Apricot's Tummy & A Window Picture

I like being able to pet kitty tummies. First, because they're soft and warm and fluffy and awesome, but also, it's important to be able to touch a cat all over, in case you need to inspect for injury or sickness. And to me, it's a sign of his trust in me.

So I've been trying to get Apricot used to having his tummy petted. Normally I can get in one or two pets before he curls up into play-cat mode.

Part of what I've been doing is telling him how irresistible I find his tummy and how I just love kitty tummies. Suiting words to actions, if he lies down and displays tummy, I always stop and pet him, with an emphasis on trying to get the tummy petting in.

Well, I'm not making much progress. Still only one or two (but we're more likely to get two these days, so that's some progress!) pets per time.

On the other hand, Apricot has learned a new way to lure me to pet him.

The Tummy Lure -- notice the disapproval of the photo being taken.

He'll lie down like this, prominently in my view, and then when I lean down to pet his tummy, he'll roll over so I can't reach it ... but I can reach the rest of him. Silly boy!

You see the self-satisfied smirk because
he got me to sit down next to him and pet him.

---

This afternoon he got me to go into the pink bedroom (the guest bedroom that Sophia had been in) and while I sat on the floor and played with my phone, he launched up onto the cat tree and looked out. 

Despite his dislike of having his picture taken, I was able to get a nice photo of his concentrated gaze out the window. I had to take the picture without getting up, thus the angle!

Interesting kitty tv today.
There is an electric line outside the window
and the birds often sit on it, making this
a better perch than I realized when
I decided to put a cat tree here.

In Other News: Kitten Developments

My kittens are a few days over two weeks old now. They are growing at an immense rate. To the point where Mrs. McFadden recommended I start an upper body workout because they look to be very big kitties when they grow up.

I'm rather pleased with myself because I've already started an upper body workout, in direct anticipation of just such an event.

She sends me videos and pictures, and I'm getting quite addicted to randomly getting kitten "stuff" in my inbox or text message box. She stays up later than I do, so every few days I'll wake up in the morning, check my phone, and there will be new kitten stuff!

Cinder is being a very good mommy. She is such a good mommy that when her kittens couldn't all get to all her nipples at the same time to nurse, she propped herself up in the corner to allow better access. She looks very silly and very adorable at the same time!

Cinder making life easier
for her kittens if not herself

Ten weeks to Arrival Day. I'm not sure whether to be excited or apprehensive. Our life, mine and Apricot's, will certainly change quite permanently when they arrive. I'll miss the spontaneous one-on-one time with Apricot, even though I can toss some toys and treats into a room and shut the door with the kittens inside to spend some scheduled one-on-one time with him. I may even have to do that sort of thing (and then go spend time with the kittens too, so they don't feel neglected) in order to keep Apricot from becoming jealous.

My sister says this is a problem you have when you have more cats than hands!

If I did this right there should be a kitten video at the end of this post. The top two are the two brown tabbies with white. Apparently they are always together now and love to play with each other. The other people are leaning toward getting the black and white (who is sleeping on the left in this video) and Mrs. McFadden is keeping the talkative brown tabby without white for her breeding program. So I may be getting the two that are friends, which would be perfect! (The other sleeping kitten is the tortoiseshell girl.)

I made the mistake of putting the laptop on the floor and playing the video full screen, with sound, for Apricot. He got quite worked up and wanted to know where those kittens were. He could hear them quite well, thank you very much, and knew there was no way they were in that stupid old laptop. They had to be somewhere in this house and he's been so lonely. Where were these kitties who could be friends? He didn't find them in the house so he concluded they must be (sigh) outside where he couldn't play with them.

On the one hand, I'm sorry I got him so worked up about it. On the other hand, it's nice to know that his instant response was to look for them and then be disappointed when he didn't find them. Makes me think that when they do arrive, he'll be happy to see them ... 

