I made a mistake Friday night with the foster kittens. I thought it would be a good idea to just open the door to their room and leave it open. I sat in there for a while and petted Delmar, but Lem, Marion and Claudette sat atop the cat tree and nervously eyed the open door. After a while, I decided to just leave them alone, hope they’d decide to explore on their own, and get comfortable being out of the room.
Then I got distracted cleaning the kitchen, going out to give the pigs their nightly snack, and locking the chicken coops. By the time I got back inside and Snackin’! Time! for our cats was over, it had been about 45 minutes since I left the kitten door open. Lem and Claudette were still on the cat tree, but Delmar and Marion were nowhere to be found. We searched the upstairs, but they weren’t up there. We searched the downstairs and didn’t find them. We searched the downstairs again, and Fred found Marion behind the bathroom door, and thus ensued a chase where we pursued Marion through the house. She ended up behind the washer, but we flushed her out with a blast of canned air to scare her out, and Fred finally caught her and carried her upstairs.
We looked all over the place and couldn’t find Delmar anywhere. After three or four circuits of the downstairs, looking in every nook and cranny, I finally discovered him hiding behind the water heater in the hall closet. I lured him out with a toy, and he let me carry him back upstairs to familiar territory.
I tried to lure them out of the room several times on Saturday, but none of them were going for it, so I spent as much time in the kitten room as I could, petting them and telling them how sweet they are. Most of them forgave me, but Marion seems to be holding a grudge.
They got their first vaccination shots Saturday evening, and were kind of knocked out from that Saturday evening and most of Sunday. I decided to pull back on trying to throw them into new and scary situations, so instead of just leaving their door open on Sunday, I left the door open but put a couple of baby gates in the doorway in hopes that being able to see the hall and see the traffic (ie, the big cats and us) would eventually make them curious.
So far it’s not working, but y’know. It takes time!
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Previously
2007: Tommy and Boog Determine Just Who the Boss Is ‘Round These Parts
2006: Maddy’s new Mommy and Daddy came a-visitin’ yesterday.
2005: I was wondering why Tom Cullen was snooping around in the stamp drawer…