A Prince of a Plumber

If you read about my pants shopping expedition, you know that I'm willing to put up with quite a lot of inconvenience to avoid doing something I hate.

It won't come as a surprise to you then that I'm willing to put up with a good deal more to avoid doing something I'm afraid of.

And when you have social anxiety, one thing that is more dreadful than anything else, socially speaking, is having a stranger in your house. I have anxiety problems having one or two friends in my house. I have anxiety problems having my parents in my house. Much less a total stranger. My house is my sanctuary; my escape from the outside world, the world that constantly proves itself to be a frightening, damaging place.

When I moved into this house, the shower diverter in the tub didn't work properly. You'd get about 10% water through the shower and the rest of it stubbornly poured out the faucet like you hadn't done anything. That was nine years ago. I used a "attach it to the faucet flexible shower head to wash pets and babies with" thing to take showers, holding it over my head the entire time. This was exhausting, by the way.

The tub faucets started slowly leaking when they were turned "off" about four or five years ago.

The flip switch to keep the water in or let the water out started being really difficult to move about three years ago.

A few weeks ago, the faucets on the sink in that bathroom also started leaking from around the base, a slow leak that was difficult to even pinpoint the source (for a while I thought it was just the water that dripped from my hand as I adjusted the temperature distribution of the water).

It was becoming apparent that I really needed to get a plumber in. Unfortunately, most plumbers, or other household type technicians, have a tendency to be larger than life kind of people who have huge personality spreads and make me feel like I'm being shoved out of the room physically just being near them. They talk too loud and move too quick and I just can't deal with it all.

After watching several posts on my neighborhood facebook type group asking for recommendations for this and that, I had an idea. A brilliant idea. I asked for a recommendation for a plumber, but also listed that I was autistic and I needed more than just someone who knew what they were doing and wouldn't overcharge me, and I described what I needed, more or less concisely. (Yes, I can be more or less concise. More than my rambling here anyway!)

I got two recommendations. I looked them both up on the web and found an old webpage with a photo of the one guy. He looked like someone I could deal with. So Friday (the same friday as the pants alteration debacle), I had him come over to diagnose the issues and tell me how much it would cost and maybe fix them then or later; I don't know how that all works, really.

I say "I had him come over" without telling you of the agony of dread and fear that it takes to call a stranger. Sometimes I'll stare at the phone for ages before pressing the "call" button and sometimes I'll just put it away without calling. Most of the time I simply "don't have time" to make the call. But obviously I managed it this time.

He was great. I felt instantly okay with him there. He reminded me of my uncles--none in particular, just that he would have fit well with the family. (I found out why during the return visit to actually fix stuff; he's from Germany like my family's background. Same way--his ancestors are from Germany).

The cats, on the other hand, saw a total stranger and hid. Colby tried to be friendly but the plumber likes cats and tried to pet him, and Colby had to flee and hide too.

When he came back the next Thursday to fix stuff, Colby again tried to be brave. While the plumber was messing about in the bathroom (which is halfway through the house), Colby was in the kitchen, looking out. What he didn't realize was that, due to the age of my bathtub, the manufacturer was unidentifiable and meant that the plumber had to get the stem out, take it to the store where he buys stuff, and match it rather than having the new pieces when he got here. So halfway through the process, he walks back through the house and out the kitchen door, scaring Colby so bad that Colby joined the other two boys under the couch for the remainder of the plumber's visit.

They actually did both come out while he was off shopping for parts; Thimble climbed in my lap to be reassured and Colby was hanging out the way cats do. He wasn't gone long enough for Apricot to emerge.

And when he came back, they were horrified and both dived for the room with the sofa. It got worse because he then spent quite a bit of time fighting with the tub faucets and the diverter. He had to replace the showerhead as well to get it to work, and of course the equipment was apparently as old as the house so there was a liberal amount of rust not lubricating everything.