The Visitor: Day Two and Day Three-Departure

The night of the first full day Sophia stayed, she reported that Apricot again sniffed her toes during her nocturnal visit to the bathroom, but then he only retreated to the far wall in the hallway outside the bathroom, keeping an eye out till she emerged. Then he walked off leisurely in the direction of the living room while she went back to bed in the pink room.

He came to me in the morning like nothing was different, showing up before the alarm went off and sniffing at me in an attempt to persuade me to get up slightly earlier to feed him. He does this a fair amount, although not every morning, and I don't know why. It's never worked, so he doesn't have that cat logic of "it worked once, maybe I can get it to work again." I have never gotten up until after the alarm has gone off (twice at least) and he's never been still in the room when this happens. (He gets bored and leaves.)

But when I came back from my walk to get ready to go to work, even though Sophia was sleeping in and showed no signs of having emerged (door almost shut, no noises from the guest bedroom), Apricot had put himself away in his observation deck (the cubbyhole in the living room cat tree) again.

I came home early but didn't go inside and we (humans) all went out to lunch together. (All my siblings and my brother's wife). After we came home then Sophia and I went in the house together. I changed my normal "Apricot I'm home" call to alert him to the fact we were both there and it worked; he didn't come running into the kitchen like he normally does.

Sophia went to take a nap and I sat down opposite from the observation deck on the floor and informed Apricot that she was in the pink bedroom and wasn't coming out for a while, and would he care for a cuddle? He stretched and made his way down from the observation deck, in no hurry it would seem. Except I know him better now. This was almost equivalent to running up to me. He just likes to pretend he's not eager.

So I petted him and cuddled him and he was most appreciative. Depending on how bad his day has been depends on how close to me he cuddles. He wedged his full body up against me, as close as he could get with every inch of fur he could. Poor guy. So I hugged and petted and scratched all his favorite areas for those things.

That night we had the big family dinner at my parents' house, and I didn't get home till after my bedtime, which you all should know by now is 8 pm like a little kid's bedtime. Apricot did not approve and would have preferred to have me home earlier, but he still "helped" me to go to bed. This help consists of walked with me to the bedroom and then staying long enough to observe that I'm starting bedtime things (changing clothes, etc), whereupon he leaves for the living room. Right before I am ready to climb into bed I go into the living room and ask if he wants his goodnight kiss, and then when he settles on a spot to have his kiss, I pet him and kiss the top of his head and then go to bed. And he did all this routine just like Sophia wasn't in the house.

In the morning, Saturday morning, Sophia went for a walk with me and then very graciously allowed me to continue with my normal routine of vacuuming the house after the Saturday morning walk. (I mean, not every guest would agree to let you vacuum while they are there, especially since she was leaving right after breakfast and a normal person would have been perfectly fine with moving the vacuuming a few hours out.)

Apricot behaved as normal during the vacuuming. He put himself in the Observation Deck during the first part and then moved himself to the headboard hideaway for the second part. He even came out from under and into the living room when coaxed once the cleaning was done, even though Sophia was in the pink room and my bedroom door is at right angles to that door (which was open). He gave her very skeptical looks as he sidled out of the bedroom door and then hastily departed down the hall. She was doing stretches on the nice clean floor and probably looked very odd to a cat who isn't used to a lot of human behavior.

Sophia's the one that coined the term Observation Deck for the cubbyhole in the living room cat tree and I like it so much I shall be using it a lot.

After all the normal Saturday routine Sophia and I went to my parents' house for family breakfast (also a normal thing, although usually it's just me going there). The whole group gathered and we had a lovely breakfast with scrambled eggs (by my father) and bacon and pancakes (by my mother) and Belgian waffles (by my sister-in-law) and cameras (by my mother and sisters). We didn't eat the cameras.

The night before, while Sophia and I had driven over in separate cars, we'd driven back in mine and left hers there. So this morning she'd packed my car, and then we transferred her luggage to her car when we got there, and she left from my parents' house for her home after breakfast was finished.

This meant that I went home alone, like a normal Saturday, and was able to tell Apricot when I got in the door that "I'm home, it's just me!" He'd already figured out something was up because all her stuff was gone from the pink room, and he met me in the kitchen with great glee.

