy all over, inside and out. I wear it in the house when I'm cold but don't want to get my robe out. 

Sunday afternoon and the snoozing is easy
(That's me in the red fuzzy.)

So I'm wearing my red fuzzy jacket all zipped up, and the rest of me is under the afgan (which is occurs to me my sister-in-law also gave me!). Apricot looked over and saw me, and I swear his face lit up like "OOOH!" and he raced over and jumped into my lap, where he normally has to be coaxed and persuaded to be. And he buried his face in my tummy and started kneading heavily and happily. 

I said, mildly bemused, (if you like this) "you're really going to like winter." (I didn't actually say the "if you like this" part; I sometimes have a tendency to start talking vocally in the middle of a thought rather than the beginning of one!)

Once he got the whole kneading fuzzy me out of his system, then he curled up in the tiny spot next to me and slept for a while. I'm still used to how Pippin would sleep for hours on me, so it always seems too short when Apricot wakes up and leaves after ten or fifteen minutes. I try to enjoy it while it lasts. And I bet as he grows older he'll want to sleep longer at a stretch.

Retrospective: Pippin's Sofa Days

Apricot's hiding under the couch reminded me of Pippin's sofa days.

When Pippin was smaller than he eventually became, he liked to go under the sofa, especially after toys. He'd put one under the sofa and then chase it out from under.

This was in my parents' house while we still lived there, and this sofa was the one in the living room on the wooden floor. There was another sofa on the carpet in the den, but that was a sleeper sofa and didn't have the room underneath, although that didn't deter him from creeping underneath when the sleeper part was out. All the photos I have are of this sofa, actually, when I was playing with him with a fabric ribbon while he was underneath.

June 2000 playing under the sofa bed

But back to the one in the living room. This was really quite a favorite place to play, and as he grew by leaps and bounds, it became more and more difficult for him to get under it. If he could get under the edge, the inside part of the couch was higher, and he was fine.

He would squirm on his belly to get underneath. This worked for a few weeks and then he couldn't get the leverage because he couldn't even stand a little bit. He got out by turning on his back and pulling himself out with his paws on the edge of the sofa, but it never really worked the other way around due to the whole bottom of the sofa interrupting his grip.

The last time he ever went under the sofa I remember quite distinctly. He tried to get under, and couldn't, so he backed up to the other side of the room. Like a funny car revving up to start at full speed, he tensed every muscle in his body and then launched at high speed across the room, toward the couch. Which I was sitting on at the time.

I waited with baited breath for him to run into the sofa; I couldn't figure what else was going to happen besides the worst misjudgment in the world.

At the last possible second, when he was going full out, he suddenly dropped to his belly, all four feet splayed out around him, and slid neatly under the couch. It was a you-tube worthy moment, if only I'd had a video camera.

It was also a good thing I was there and saw him do this, because only by splaying out flat, and thus flattening his shoulderblades too, had he been able to get underneath. This meant that he actually couldn't get out by himself, even by his now-normal method of dragging himself out upsidedown with his paws on the sofa edge.

I asked him if he was stuck, and when he refused to answer me indignantly in the negative, I figured he was stuck. (A cat isn't going to admit they're stuck, after all.) He could still move around underneath, but he couldn't get out. He did try and then gave up, which was when I came down and asked if he was stuck.

So I grabbed both front paws with one hand, flattened his head to the floor with the other, and gently dragged him out from under the couch. He understood what I was doing and made himself as flat as possible, which was nice--it was possible he would have fought against that kind of treatment, since as a rule cats don't like you pushing their heads down.

He never went under the sofa again, although I did find him occasionally looking at it mournfully as if remembering the good old days when he could chase his toys under the sofa and not rely on a human to retrieve them.

And you know how I know he never went under again? Because I never had to extract him from happy sofa land again, either!