But when he left, the tub faucets weren't leaking, the shower diverter worked completely, the in-and-out water lever worked much smoother (when I took a shower that night I forgot he worked on it and used my normal amount of force and startled myself about the same as you do when you shut a car door that weighs a third of what you're used to). The other plumbing problems were all fixed as well.

Even better, next time I have a plumbing problem go haywire in my house, I have someone I can get to come fix it that I'm okay with. It'd be nice if the cats were okay with him, but they do emerge eventually and go back to normal, even Apricot, so having things fixed in the house doesn't scar them for life.

In Which Another Visitor ... Visits

Thimble finds it safer to investigate her purse

While Colby wasn't okay with being petted
by Draggy (my friend) quite yet.

And of course, no Apricot to be found.

Sophia's Magical Visit

It didn't start out very magical.

My sister came to visit. On the Sunday she drove to my house from hers, I was in the guest bedroom on the bed on my back, reading my Kindle. It was getting close to 8 pm, which is kitty bedtime, and kitty playtime, and they were getting a little rambunctious.

Colby leaped up on the bed at chest height to me, leaped over me diagonally to the other side of my head, and kept going. His back foot tapped the Kindle in my hands, making my grip less than secure. Everything would have been fine except the reason Colby kept going came after him at full speed.

Thimble followed the same pattern of jump, only when his back foot hit the Kindle, he knocked it out of my hands completely and smacked it into my upper lip.

This, by the way, hurts quite a bit.

I was severely not pleased with him. They know they aren't supposed to be playing on top of me like that. I was irrationally not pleased as well, since I was mostly blaming Thimble and not Colby, even though both of them were fairly well responsible. And I was upset because I was simply upset--the week had not gone well and I was stressed. As usual. You'd think I'd handle it better or get used to it or something.

Well, I knew what I was feeling was irrational, so I managed to not yell, or do anything overtly scary, but Thimble did get "talked at" (as in, "you know you're not supposed to do that and this hurts a lot" with whines and whimpers in there too. Granted, those were deliberate to let him know I was hurt--that's how cats let each other know they went to far. They whimper about it. And meow, but I can only do human versions of meows and they don't sound right.)

Unfortunately, before I could get settled down and settle Thimble down, my sister arrived. She then stayed in the same room where the "incident" happened. And shut the door.

You are not supposed to shut doors!

Now Thimble met her as usual, being my greeter cat. It wasn't until the next day that he started acting weird. It wasn't until the second day that I figured out why. He was acting skittish around her. Wanting to be elsewhere if she was there. Really acting more like Apricot than himself.

Well, we think he was kind of viewing her as his "punishment" and was expecting the other shoe to drop, so to speak. 

While Thimble was starting to act stranger, Apricot was under the sofa any time Sophia was in the house and not behind closed doors. (He's there in the photo; see his tail? The rest of him is pretty well hidden behind Thimble's bulk.) She remarked that Apricot had done better when the kittens weren't there, as he'd stayed out in the Ops Deck of the living room cat tree and watched her, at least.

I said that it made sense, though, when you thought about it. Apricot and Thimble split up the "monitoring safety" duties between them, so as long as Thimble was around, Apricot could hide under the sofa all he wanted to, in full confidence that Thimble was on top of things.

But this time Thimble wasn't on top of things. He was very much not on top of things. And Apricot started coming out and showing up, in the distance, more and more often as Thimble got more and more skittish.

Until the evening of the day before Sophia was scheduled to go home. We (she and I) were doing stretches in the living room, and Apricot wanders out into the living room, calm as you please, and stays.

Not in the Ops Deck. Not up on any of the cat trees. Down on the floor. With us.

Sophia was doing a stretch on her back and Apricot meanders over to her and sniffs her. Both of us humans were just almost paralyzed, trying not to do anything to scare him or make this brave moment something he would regret.

From that point on, he started acting his normal self around her. We stayed in the living room some more after stretching, just talking, and Apricot came over to me several times for head bumps. Just like usual. And this is the first time anybody besides myself has seen the "real" Apricot, the way he is when he isn't scared stiff.

Magic.