Well, I miss having Sophia around, even if Apricot really really doesn't. He made quite a big deal out of not-missing her. He was thrilled to have me to himself, and made a point of following me around and wanting petted frequently. On my part, I was so happy this visit hadn't made him regress to the traumatized anxious shelter kitty that I was perfectly willing to pet him. Frequently.

When I left for my normal Saturday night friends gathering, Apricot actually tried to physically block me from going into the kitchen to put my shoes on when I told him I had to leave again. Since he's only eleven pounds, he's not very effective at blocking me. Not physically anyway, but I sure hated to leave him!

Today he has been very clingy still, but he's getting back to normal. He is taking his early afternoon nap in his typical spot (the green stair cat tree) while I mess with computers and laundry and stuff in the living room (and back and forth for the laundry between the kitchen where the laundry closet is to the bedroom where the clothes live).

Saturday he even tried out his new kitchen
outpost while I folded laundry. The green
poofy thing next to him is an identical
barstool for him (or another cat) to sit on.

The Visitor: Day One

I woke up this morning to a typical Apricot greeting. He comes up on the bed, gets petted, and then leaves again. One of these days I might persuade him to settle down for a few minutes!

Then when I get up I call "Apricot, I'm awake officially." (I started adding the "officially" because, well, he could see perfectly well that I was awake while I was lying in bed.) This morning I called softly because Sophia wanted to sleep in. Or not get up at 5:30 anyway ... is that really sleeping in?

My little orange kitty seemed almost normal except that he didn't eat much. I have concluded from previous behavior (the pattern of when he throws up food) that he has a nervous stomach and it's best not to encourage him to eat when he's got a nervous or scary day ahead of him. So I didn't worry about the not eating. He's at a healthy weight and it won't hurt him to eat lightly for a few days.

I headed out for my walk and he was still behaving normally when I got back. But when I went down the hall toward the bedroom, Sophia's door was open more than a crack, even though it was dark. He got very skittish at that point, and although he followed me into the bedroom, he also soon left. This is actually fairly normal too. Apparently my changing clothes from walking clothes to working clothes is not interesting enough to hang around for!

Sure enough, Sophia was up (she'd been in the bathroom we'd walked by but the door was shut so Apricot hadn't reacted) and so by the time I left for work shortly after, Apricot was back in his cubbyhole in the living room, observing from a safe distance.

Sophia told me that when she'd gotten up for a middle-of-the-night bathroom stop, Apricot had actually come and sniffed her foot while she was "occupied." I told her Apricot likes to come around while you're "occupied" in the bathroom because he knows that humans can't get up rapidly from that position. I was still surprised Apricot got that close to her!

Today I had a very rough, long day at work. Typical, when I'd specifically said I wanted to leave early toward the end of the week in order to spend time with my family. But it's not like they forced me to stay; the workload exploded and forced me to stay because I'm perhaps a tad too conscientious.

Sophia reports that while she was in the house (she was in and out visiting parents and the other sister during the day) Apricot stayed in his cubbyhole, but there was evidence that he was getting up and moving around when she wasn't in the house.

When I came home, Sophia was just leaving again to spend a couple hours before supper with our parents. This was quite welcome because of the aforesaid long day at work--I needed some time with just Apricot to decompress.

And I was so very happy that within about five minutes of me talking to and coaxing Apricot, he came down from his cubbyhole and cuddled with me. Since he's not a lap cat, his version of cuddling is different from any cat I've ever had. I sit on the floor with my legs in a wanna-be split (like nowhere near a split, but you get the idea) and he cuddles up against my stomach. Depending on his day, some days he cuddles closer than others.

Today he seemed to be trying to merge with me. He was pressed up against me and purring like a motor without a muffler. I needed the cuddles just as much as he did so we sat there and comforted each other for probably fifteen minutes. Finally Apricot decided it was safe enough to go do things (like drink from his fountain) while I kept watch.