Driving is Fun Again (with eye pictures)

July 11, 2014

I took the day off today, and Apricot knew I was not going to work because I didn't have my stack of work clothes on the little side table. He was very happy.

this was June 28 but I didn't have a good one from today

Unfortunately I wasn't staying home. I did tell him that, but he's only been with me nearly five weeks now, so his English isn't up to future tense and figuring out something that hasn't ever happened before. Next time he might remember this time and understand when I say, "I'm sorry but I'm not staying home, either, even if I'm not going to work" that I'm going to leave.

Practically everything I do now at home is done with accompaniment of Apricot. It's great fun and makes everything take longer, which is not so much fun, but I didn't get him just to ignore him, after all. So if he wants to wind back and forth in front of me when I walk, and ask for pets every few steps, I'm going to accommodate him. If I run into him, he tags me with a paw, like "whap, stop that." I would like him to stop doing that, but the only reason I want him to stop is in case he gets "worse." Right now it's just a soft paw, no claws.

This morning he had his first experience with asking to see something and being shown but told he can't touch. For the first time he actually noticed that the fridge had an inside that he wanted to see. My freezer is on the bottom so the fridge starts almost at waist height to me. He let me know he wanted to see by staring fixedly at the fridge door while it was open and after I closed it.

I told him if he wanted to see, I'd have to pick him up to let him see. And then I picked him up and cradled him in one arm while I moved a step to the fridge and opened the door. He craned his neck and looked all around at the inside, but made no move to leave my arms. It was like he understood that this was "look don't touch." This also ended up being the first time I had to put him down before he was ready to leave, because even after I shut the door, he cuddled into me and was very affectionate and didn't want down.

However, I had to leave, even if I really really didn't want to. Because you see, I'd taken the entire day off work to go to an eye appointment. An ordinary, optometrist, eye appointment. Why was it going to take the whole day? Because it was in Atlanta, and was a three hour drive one way. Why was I going to an optometrist in Atlanta? Because he has equipment that allows him to do the look into your eyes that usually requires dilation, and I hate having my eyes dilated.

Side note: the last time I had my eyes dilated, the drops were painful, and worse was the drive home. It only took fifteen minutes, and I had my normal extremely dark sunglasses on in addition to the wrap around pair they give you, and by the time I got home, my eyes were so painful that I had to go into a completely dark room and sit there with my eyes closed, doing nothing, for over half an hour. Which was boring, especially since Pippin was busy toasting himself in the sun in a different room and had no desire to stop toasting himself just to come amuse me.

Anyway, thus this day off involving a round trip driving to Atlanta and back. On the drive up, the traffic stayed moving fairly well, only going down to 55 a few times (on a road that actually had a speed limit of 55, oddly enough, though you could tell traffic was going much slower than "usual" based on people's behavior) and since the sky was overcast, I didn't even have to run the air conditioner much.

I passed a chicken truck, and found it amusing that the truck I passed which was immediately behind the chicken truck had a logo on the side called "Old Dawg".

Also, I discovered that my previous definition of a "big" highway being three lanes in each direction is much lacking. Here I am, tooling along in my little Prius, in the left lane of a two lane (in the one direction) road, busily passing someone going slower than I wanted to go, when all of the sudden, like in the space of thirty seconds, I swear, the road turned into eight lanes wide. All in one direction. My "left lane" was now in the middle(ish). And I know two lanes came in from the right and joined instead of merged, so that's where two of them came from, but I have no idea where the three to my left appeared from.

I don't much appreciate driving when there's multiple middle lanes, I discovered. You really have to pay attention because not only are people changing lanes from both sides of the lane you're in (or intend to go in) but they're also potentially coming from several lanes deeper into the lane you're targeting. It's invigorating but a little exhausting to keep track of that many vehicles!

After I arrived at my sister's house, (and had a half hour nap) we went out for lunch and had excellent desserts (which we halved and shared, so we both got to sample two) and then I had my eye appointment.

This was all quite interesting as the doctor actually bothered to explain what was going on and what all the different tests meant. Apparently I "aced" the peripheral vision test (this explains a lot about getting distracted by things in the corner of my vision!) despite it depending on communication between brain and fingers (you clicked a mouse-like thing when you saw the flickers in your peripheral vision). And I'm slower at that kind of communication than regular people.

