Sunday, December 09, 2007

Lucille's status

Last night and today have been very good for Lucille. Last night, I was able to coax her repeatedly to come from over about 6' away to being close enough to be petted. She takes a minute or two before she decides. Then she stands up, stretches, and wanders over close enough to be petted. Usually she'll jump up on my lap with just a tiny bit of coaxing.

She's a lot more inquisitive after being held. I've been introducing her to the cat tower that way. Hold her in my arms, see whether she's interested in stepping off. Usually she does and then I pet her while she's up there. She was very comfortable up there and I remained close enough to provide security. She's started jumping up on top of the boxes in my office that I still haven't around to unpacking. She then makes the 12" jump over to the cat tower from their.

Like the good folks at the shelter said, it would've been better if I could've confined her to the bathroom at first. But it's such a tiny bathroom, I wasn't sure that she'd actually be happier there. So we've gone the longer, slower road of starting with just the kitchen / office. Her food is over near the stove and the litter box is in the far corner. Since I'm usually in the office area, working at my desk, it makes the kitchen the quiet area for her.

Because of all the progress, I've gone ahead and opened up the bedroom for her to access. I carried her slowly in there last night and we had a petting session on the bed. That's the last room that I'll be allowing her to access for a few weeks. I plan on keeping the bathroom closed off unless I'm in there, and the living room at the end of the hall is where I'm carrying out unpacking from the move. So it's full of boxes and things that I'm not sure I want her to get into until I'm positive that she's got her bearings.

I'm not exactly sure where she slept last night, but when I came out at 6am, she was sleeping on my office chair. Which doesn't surprise me as that's where we had most of yesterday evening's petting sessions. But it's another step up from sleeping under the oven. Of course, when I entered the room, she got up and skittered into the kitchen and cowered under the microwave cart by her food and the oven. So I kept my movements slow and careful and she merely watched me while I prepared something to eat. As she gets less skittish, I've been able to act a bit more normal and she doesn't go running at the small sounds like the opening of cabinet doors anymore.

She's still a little jumpy at the pops that the heat radiators make, but it's no longer triggering an instant flight response. And if I happen to be holding her, she'll settle right back down to kneading, nudging and purring. As long as I can keep any disasters from occuring, such as her knocking over something that makes a huge racket or getting hurt, I'd say that she's doing pretty good (maybe 1/4 of the way). I'm not keeping the place super quiet (I've been watching TV and listening to the radio) and I've been going about things a bit more normally. Basically, as long as she's not running and hiding I'll keep going about my business.

Right now, she's sleeping under my bed. She must have felt too exposed up on top where I left her, because she only stayed there for about 15 minutes or so.

She's getting very good about coming when called. I just coaxed her out from under the bed with a small calling (less the a minute), then she hopped up on top of the bed for a little petting. Then I walked out to the kitchen and called her there. She crossed the office with tail held high, but with a wary glance towards the desk area, before coming into the kitchen where I was sitting. Picked her up, petted her, put her down at the food dish and she's chowing down.

...

Joan from the Animal Lovers League wrote back to my e-mail this morning. She gave me a little background about Lucille that I was unclear on.

I am a co-founder of the Animal Lovers and was there the day Lucille came in. A gentleman who lived far from our town claimed he had found her (carrier and all) sitting by a garage. I was the one who put my hand in the carrier to see if she was friendly. It was startling for me to see she was ear-tipped and recently spayed and I was struck by her beautiful eyes and soft, soft coat. It does happen that kittens can be taken as pets and then thrown out on the street when they are no longer tiny.

I'll need to go back to Petco on Mon/Tue and pick up another flavor of the Max Cat Gourmet Food for kittens. What I'm feeding her now, she likes, but she doesn't seem overly enthusiastic about. I generally put 1oz down and if she eats it, I put another 0.5oz down. But last night, she didn't eat the second helping and it got a bit crusty. It took until 2pm today before I could coax her into eating the 1oz that I put down this morning. I may need to wait until she's in the kitchen before putting it down. I can also switch to feeding her 3x a day with the wet food (and of course, the dry food bowl always has something in it). I'm allowed to feed her as much as she wants.

One of the reasons that I felt comfortable bringing Lucille home from the shelter was that she was comfortable enough to eat in my presence with the cage door open. So while I was standing less then a foot away, she was willing to chow down on her wet food in my presence. I've been testing her reaction the past day, she'll now simply turn and look at me when I walk into the kitchen, but if I stop and call, she'll go back to eating.

The mantra of the weekend has been "making progress, making progress..."

I haven't decided when to get the collar on her. It may be easier to get her microchipped at the vet. She's going to be restricted to the indoors, but I need some sort of identification on her if she should get out by accident.

The corn-based litter is continuing to hold up well. Personally, I much prefer the smell of corn over clay litter and Lucille seems to like it as well. We've not had a single accident yet. And I know that if I like the smell of the litter, I'm more likely to clean the box a few times a day. So the corn based litter is worth the extra cost. (In fact, I hear a kitty in the box right now, I guess she's done eating.) It does seem to be a little dusty (she has dust on her paws), but it should be okay for her to lick it off.

Labels: 2007, Lucille

posted by Wuphon's at 2:04 PM