I kept a very sorry watch considering I just keeled over slowly from a seated position to a lying down one and almost took a nap on the carpet. But this was okay too, as Apricot likes when I'm completely down on the floor. I'm "smaller" that way and less scary.

And I was deliberately doing a lot of the "I'm not a scary person" things that I'd almost stopped doing. Apricot needed reassurance, so I was supplying it.

We even got to play with Da Bird for a while. It was not very enthusiastic, and consisted mostly of Apricot lying in his star tunnel and playing very gently with the feathers when they came within reach. He made the occasional dart and pounce, but those were few and far between.

Then Sophia came back for supper, and Apricot lodged himself in the cubby hole again.

I actually consider this to be wonderful progress. He's not hiding completely, and he's somewhere he can watch. I think it's a good thing when he's not too scared to be an observer, at least.

After supper we (the human we) hung out in the tv room on the sofa, since the living room doesn't have a multiple person seating arrangement. Yet.

And when we emerged to go our separate ways to bed, I found Apricot had moved into the stair cat tree cup on the other side and was looking out the window. He stayed there even when Sophia came through to get a water glass from the kitchen.

Back on Oct the 11th in the stair cat tree's cup

Even more progress!

Now that she has gone to bed, or given enough evidence of staying in the pink room to satisfy him, he's come down from that cat tree and is roaming around the living room; looking out the patio door, coming over to me for pets, wandering away into the kitchen to look out the window there (judging by the length of time before he comes back and the thump when he hits the floor jumping down from the cat tree), coming over for more pets, getting a fountain drink of water, scratching his scratching posts, and coming over for more pets. You get the picture.

I even got a goodnight kiss last night and I have every hope of getting one tonight. From Apricot, not Sophia.

The Visitor: Arrival

My sister has come to visit. Actually, both sisters have come, but only one is staying with me: Sophia.

I have been very apprehensive about Apricot's response to my having another human in the house. I did my best to prepare Sophia to behave like a cat-human so as to minimize the trauma, but I had no idea how he would respond.

When she came to the door, I went to it, acting very excited in a low-key way. Do you know how hard it is to act excited without getting bouncy? But anyway, I wanted him to know that I, at least, thought this was a good thing. I'd been telling him she was coming for weeks now, in the hopes that that would help as well.

He stood in the kitchen and watched her through the window of the kitchen door. She told me after that she was doing slow-blink cat kisses at him through the door, which may account for why he only retreated to the living room / kitchen doorway when I opened the door and let her in.

He never turned and ran, just slowly backed away, stopping periodically to watch her as she slowly came farther into the house. We stayed in the kitchen, though, until he had completely retreated. I wanted to have him not watch the luggage arrival; strange human is bad enough, strange human with lots of new stuff is even worse.

Well, I do happen to like my sister quite a bit (both of them, but we're only talking about the one who is staying with me right now). So we chatted and I helped her bring her stuff in and we got her ensconced in the pink room. And the sorts of things you do after a long drive--more water, etc. Then I wanted to show her my new (to her) sofa in the tv room.

Since at the moment it is the only multi-person seating place in the house, we ended up sitting on it and chatting. She has a new iPad (a birthday present from this year) and was showing me that, which is really cool since I want an iPad but I can't afford one and the kittens I'm getting so I'm not getting an iPad. It was fun looking at one, though. Noticing the differences in the iOS from my iPhone and so on and so forth.

What neither of us realized was that Apricot had not retreated to the bedroom under the headboard as I had assumed. I didn't realize until I went to check on him and didn't find him there that he was under the sofa. We'd been sitting on him and talking this entire time!

I don't know if this was a good thing or not. Since we didn't know he was there we weren't self-conscious about talking so he heard freely flowing and easy conversation between us (indicating that I'm okay with this new person). But he was right in the middle (literally) of the new human and me, so that had to be scary.