My brain goes, "look, there goes that annoying flicker again. Make it stop." Then a different part says, "you were supposed to click the mouse with your finger when the flicker happens." The first part goes, "oh, yeah, right, sorry. Hey, you on the mouse, click!" And only then do I click the mouse. If you know me, this probably explains a lot!

He showed me topographical maps of my eyes, and explained what they meant, and showed me what the laser surgery had changed, and where the nearsightedness came back--you can actually see it on the map. Nearsighted means your eyes are too long front to back, so there are tall spots, like a mountain, on the front of my eye, but part of it is flatter which is what the laser surgery did. Both eyes have this but one eye is more severe; the flat part is more flat and the raised part is more raised, and that's the one I'm the "worst" in; the other eye is kind of less flat but also less raised.

Topographical map. The blue parts are the flatter parts
that the laser surgery did; the red is the tallest bit.

The topographical map also showed where the astigmatism was, which is worse in the dominant eye (drat it) and he explained (first doctor to ever explain this) that this is what causes the "echo" image I see where, like, a projected image will have a second image shifted just slightly off from it, like when a magazine gets one of the color printers offset a bit and you get this ghost image on all the letters? Luckily the astigmatism curve (it's like the mountain of the front of my eye is a mountain range going mostly vertically across the eye but tilted slightly) is worse the more you get to the edge of the eye, so in bright light (pupils smaller in center of eye), my astigmatism affects my vision less. This explains why I can see better at work, with its abundance of light, and outside, with its overabundance of light, than I can see at home. It also explains why my vision seems to get worse in the winter!

Eye image: the reddish dot toward the left is the macula,
where the most photoreceptive cells are and your best
vision is; the veins/arteries are visible going into the "tube"
at the back of the eye.

And the instrument that looks in your eyes without dilation is like having someone take a flash picture right in your face. However, even though the light is honestly brighter than a flash on a camera, somehow the afterimages don't last as long. What's really cool is in that flash, in the split second after it, I could see the veins and arteries across my eyes. I know that's what they were because when I looked at the picture of my eye that then appeared on the computer screen, the patterns matched those that the lines of veins/arteries made!

He showed me the focal point of the eye, where the most photo-receptor cells are gathered, and I could see all the veins all gathered up into one spot and disappeared down into that spot like ribbons down a tube. I said excitedly, "and that's my blind spot, right?" and I was right. He gave me that look people do when I come up with something that ordinarily you wouldn't expect me to know.

(In case you don't know, you have a blind spot in each eye where there are no photo-receptors, because that's where all the veins and nerves go back into your brain. Your brain literally fills in the blind spots from what it sees around the spot. So you have two tiny spots, everywhere you look, that aren't real. They're your brain "photoshopping" reality into place there. I think this is fascinating.)

What I didn't know was that all the veins, nerves, arteries, etc, are across the top of your eye, with the photo-receptors behind them. Kind of like having a camera with the electric wires running across the front of the film. Seems rather impractical. But your brain filters them out and you usually don't see them. If you startle your brain with a sudden unexpected light source (like the flash of the instrument that took the pictures) then you interrupt the "filtering" process and you can see them for a moment.

I wish I'd thought to ask him if I could have a copy of my eye photos! I will email him and if he sends them to me I'll update this post with them. (As you can see, they were quite willing to email me screen shots of the images, and I have put them into the post now!)

Well, anyway, if you're still with me after all that, we come to the drive home.

I left the doctor's office about 2:20, and even then traffic was beginning to back up. It was stop and go all through Spaghetti Junction (there are so many bridges connecting all the different interstates that come together there that they call it Spaghetti Junction. I was on the second to the top bridge). It was weird being on that tall of a bridge and not moving. I'm usually nervous about it. This time I found myself thinking, I wonder where I have to be going to get on the top bridge?

All the 6-8 lane part was moving fairly quickly after that, but then, just as it thinned down to two lanes (which means usually not much traffic and you can sit back and just move) we rapidly decelerated to stop and go again. With the go part being 5-10 mph. For like a half hour at least.

