Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

socksofjello noted that I hadn't posted about Ellie New Cat in a while. For new readers, I adopted Ellie after my previous cat died. Ellie was feral for the first year of her life and in a foster care home with lots of other cats for her second year. I've had her for about four months now.

I replied to socksofjello that I hadn't been posting because Ellie had been making no progress at all, that she was basically still the same as the last time I posted. But the more I thought about it, the more I suspected she's still making slow, slow (think glacial) progress, but I'm just not seeing it because I'm with her all the time (and it's so slooooow).

A few times a day, she comes to me for love. "Love" being careful, slow, one-handed pattings. Brushes are scary and will cause her to run. Nine times out of ten, a second hand will cause a panic attack and a scramble away. She's come to love treats though, and has learned to take them out of my hand (woot!).

If I approach her, sometimes it will be okay, but most often she'll run off a few feet or just tense up and watch me wide-eyed, ready to flee.

Unfortunately she rarely sleeps on my bed. However, I can now walk near her without making her run off in a panic.

A couple times a day, when she seems calm, I still try to work with her, to introduce a second hand to things. Sometimes I hold her (with all of her feet still on the floor) for a couple seconds. After this I give her lots of pats (if she wants them) or treats. I still wonder if I should be doing this though; I need (not want, need) her to get used to being held and picked up. If there were a fire or some emergency, I could never grab her and take her outside at this point. However, working with her this way seems to make her backslide, so... Just not sure.

I think she must be more comfortable though, because more of her personality(?) is coming out. She's a bold little thief! Not for food, she's never tried to get into my dinner when I'm eating, but she'll attempt to carry anything and everything else away. Anything from my keys (metal! Heavy!) to a back scratcher (longer than her!). Anything on my desk is fair game, all sorts of toys and pens and papers. She steals things right in front of me, with me watching. It's darned cute to watch her try to carry these things off.

My user name, Thistle-Chaser, comes from a series of books by rathacat. Set on another planet, the dominant species is a cougar-like cat. Some of them talk, they herd animals, and live in clans. Thistle-Chaser was the daughter of a clan cat named Ratha and an "unnamed" (wild) cat. When a clan (intelligent, talking) cat breeds with a wild one, the offspring are usually wild (unintelligent). Ratha was impatient with her litter, scared they wouldn't have "light in their eyes" (be intelligent). She gave up on Thistle-Chaser too soon, attacking her and driving her off. Thistle-Chaser had just been starting to understand, to realize that language existed and was important; Ratha pushed too hard and gave up on them too soon. I feel kind of like that with Ellie. Being impatient, lashing out, would be bad bad bad. It feels like so long though, I just want to hug her and hold her on my shoulder like a baby, but I can't. Worst part is, I don't know if we'll ever get to that point. Four months feels like a long time, but maybe it's not.

Must be patient, must be slow, must be quiet. Silly Ellie, I'm not going to hurt you. Please learn that soon.

Whenever people ask me how Ellie is doing, I tell them that she improves every day. Sometimes it's a big step, sometimes it's a little step, but every day there's some sort of progress.

Today's was really interesting, and though nearly invisible, is a big step. We're finally communicating. There was a loud bang next door. We both looked towards it, then looked at each other. She then ran off to hide, but before that she looked at me and saw me. It wasn't fear in her eyes at that moment, she was checking on me and I was checking on her.

Previously when I had said things like "she looks at me with terror in her eyes", I thought I was sort of engaging in hyperbole. I knew she was afraid, but I didn't realize that that's really what I was seeing until it was gone from her eyes.

It's hard to describe it, but it's like she's finally seeing me. Me, not OH MY GOD A CAT-EATING MONSTER. It's like she's willing to look first and then decide if I'm doing something scary or not.

This is a wonderful step, I'd put it on the same level as her letting me pat her or her approaching me for the first time, perhaps even bigger than those two. I should have been more patient, I think everything's going to turn out okay with her. :)

So tired. On the best of work nights, I get five hours of sleep. It's rarely a "best of" night. Three to four hours is closer to the norm. Last night I got all of one hour of sleep.

So. Tired.

Ellie New Cat is so full of energy. Every morning from 3:30 to 4:30 AM she races around from room to room (how a galloping cat can be so loud!). Unfortunately this includes my bedroom. And my bed.

LEAP ONTO THE BED! LEAP ONTO PERSON! KILL THAT FOOT! EAT THAT BLANKET! RUN RUN RUN OFF!

I try to wear her out during the day, but it doesn't seem to help at all. I'm considering getting a second cat to keep her entertained and help her burn off energy, but then I might end up with two cats who keep me up at night... (And I'm not sure getting a second cat would be right for her.)

And on a more serious note, I've been thinking about this for a while. I wonder how long it takes for love to happen. More important: Does it always happen? I couldn't have loved my previous cat more. If she had been human and a spouse or child of mine, I couldn't have loved her more. It's impossible for a human heart to feel more love than I felt for her. Ellie New Cat? She's a nice enough cat, but I feel nothing for her. That both makes me sad and makes me feel like I'm cheating her somehow.