Suppertime came and we went to the kitchen to have that. We made an apple crisp with two honeycrisp apples. I know they aren't technically baking apples--you have to increase the cooking time of any recipe you use them in, and if your other ingredients don't appreciate the longer cooking time the recipe won't work. But for recipes where it does work, they make such delicious desserts!

Apricot didn't budge from under the couch during supper. I know because I checked on him before and after. But if I wedged myself under the reclined chair I could reach my arm in the very narrow space available and pet him. And since my arm is fairly well wedged in that position, he has to be willing to be petted. If he moves even an inch farther away, I can't reach him.

I found it encouraging that he was not only willing to be petted, but he rearranged so that I could reach the bits he wanted petted the most.

After supper (and the check-in on Apricot) my sister and I went for a short walk, just ten minutes or so. I told Apricot we were leaving for a little bit and we'd be back soon. When we got back (from a very nice walk except for a high-pitched yappy dog on a leash that we were able to avoid fairly quickly) I announced that we were back, both of us. This is different than my normal announcement of "Apricot, I'm home!" (or I'm back!) I wanted to make sure that he didn't come bounding to meet me like normal and then be horrified when there were two humans and one of them he didn't know.

So he didn't show up, which I was grateful for. We made our way through the house. Sophia wanted to call our parents and see what the schedule for tomorrow was. She did that in the pink room (which is the guest bedroom when there is a guest, which is her. I never have anybody else stay with me). While she did that, I went to check up on Apricot again.

He wasn't under the sofa. Odd. Guess he moved to safer pastures under the headboard. I walked into the bedroom and looked ... he wasn't there either. I double checked the sofa. No Apricot. Checked the bedroom again. No Apricot.

I've lost a cat! Where could he be? Those are the only two good hiding spots in the house. I started going through the house looking for him in other places.

Remember back at the very beginning when he first emerged from the bedroom? His new favorite spot was the cubby in the cat tree in the living room by the window. Yup, that's where I found him. We had walked right past him and never even saw him. But he got to watch us.

The photo is from back in June,
but he was in this cubby today, too.

Well, Sophia and I talked till bedtime in the pink room. And then I made the decision to stay out in the living room doing things (like writing this blog) while she made bedtime chores and went to bed. This turned out to be a brilliant decision. (I'll regret the hour of sleep lost tomorrow morning, but I'll deal with that.)

It's brilliant because after Sophia stopped moving around and went to bed (and I do mean right after she stopped moving around--because he had an abortive attempt at this thinking she was done and she wasn't yet) he came down out of the cubby and came over to me. He is acting just like his normal self, walking through the living room, expanding into the other parts of the house on a whim and then coming back. He jumps up on the bookshelf (the top shelf is empty and at window height) by my chair and wants kisses. (Real ones, not long-distance ones.)

I'm so relieved. I was afraid that he'd be terrified back into a ball of fluff that took ages to lure out of his shell and it would be that much harder this time around. But as soon as she was "gone" (and he knows she's still in the house) he went back to normal.

Of course, now I have to go to bed too. I wonder how he'll be in the morning. I hope he takes the opportunity tonight to sneak into her room and investigate her stuff (which will have her scent and make him more familiar with her). I think he did that with me when he first came. He'd come out at night when I was asleep and explore the bedroom. That was, of course, before he declared he'd rather have free run of the house and I had to get a light-blocking curtain for my door so I could leave it open.

We shall see. I'm really impressed with the way he's handled this whole thing so far. He's been a very brave kitty, for an Apricot kitty anyway.

News for Apricot and I

October 9, 2014

I got some very welcome news.

Hey, Apricot! Guess what?

Your baby brothers have been born!

Okay, well, actually Apricot just rolled his eyes at me the way he usually does now when I'm trying to explain something that's going to happen in the future. 

He actually seems to be missing his shelter cat buddies. Since those cats weren't the same cats from week to week (as some got adopted and others took their place) it's not a particular cat he misses. Just other cats around in general. If what I (and my vet) believe is true, he spent most of his life (10 months) in the cat room at the shelter, and only 4-6 months outside by himself. And some of that he was a baby and probably doesn't remember much, plus, another cat (mom) would have been there at least long enough so he could survive away from her.