Oddly, I wasn't the least bit impatient or put out. When it got completely stopped, I sorted paperwork (all my maps plus my prescriptions and receipts), and did car stretches (the kind of stretching you can do in a car's restricted movement space), and eventually ended up braiding my hair on both sides, just the front bits, which nicely kept them out of my eyes for the rest of the trip.

A truck driver had his window down, so when the shifting flow of traffic (I use the word "flow" in the most general of terms here) brought me even with him, I rolled down my window and called up to him to see if he knew how much farther we'd be stuck in this traffic. He was startled I was asking (well, I'll admit it's a bit weird) and said he didn't know. I asked then, "Haven't heard anything on the CB?" (The CB radio, which most truckers still have and use to communicate between them, in case you don't know.)

Now he really looked startled and actually put his hand on his CB, as if it hadn't occurred to him to use it to ask, and then, as if he wasn't going to admit that to me, shook his head and said no, nothing useful. I gave him a grin and said thanks, just thought I'd ask.

I bet he's still scratching his head over that one. Woman in tiny Prius knows about CB radios and bothers to ask truckers what's going on? (Helps when your dad was a long-haul trucker for just ages until he retired and you know what's what!)

We finally passed two police cars on the edge and a wrecker hauling up a rather battered but still intact car onto its platform. Ah ha, the source of the backup. Sure enough, once we were past that, traffic started back up to its normal speed.

The sky is blue with fluffy white clouds. The trees are green on either side. The cars are sorting themselves out into packs that want to all travel the same speed, with the faster packs moving through and past the slower packs on a regular basis. I travel in the middle speed packs, if you're wondering. I was resting comfortably in my driver's seat, watching the road scroll by, engaged enough in dodging the slow packs to have entertainment, and listening to my music.

And it occurred to me that I was enjoying this. Like really having fun. This was the way it used to be, driving. I used to like long distance driving. But since Pippin passed away my anxiety levels had gotten so high that it was interfering with a lot of things I used to enjoy doing, even removing the memory of how they were enjoyable. All the other road trips I've taken this year have been miserable.

But ever since Apricot came into my life and I decided to let him stay inside my life and care for him, the anxiety has been slowly draining back to normal (it's still there, just not the awful tense constant fear of the past nine months).

I enjoyed driving 6 hours in a day. 6 and a half if you count the stop-and-go traffic time! It was fun. When I got home I wasn't tired at all. Unlike the previous trips, the one in March to Megacoons and the one to the cat show and the one to visit Br'er Coons.

This was a good thing, since it's Friday and I had to make my bed with the freshly washed sheets and finish washing the towels and put them away in addition to all the other normal after work stuff. Apricot helped me with most of it. Turning the mattress around (horizontally, not flipping it) and putting the sheets on were something he watched from a cautious distance. But he did watch, and not go hide!

My sister had given me some extra finger-tooth-brushes for kitties, since they came in a pack of six and she had no idea why they'd put so many in. I put one on my finger and let Apricot investigate it.

Now I know why there were six. Apricot's response to the nubbly plastic brushes was to brush his own teeth by chomping down, hard. He didn't know my finger was inside it, so I didn't get mad at him, just pulled my finger out and let him continue chomping on an empty finger brush. He quite enjoyed it. But if that's the response some cats give, they're going to go through those brushes rather quickly!

Also I now know the difference between his love nibbles and play nibbles, both of which I'm trying to discourage, and his actual biting. My word but he has some strength in those jaws! The plastic kept my finger from being perforated but it certainly didn't keep my finger from aching for a few minutes from the power behind that bite.

Since I got home rather later than usual (around 5:45), I ate some supper before we played with Da Bird. Da Bird has been a slow stalk toy the last few days rather than a run after at high speed toy, but today we were back to full charge.