Apricot's new confidence even made Thimble feel reassured, so by the time Sophia left the next day, everybody was acting normal again. Not that Colby ever stopped being his normal self. Colby, bless his heart, is a little oblivious. As long as someone is taking care of things (those things including him), he doesn't really pay attention. 

I had taken the day off on Tuesday, but Wednesday, when she left, I'd gone to work as usual. She left a few hours after that (which is why I went back to work that day). She said that Apricot had walked with her / followed her down the hall to the pink room door, whereupon he peeled off into my bedroom. She asked if this was "good riddance" or "good bye" or a combination of the two.

I don't think it was either. When Apricot walks with me down the hallway, normally I go into my bedroom. At that point, he jumps up on the bed and wants petted. Sometimes, if he's feeling a little more anxious than usual that day, he will stay in the center of the bed and I'm supposed to lean over on the bed and pet him, making my body "hide" behind my head so I'm not so big when I pet him. It reassures him.

I'm betting that if Sophia had gone into the bedroom as Apricot expected, he would have gone into the middle of the bed and wanted her to pet him for the first time. If he was experimenting with how far he could take this new acceptance, that would seem to be a logical, safe way to do a first-time pet. 

Now we are both curious, Sophia and I, to see if he will accept her from the beginning the next time she visits, or if he'll have to get used to her again.

New Human!

My sister came to visit two weeks ago. She comes to visit us about every 6 months now, and the last time she was here, the kittens were alive but still too tiny to leave their mommy, so they weren't here. Just Apricot.

Apricot spent most of that visit watching her every move from the safety and vantage point of his cubbyhole in the living room cat tree. This visit he spent most of the time she was in the house hiding under the sofa.

I was puzzled by this, but as the visit went on (she came on a Wednesday and left the next Saturday, so half a week) I came to realize that he just couldn't keep track of two rambunctious kittens and a human at the same time. (Remember, he doesn't think I count as "human.") While he loves his younger brothers, they are bigger than he is now, and they don't really give fair warning (which to Apricot would mean half an hour to think about it) before initiating a mighty battle.

In the evenings, sometimes we would go in and sit on the sofa he was hiding under in order to (hopefully) get him used to her voice, at least. This had an unintended consequence. Thimble would go underneath (how on earth he still fits I have no idea ... perhaps kittens have access to a fourth physical dimension) and pester Apricot until my sister and I would see an orange furry streak across the room as Apricot left for un-pestering hiding spaces.

Poor guy. But don't feel too sorry for him. He still managed to gain weight between that Thursday and the following Sunday. Usually when I have a visitor or two, the ones that stay for half an hour to an hour and play with the kittens, Apricot doesn't gain weight during the time period that spans their visit. The trauma of hiding from humans puts him off his food, apparently. Since he gained weight while my sister was here, he was obviously hiding mostly from habit.

The kittens responded very predictably to her visit. Thimble inspected her thoroughly when she arrived, and then at an undetectable signal from him, when he determined her to be "okay", Colby came forward and started interacting with her.

Thimble helped us make the guest bed up. (I'm a terrible hostess. I wait till my guest arrives before putting sheets on the bed. It's because three of the four sides of the bed are extremely hard to get to, and it's so much easier with two people who both have opposable thumbs.)

Sophia, my sister, said the kittens were a hoot and left her in stitches with their antics. Apparently, their attention span is hilarious. (I guess I don't notice because quite honestly, mine is shorter than theirs.) She says that they would find her absolutely fascinating ... for about half a minute, and then something else would catch their attention and off they'd go.

She also does stretches and exercises that make the human body go in ways I don't normally make my body do (or can't, in a lot of cases) and they found that absolutely fascinating as well. For about half a minute.

When she left, they were a little disappointed, I think. You see, with two humans in the house, they had someone else to be fascinated by once they got bored with the first one. So they could sort of ping-pong back and forth between us. With only one ... well, toys don't move on their own and I'm apparently very boring (given that I have very little energy once I survive the work day and come home, that's not surprising).