I'm hoping he will welcome the two little kittens that were born (starting at) 7 am October 9, last Thursday morning.

Cinder is the mom's name. She takes very good care of her kittens but occasionally needs some help from her human because, well, apparently between Cinder's personality and her hormones, she believes her kittens are the be-all and end-all of the universe, and actually eating and drinking for herself comes a far distant second. So human mom is having to coax her into eating and drinking, and also occasionally offering the kittens supplemental food in case Cinder's reluctance to take care of herself is leading to not quite enough milk at the moment.

Cinder is the gray one parked on my lap.
This is from my visit back in June

There's another person ahead of me in picking order who wants a single boy. Cinder obligingly had four boys. One of the boys is being kept for the breeding program. So whenever these other people pick, I will get the remaining two boys. So I don't know which of the three my two are yet!

I am having to apply liberal amounts of patience and I am rapidly running out. Not that I can do anything if I run out of patience other than drive my friends and family crazy by fussing about it!

Oh. Where you all waiting for pictures of the kittens? 

They are mostly just furry wiggles right now, not very kitten like! These pictures are all from Saturday, when they are just two days old. She sent me a newborn headshot of each kitten but I wanted "fluffy" pictures. She protested they aren't fluffy yet. I clarified that I mostly just meant dry.

Black and white kitten

This is one of the kittens I could be getting. Notice he is sleeping on Cinder's paw. Now I know she's a Maine Coon, but she isn't actually an overly large cat. She's what you'd think of as more normal size. Probably twelve pounds more or less (and that's a guess based on my memory of her size compared to Apricot). And that's her paw and leg underneath that tiny, tiny kitten. He's 4.5 oz, Mrs. McFadden said.

Brown tabby with white, left side of the face

The other two kittens are brown tabbies with white. Oddly enough, you've seen one, you've seen both of them as long as you have a mirror. The other one looks like the mirror image of this one. They're chiral!

For those of you who don't already know or for whom I haven't explained this before, chirality is the chemical property of being a mirror image of each other. Molecules can be chiral. DNA is chiral. It has a mirror image that twists the other way. We're all made of DNA with left-hand twist but the right-hand twist does exist in rare examples (not humans, other really weird life on our planet). 

Since I am a chemist, I find it quite funny that two of the three kittens I could end up with are chiral kitties! Well, their faces are, anyway. I don't think the rest of their markings are chiral too, pity that.

Look at his toesies! They're translucent!

That's the black and white one again. He has a bellybutton too, a black mark on his white tummy.

And look at that tiny little tail!

It's hard to believe these tiny, tiny beings grow up to be massive cats like this one:

That's Tank. He's Cinder's daddy.

Of course I have not yet decided on names for them. I had names all picked out, and then decided I didn't want to use those names after all. I think I will bow to destiny and pick food names on purpose this time. My best cats have all been food names: Pizza, Pippin, Apricot. Even though I specifically chose Pippin's name because (I thought) it wasn't a food name. Yeah, then I found out within six months of naming him that there is such a thing as a pippin apple.

I can't wait for more pictures. The internet says two weeks till eyes open. I suppose they just look like bigger furry wiggles until then ... 

I will know which of the three kittens are mine at six weeks. More patience must be applied ...

A New Way to Play

All by himself, Apricot has invented a new way to combine the Bird wand toy play with what has become his favorite toy, the star and moon tunnel. It's funny because I never realized the tunnel itself would be a toy; I thought it was a place to play in.

Ooh, lookit the birdy!

He introduced me to the concept of using the tunnel during Bird play by dashing through it after the Bird. I'll admit I was trying to coax him into this by convincing him that the Bird couldn't see through the tunnel even though he could.

But suddenly he was diving through it even though the Bird was off somewhere else taunting him. It was like the beginning of the run after the Bird had to be through the tunnel sometimes.