He has learned how to capture it so I can't get it back. We even managed to break it the other day by snapping the elastic strand off the end of the feathers which are held together by a metal clamp thingy. I fixed it by tying the elastic back through the (tiny, I'll have you know) loop that it was attached to before (glued, maybe? Industrial glue is quite powerful). So we were both happy the toy got fixed--him because he got to play with it some more and me because I don't often fix things well or even adequately!

My sister also gave me back the sisal scratching post I'd given her when Pippin didn't use it (Pippin never liked sisal; he was a cardboard scratcher). But Apricot uses sisal. I haven't brought it in yet, though. It's in my trunk and at 90+degrees when I got home, I didn't feel like hauling it out. I'll bring it in tomorrow morning and we shall see what kind of reception it gets, since it will smell very strange to Apricot. Tee hee. I enjoy setting puzzles for my cats.

The Apricot Theory

I've been developing a theory about Apricot's behaviors since I brought him home. I think that he is going back and doing his life over, paying special attention to the bits he missed (due to survival requirements) the first time around.

Okay, so when a kitten is born, they stay in the "nest" for the first week or so (not positive on the timeline here; it doesn't matter--it's the "this happens first and then this does" that matters). Mama takes care of all their needs. Right?

Apricot goes under the headboard and stays there for three days, only coming out in the dark of night to eat, drink, and use the bathroom. Meanwhile, like a giant mama cat washing him with her tongue, I am stroking him (with my hands, of course) while he's in the "nest."

What's next? Well, the kitten starts to explore, with anxious mama cat nearby. But the kitten only explores for a very little distance, and, if you're a nervous sort of kitten, not for very long each time. What did Apricot do next? He came out from under the headboard and explored for a very short distance for very brief amounts of time.

A kitten will then leave the nest for longer times and longer distances, as he or she grows stronger and gets better coordination of four legs. (That's gotta take some doing; it's difficult enough to manage two.) And so did Apricot, exploring for longer and longer times, coming farther out each time.

And then the kitten starts playing. Which is what Apricot started doing as well, nearly driving me batty before I let him into the rest of the house so he could play somewhere else while I was sleeping. It occurs to me that kittens start annoying their mama cat about this stage, too.

Just like a kitten growing, Apricot played longer, and harder, and got harder to wear out as the days went on. He also developed muscles that I suspect he'd had before his enforced quiet-tude in the shelter.

Now he is entering the teenager stage. He wants to be his own cat, not just an extension of mama, but he still wants to know mama loves him--he just wants both independence and love at the same time, which gets confusing for both teenagers and their parents.

He's developing tactics with Da Bird, and catching it far more often. I'm having to actually pay attention and counter his strategies rather than just reacting to his movement!

With each stage he's getting braver and more confident of the house, of me, and of the interaction between us.

Last night he even put me to bed. Sounds funny, doesn't it? But while he'll get on the bed for a petting, he won't get on the bed when I'm under the covers. Several times he's come to the end of the bed and up the stairs and mewed at me in the morning, trying to make me get out of the bed and become a useful petting person again, but he wouldn't come onto the bed for anything.

But last night he got on the bed while I was doing the second to last thing in the bed-time routine, and instead of coming over to my side of the bed and wanting petted, which he'd been doing earlier in the routine, this time he went to the far side of the bed and lay down on the covers, looking nervous but determined.

The covers were thrown back in a triangle, the way they do when you get out of bed rather absentminded of where you leave the bedclothes. He stayed where he was while I got into my pjs. He stayed where he was while I got gingerly into bed on my side, staying as far from him as possible while still being on the bed. I slipped my feet under the covers but left the rest of the covers the way they were, so as not to startle him.

He stayed put. He even stayed there when I turned the light off and turned back to him, facing him across the bed. (Although he was at the edge, he was more facing my waist than my head, actually.) So I closed my eyes and pretended to go to sleep. I think he may have thought I was asleep when he got up and left. He didn't leave in a hurry, and he stopped to get a bite to eat before he left the room. That's actually how I knew when he left the bed. Crunch crunch crunch. It amazes me how I usually sleep through his eating, because I know he comes in and gets snacks throughout the night.