I wonder what they will think of her when she comes back in the fall. I wonder what she will think of them. They were bigger than Apricot in physical size but only Thimble weighs more than Apricot, and they weren't that much bigger. They're also obviously teenager type kittens with all legs and ears and a big head each.

They have plumy tails but not as much as they're going to get, I don't think. And they have some more growing to do, in height and length as well as weight.

First day here: Thimble naps next to my sister

Colby's keeping an eye on supper
The shelf is next to the table.

Sophia has a square cooler that is softsided. Thimble decided to sit on it. He does things like this.

Well, being empty, as she had put her cold stuff into my fridge, the cooler slowly subsided under his weight. Sophia was giggling as she watched Thimble slowly sink down toward the floor, riding the cooler with much determination. He finally gave up just before he collapsed it completely and got off.

The cooler, being made to be squished and rebound, slowly pushed itself back up to its square shape. Thimble watched from the floor in astonishment. So did Colby, having come over during the whole initial thing.

I am, of course, on the wrong side of the table
to get any really good photos of this.

Chuck and Dawn Come to Visit

Sunday during my morning ... rest ... in the nursery room, we suddenly heard the elephant humidifier in the bedroom go nuts. The fan went from nearly silent to sounding like it was grinding wheat into flour. Everyone was quite alarmed. My initial solution was to turn it off.

Later that morning I took the humidifier apart and figured out it was the cooling fan. That humidifier's insides are awfully complicated. There's circuit boards and everything. Anyway, the fan was a computer's fan, and my brother does computer work, so I called their house. I was a little confused because when it wasn't attached to the base, the fan didn't make noise. But when it was attached, it made the horrible grinding noise.

It's made that noise before, but turning it off and back on always made the noise go away. This time that didn't help. And while it seemed like the fan was the problem, maybe it was the attachment points? I'm not very good with diagnosing mechanical type issues. Which is why I called them.

My sister-in-law answered. She also does computer work with my brother, so she said it was likely the fan's bearing was wearing out. And that they would be in town later in the day and could drop by and look at it.

Perfect. I'd been trying to figure out a time for them to come visit Colby and Thimble anyway, but between me trying to get sick and the kittens actually managing it, I hadn't found a good time. Sunday afternoon seemed as good as any, and I'd get a solid diagnosis of my humidifier problems and what to do to fix it.

When they showed up, they had a new computer fan and the things to attach the fan in place of the old one. Okay, that was really cool. I'd rather expected to have to order one off the internet and put it together (put the humidifier together with the fan, not that the fan comes disassembled!) myself.

So my brother did that, and the humidifier now works like a charm again. It's a little higher pitched because this fan runs a little stronger than the old one, and it has taken me a while to get used to the sound, but because it's a constant white noise type of sound, it won't take long. I think it's louder but it could just be the higher pitch, as I perceive higher pitched noises as louder than the same decibel-level lower pitch.

And they played with Colby and Thimble. Apricot, of course, disappeared under the couch the minute I turned the house alarm off to let them in the door. He's figured out that if I make the alarm make those noises, it means another human is coming in, and now he won't even stay to see who's coming through the door, just disappears on general principles.

And they played some more with Colby and Thimble. My brother and his wife have so much energy is baffles me. They played with the kittens for more than an hour. The braided rug bed came into it when I mentioned that the kittens like to flip it over on themselves and then play footsie underneath it.

So my brother traps Thimble underneath and was toy-taunting him, trying to get the paws to come out. At one point Colby was reaching underneath from one side and Thimble was reaching out for a toy on the other side, and it looked like long-cat, because their paws are both white. Unfortunately I messed up with the phone and didn't get that picture.

But here are some of the braided rug bed playtime:

Thimble's paws

Thimble's paws and a nose.
Colby watches from afar.

Thimble emerges, too taunted to stay under anymore.
He wants that toy!

But he likes being under the bed, too ...

After my brother and my sister-in-law left, we all just sort of crashed. And the kittens slept like logs till bedtime!

Although they did move around--
they didn't sleep here the whole time.
Yin-yang kittens!