For a few days he didn't feel so good, just tired. And during this time he didn't want to play anywhere but the tunnel. He'd simply go back to it if I made the Bird "fly" somewhere else. So, okay, we'll play around the tunnel.  

The tunnel is next to my computer desk, and I made the mistake of trying to incorporate the desk into the allowable "tunnel only" play. Oh, it worked a treat; he loved being able to peer under the cabinet (you can see in the picture above how it's slightly above ground level due to being on wheels). But the mistake was when I jumped the Bird onto my chair and inadvertently taught him to grab it off the chair.

This means now when I sit there to work on the computer, I occasionally get bopped in the butt by a kitty paw or two as he tries to grab me off the chair like he grabs the Bird. He doesn't use his claws so I mostly just roll my eyes at him and say in a softly exasperated tone, "Now Apricot, don't do that."

Alla Alla Upside Down Kitty!

The culmination of all his tunnel antics came when he would get in the tunnel, roll over (using the tunnel's ability to roll, not his!) and try to grab the Bird as I would drag it over the outside edges. He'll grab the edge of the tunnel and compress it down toward him (the whole thing is on a spring enabling you to collapse it down and store it in a much smaller space). 

He'll even use his paws to snag the fleece edge (the white part inside) where it meets the star fabric on the outside, and pull the star fabric in to the inside. The point is that the Bird feathers are resting near the edge, and by rolling the edge toward him like this, he can flip the feathers down on top of him. Whereupon he grabs them between both paws and ecstatically chews on the feathers.

He seems to play in cycles. Sometimes the hallway is the favorite place; sometimes the living room crepe tree is, and lately it's the tunnel. And I think he looks so absolutely adorable on his back inside the tunnel, grabbing at the shadow of the feathers!

An Errant Toy

Saturday morning (the 4th of Oct) I was in the process of cleaning the house and washing clothes.

There, in the fountain for Apricot to drink out of, was bobbing one of his toys. It was one of the little fuzzy stuffed balls that have a string attached so you can hang it from the underside of the cat trees.

I believe this was the one I'd hung on the underside of the living room cat tree by the window, as a good swat to it would have sent it in the correct direction to land in the fountain. I don't think Apricot did it on purpose. He's never tried to wash his toys before (unlike some cats!).

So I fished the toy out of the fountain and squeezed the water out of it over the sink, and then sent it through the dryer with the rest of my clothes. It came out none the worse for wear. Although the entire incident reminded me of my mom washing my stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh multiple times (I dragged it everywhere with me when I was a toddler, getting it dirty a lot) and it getting all stiff in the stuffing. I hope Apricot doesn't toss his toy in the drink too many times or it might get the same way!

Allo-grooming

You know how I think that Apricot thinks I'm a cat? All the evidence seems to point that way except for one: he'd never tried to groom me. Cats groom each other as a sign of friendship. It's called allo-grooming and there's a word for self-grooming (that isn't it) that I forget.

Well, turns out, Apricot hadn't been grooming me because he couldn't reach my hair. Apparently he's picky about hair versus skin?

Last week, around Tuesday or so, he comes into the tv room while I'm watching a show, and asks to be up. But somehow this was a different ask. I'm not even sure what is different about it (he's done it since at least twice) but I can tell he wants to be UP up, not just up on the seat of the sofa.

So I patted the back of the sofa and glanced from it to him and back again as encouragingly as I could. I mean, I specifically got a sofa with a thick back so cats could rest on it.

He jumped up to the seat and then up to the back of the sofa. And then he came over to the section where I was sitting with my back against the sofa and proceeds to try to straighten out my hair so all the pieces go the same direction and lie straight. Except I had my hair with the front bits tied up in back and his paws kept catching in the strands.

I had to lean forward so he couldn't reach!

He's tried to groom my hair multiple times. It must puzzle him that I won't let him get it all lined up properly. He prefers his own hair to be all lying in the same direction in an orderly fashion, and for me to have it loose but some of it going in a different direction must be confusing.

Oh, well, he'll get used to it. Till then I just have to lean forward when he's directly behind me.