I think part of the issue is she's still somewhat scared of me. It's been a whole month now and if I get too close to her, she'll sometimes run off. If I reach for her with two hands, she'll sometimes run off. If I look at her wrong or the moon is waxing or who knows what, she might go running off. She is getting better, every day it seems like she's making an improvement, but it's still so... depressing. I've been nothing but kind to her, I don't even have to lift my voice to correct her (she's so sensitive), I feed her and play with her and give her treats, and yet at times she still treats me like I'm going to hurt her.

I don't mind waiting more for her to come around, I just worry she'll stop making progress and she'll never really trust me. I'm probably worrying too much, that's a specialty of mine. :P

Every day she makes another little step forward. Last night, for the first time, she decided to sleep with me. "Sleep" meaning anything but.

3:30 AM I woke to happyfeet on my legs.

3:45 AM she decided my feet were not happy and thus needed killing.

4 AM and she decided the blanket was in on it, too. She spent the next hour trying to bite and pounce every part of it.

Progress is worth the loss of an hour and a half of sleep, right? :P

I'm surprised this happened last night, as I had to traumatize her just hours before. I needed to take off her collar to try to fix it (the tag is backwards), which means I had to somehow get it back onto her. Since she likes being scratched around the neck, I had thought this would be easy, but oh no. TWO HANDS TRYING TO CATCH ME. FLAIL! RUN! I had to scruff her to get it back on her, which sent her fleeing away once I released her.

One day, little kitty, one day you will trust me.

I bought Ellie a new scratching post/bed which she seems to like a lot.

I have to be careful what I wish for! I had been sad that she doesn't approach me for pats and scratches, and now I can't type more than a couple words at a time because she keeps rubbing against my legs wanting love. :D

This isn't to say she's perfect now, far from it. If I move too fast, she'll still run from me. Sometimes she'll flee in the middle of being patted for some reason I can't identify.

She got a break from picking-up training. She seemed to be backsliding a little, drawing from my hands instead of pressing into them, so I gave her yesterday off and didn't pick her up at all. Today it's random instead of every time: Most of the time I'll just pat her, but now and then I'll pick her up in the middle of it (then put her right back down and continue patting).

Understandably, she's still really scared of my face being too close to her (EVIL CAT-EATING MONSTER EEEK). By mistake I gave her a kiss on the top of the head this morning, and she jerked violently away, eyes wide.

Little steps for little kitties!

I made a decision: If I don't watch at least one thing from Netflix most every week, I'm going to cancel it. Most things in my DVD queue are things I'd see if I have to have something sent to me, not things I want to watch. My instant queue is a little better but not by much. (I never knew I was so little of a movie person; I spend hours going though the Netflix catalog and can't find anything I want to see.)

As part of that, I did the software updates and stuff to make me able to watch movies instantly on the Wii (thus on TV). That helped a bit. (If I only watch things on the computer, it's a pain because I have to keep flipping back and forth with WoW.)

I watched the new Star Trek movie, which wasn't bad. I'm not sure if I would have liked it more if I had watched it with 100% of my attention or not. Seemed like a typical summer movie.

The other movie I watched was Frozen. I went into it expecting it to be one of those "so bad it's good" movies. It got half of that right... Cut for "spoilers", as if this movie could have such a thing. ( Three kids are trapped on a ski lift... )

And in non-movie news: I found a new (new to me) market in WoW. The money is seriously good (I made 10K in just over a day), but I decided it's too much work for me. I have more money than anyone in a game would need, so I'm just going to sell off the stuff I have now and try to resist buying more mats.

I kind of envy that blogger I was annoyed at (the one who gave away all the goldmaking secrets), it would be nice to be able to openly talk about this stuff to folks. Ah well, maybe one day when I quit.

New Kitty is settling in. It's so strange having a young cat! She runs around and explores everything and wants to play lots. She can sleep anywhere and in seeming any position! Such as almost upside-down. The pillow has her butt up in the air, all the blood must be rushing to her head!

Today's Ellie update was going to be all happy and upbeat: She's making such progress! She spent the evening with me in the living room instead of off on her own as she previously had been. She wants pats! She almost took treats directly from my hand!

But that was before the poop. Like my previous cat had done, she stands inside the box with her butt outside the opening and pooped. Unlike my previous cat, she decided ALL of the litter needed to be scooped out of the box to attempt to cover the offending poop. That failing, she attempted to cover it with the bathroom rug.

I don't have a too-small box, I bought the biggest one in the store. Why can't cats step in, turn around, then squat? What's this stepping in, squatting, then turning around and leaving?

I really, really hope this is a one-time thing. The box has a cover on it so there's only the one opening, so maybe odds will be this not happening again, but the odds didn't matter with my previous cat.

Does anyone else's cat do this? Am I flailing over something common?