The Second Visitor

Last week on Saturday I had my mom visit the kittens. Apricot, of course, disappeared. This week yesterday I had my dad visit.

Apricot again disappeared and didn't come out for hours afterwards, but I'm beginning to think this is just the way he's going to be. Once he comes out, he doesn't act traumatized or the least bit affected by his experience.

And this week I planned better. I managed to get my mom punctured by an unintentional Thimble, and since Daddy's on blood thinners, I needed to make sure that wasn't going to happen to him! So he came later, after their nap time, because it is during the sleepy time that I clip kitten claws.

Well, you really think clipping kitten claws when they're all riled up and playful is a good idea? And it's a good thing I had him visit after the claw clipping, because Colby had somehow managed to get all of his except two razor sharp. They're really good with their claws when they're interacting in a lap time petting time fashion, which is why I hadn't noticed.

They're really quite good kittens. They know the rules of human skin-kitten claw interaction. They just forget when they get all excited over a toy.

My daddy and my kittens.
Colby's the one you can easily see.
Thimble is in the picture. He's just behind the tree supports.

I also had a longer wand toy for Daddy to play with the kittens with. I actually had it last week too, and just forgot I had it. You have to put those sorts of toys out of sight and out of reach so the cats don't try to play with it on their own (the toy is not designed for unsupervised play) but with me, out of sight is out of mind, and I forgot about it!

Daddy had lots of fun, judging by the chuckles the kittens elicited. I noticed my play style with the kittens mirrors his, and I think this is very odd, considering that, with his work schedule, I would have seen Mom interacting with cats way more than Daddy.

He stirs up trouble more than I do, but then again, I see the two of them pounce on each other plenty; I don't have to initiate it! Whereas this is the first time he's gotten to interact with them. So he was trying to get one kitten to pounce on the toy and accidentally pounce on the other kitten. It might have worked with less focused cats, or less polite cats, but they were both focused on the toy and they do actually take turns. 

Sometimes they play with the toy together, and sometimes one will rest while the other plays. This means the human at the other end of the toy gets no rest at all!

I told Daddy about one time a few days earlier when Thimble had flipped the braided rug cat bed over on himself, and I looked over to see the bed, and Colby just watching it. I didn't see Thimble anywhere, and I hadn't seen the initial bed flip, so I didn't actually know where he was. I lifted the edge of the bed just a smidgen to see, and I didn't have to look--a fast paw came out and tagged me and then withdrew. He didn't use his claws, because it was me and not Colby, and so I just thought it was funny, that quick soft paw touch and retreat.

So Daddy promptly starts trying to get them to flip the cat bed. He actually had to trap a kitten himself as they flipped the bed going after the strategically placed toy, but not on top of either one. Since the game wasn't cat-under-the-braided-rug-bed but kittens-after-wand-toy, Colby emerged quite quickly out from under the cat bed, leading to a laughing comment from Daddy of, "he escaped!" 

The bed has a cat tail now...

He was having so much fun with them I wished he could stay longer, but his asthma was starting to bother him, both from working outdoors earlier in the day and because, well, my poor father loves cats but is allergic to them, and while he can be around them for short times, all the time is too much.

(He wasn't supposed to let Pippin in his bedroom when I lived with my parents, but he'd fall asleep on the couch in the living room with Pippin next to him. He says long-haired cats don't bother him as much as short-haired ones do. Good thing I have three long-haired cats then!)

I think perhaps this weekend I will take the weekend off from having visitors, though. It's exhausting for me to have anybody else in my house. Really, I'm such an introvert ... having cats in my house is about as much company as I want.

The First Visitor

Yesterday ...

Apricot had been doing so well with new and scary things and noises that I thought I would start introducing new people. The kittens seem to really have given him some confidence.

I invited my mother, who is a quiet person and gives off a low-energy vibe unlike some of my friends, to come over and visit for a half hour or so. I told everyone she was coming, but when I opened the door and she came in, by the time I turned around I had only two cats. I don't think Apricot ever even came into the kitchen.