So if my Apricot Theory holds true, he should turn into an adult in a month or two, with less playfulness and more cuddly (if I do my part right). He's already starting to enjoy cuddling while being held much more than he used to. Which I like very much.

Apricot Survived The Fireworks

July 5, 2014 Saturday morning

Last night my house was surrounded by not one but two massive fireworks displays. On one side of the house it was the city's downtown fireworks (I guess; that's the biggest "thing" in that direction) and on the other side of the house it was the massive modern church that does everything it can to appeal to the general public, including fireworks on the Fourth of July. It is unfortunate that the trees surrounding my house, and the fact that I'm in a small valley, make it impossible for me to see either of these displays from here.

I had every intention of going to bed at my normal time and letting Apricot deal with the fireworks as best he may. I got home from my Fourth of July party in plenty of time to quickly go to bed, which I did.

And then I couldn't sleep. This was before dark, so it's not like the fireworks noise was keeping me up or anything. Perhaps I felt guilty about leaving Apricot to be alone with the fireworks ... or perhaps I was still too wound up from the party. Maybe a little of both.

But the end result was, when more than half an hour had passed and I was more awake than when I lay down, I gave up, got up, and came out to the living room to finish my book, explaining that "I can't sleep" to Apricot who was hanging out in the cat tree.

The fireworks slowly started up, a pop here and a bang there. Apricot looked out a window on one side of the house, and then after a while went and looked out the window on the other side of the house. I guess he was trying to see what made all that noise.

When the firework explosions started coming closer together and more of them, Apricot came over to me and asked if he could be up. I was curled up in the chair, my legs bent next to me, and so there wasn't really a lot of room or a good level lap. However, I know from previous experience that if I unfold, he'll change his mind and decide to go elsewhere. So I invited him up, figuring he wouldn't stay long due to the uncomfortable nature of the current configuration of the chair and the person in it.

I keep underestimating how small he is. He wedged himself into the space between me and the chair arm. This involved folding himself in half, so all his feet were in the same spot up next to his face. His tail was curled around against his face. My arm on that side was resting on the chair arm, and I was petting him and scratching ears and rubbing his face with the other arm.

He stuffed his nose deep into his tail and tried very hard to go to sleep. (This is similar to pulling the covers over your head to make yourself a cozy spot to sleep in). I finished my book, although it didn't take long. And by now, I was extremely sleepy as well. Had he not been folded up beside me, I would have gone to bed.

But, given that he was still not asleep (the ears are a dead giveaway), and he was obviously using me for safety against the firework storm, I wasn't about to move. So I rested my hand against his hip, fingers curled over into the space left among the four paws, head, and tail; rested the other hand on the arm of the chair, and, since this is a wingback chair, rested my head up against the wing on that side, so my body was arched over him.

The fireworks must have really been bothering him because normally that much looming on my part would make him nervous, but he stayed there for probably an hour all told, maybe a half hour after I finished the book and a half hour before. He kept trying to sleep but the fireworks wouldn't let him relax that much.

There were a couple of big boomers that almost shook the house. I think it really helped that he was lying against me and that I was (by this time) so tired and half asleep that, although the boom startled me, the startlement didn't translate to any kind of muscle twitch or body movement. By the time my body realized I'd been startled, I was already over it.

Thus he could feel that even during the big booms I didn't even flinch, so obviously, it was nothing but noise and he was perfectly safe.

When he left the comfort of being next to me, it wasn't to run and hide. He just went to one of his sleeping/watching spots in the living room and settled in there. This was much to my relief as I was so very sleepy by this point, and I gratefully went to bed.

Of course I'd left my phone in the bedroom, charging. So of course I was unable to take a picture of the first time he folded up like that against me. There was so little room there that one half of the folded cat was actually resting up against my hip and leg, like a "V" shape in addition to the folded in half part.

This morning he was perfectly normal; his usual happy pet-me-now morning self. Whoo hoo, we survived the fireworks!

This morning he took a catnap in my lap
He's resting on my arm too--those are
the tips of my fingers sticking
out next to his nose!