He went under the couch and hid in the tv room. Oh well.

Mom sat down on the floor at my behest (I did make sure she was okay sitting on the floor) and I gave her the toy with a wand handle to play with the kittens.

Colby had waited at the door to the kitchen/living room while Thimble sniffed her shoes and investigated her in the kitchen when she first came in. After Thimble was satisfied, Colby came in and was perfectly fine with her and didn't even need to do his own investigation. This is part of the benefit of Colby's relationship with Thimble. He does what he's told, but he can also trust Thimble to do the "heavy lifting" in any strange or new situation.

So they were perfectly fine with her, playing quite enthusiastically. Unfortunately it's been longer for my mom than it was for me to have kittens around, and as she is older her skin is thinner even than mine, and she wasn't as paranoid about the prickly ends of kitty paws as I am ...

Long story short, Thimble accidentally nicked the end of her finger. He must have got a vein end, too, because it bled. Slowly, but persistently, and didn't stop.

Well, that was the end of playtime. Mom understood Thimble hadn't meant to do it, and she wasn't mad or anything, We just had to quit so we could get the finger cleaned and bandaged. Mom even was careful enough not to drip blood on my carpet, which I thought was nice of her.

Finally we just put a bandaid on it, even though it was still leaking slowly. I called her this morning to make sure it was okay, and she said it had stopped bleeding and everything was fine. I'm planning to let my Dad come visit this Saturday, but he's on blood thinners, so I think he'll have to come later in the day (after the weekly claw clipping session!) and perhaps not get to play with them directly ... I'll let him make that call.

Back to Mom's visit: she and I sat on the settee and I ladled kittens into her lap. They were tired and sleepy now. So she got to experience the kitten sleeping mode as well as the kitten play mode. And this was all good. She left, and I told Apricot it was safe.

The kittens came in too, and Apricot slowly emerged from under the couch. But he wouldn't leave the tv room; acted scared. And stupid me, I pushed it, and picked him up and carried him out to the living room. I guess I was channeling Pippin instead of Apricot, because I know Apricot doesn't like to be carried and I know he likes to do things at his own pace.

Apricot also knows things I don't. He heard the man stop a car in front of my house, and come to the door, and then we both heard it when he pounded on the front door just as I passed it, carrying an already upset Apricot, on my way to the living room.

Needless to say, when I put Apricot on the floor, he fled to the safety of the living room couch and disappeared.

When he finally did come out, he investigated where Mom had sat on the floor very thoroughly. Colby was on my lap and Thimble was beside me on the settee, and Apricot came over and made sure Colby was all right. He didn't check on Thimble, just Colby. They had a brief nose to nose discussion (silent) and then Apricot went and rechecked the area he'd just investigated. I thought that was the end of it, but Apricot disappeared again.

The only thing I can think of is that the smell of blood in the air, which he would have been able to detect, was something that was very upsetting to him. He stayed hidden until after I left for my board gaming night. I told him goodbye, but was unable to give him a goodbye kiss (this is a tradition that he enjoys). So I told Thimble to keep an eye on him, that he was a bit scared and stressed.

I don't know how much Thimble understood or how much he did of helping Apricot feel better, but when I came home later that night, Apricot was out and about again. He did, however, indicate he'd been through a lot of stress by pressing up against me very tightly during the greeting routine of "cuddle Apricot."

Today he has been back to his normal happy self, and has even spent quite a bit of time on my lap. Just recently he curled up on my lap and went to sleep. I timed it after it became apparent he wasn't doing one of his normal drive-by lap sits. He stayed there for more than 20 minutes, the longest he's ever been on my lap at one time. Thimble was on the chair near my feet and Colby was on the settee I was sitting on, thus clearing the way for a single bigger cat to be on my lap!

Boy is he ever heavy after the little Pocket Maine Coon kittens.

So I guess we'll try again with another visitor this coming Saturday, and hope that eventually he (Apricot, not the visitor) gets used to it.

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.