Little Bit toasting this morning in her scratch box. She thinks that she could manage to live in a house with a furnace.
Cats last night. From top left, Mystery, Atticus, Pharaoh, and Solo. The attitude difference visible between Mystery, fluffy in body and soul, and Solo, in the seat of honor, note, amuses me.
Trying to get out and work a horse this morning but got distracted by these ladies and the neighbors cat.
Little Bit and Mystery. You can see here that she is a little bit. Mystery is an average-sized cat.
Psalm, helping me with my yarn.
Lunchtime project. I don’t have a bottom door sill so had to manufacture one. I will not trust this thing except when I’m right here, but it does seem sturdy, and several good reviews saying it does hold. It’s an interesting construction, very, very tight mesh, not metal but something tough, and it almost comes across as solid. Nobody has tried to climb it yet. I figure we’ll stick with this system for a month, unless it starts showing wear, then try to test integration in March.
No spotting of the extra black cat this morning. Maybe he was a traveler just looking for a motel.
Little Bit. She is definitely settling. Not clear up to the screen yet, though the rest of the pride is definitely at the screen on the other side. She has learned to play and enjoys limited petting. You have to watch her on the petting; she has a decided limit, and she will strike like lightning when she hits it. Not a snugly sort, I think, even when she eventually gets totally socialized.
But what a change from her former cold, wet life.
Fun in the Wild, Wild Woods. Here’s Rascal at Pedestal Rock.
Selfie with Rascal. She is on the top branch shown in the next picture. I was just trying here to make sure that I could do the step up (from a rock) into this tree and feel stable doing it.
14 takes to get this shot. I have had my stair stepper (tree stepper?) workout for the day. I was being careful. I threw away 3 takes where the step felt wrong, and I didn’t hurry, plenty of shots mid turn. I never would have tried this before the tree finished falling off its stump in the last week. It is now on the ground just out of shot, will not shift further, and is rock solid.
But I’ve wanted this shot for months. Thanks to Cotton and Rascal, even though they ruined a few takes, too.
Little Bit is definitely not a socialite but is getting more used to the others being there and doesn’t bother to hiss most of the time.
I must say, I am impressed with this cat screen. The other cats not so much. Little Bit is indeed a loner (her reputation her entire decade-plus on the fringes of her former property), but it’s a big house. I’m hoping to expand her range in a few weeks, and her solitary spots available would expand at the same time.
Nostalgia trip. Your bookshelf looks like my father’s. 
Britannica 3 beneath The Interpreter’s Bible?
What is Atticus wearing?
Good eye. This is the old reference sets bookcase. Interpreter’s Bible, Treasury of David, Britannica, and Annals of America.
I think it’s just screen effect on Atticus, though Pharaoh is right behind him (yellow eyes in midair).
Matutinal Feline Adventures:
As usual this morning, I gave the household cats a bite and then went on to the guest room to give Little Bit a bite. She only gets a small sliver of Fancy Feast, but she likes it, and it is helping us bond. I unzipped the screen, stepped through, and closed the solid door behind me so that the other cats, who eat faster, wouldn’t have to come up and see her eating Fancy Feast inside. Of course, they know that she’s getting some, too, but no point in having it right in front of their eyes.
Little Bit was, as usual, ready and waiting for breakfast. She scarfed it down while I read a bit (that room is the library annex and contains several hundred books; being stuck in there for a few minutes is no hardship). Once she had finished, I stroked her a few times and then headed for the door. I opened the door, and sure enough, here was a pride full of eyes on the other side of the screen. I unzipped the screen and stepped through. Atticus was on top of the books on the short bookcase in the hall just outside of that door, and Pharaoh was behind him. I said, as I went through, “No, Atticus.” He stretched out his nose a bit to sniff as usual with no barrier in between, but he knows the word “no,” as do all of them. He sat there on the books and looked in but did nothing.
However, there are definitely stronger characters in the house than Atticus. As I turned around after exiting and started to zip up the screen door, which takes several seconds, Pharaoh, on the books in the hall farther back, suddenly jumped OVER Atticus, through the open screen door, and landed in the guest room.
Little Bit jumped onto the bed. Pharaoh, now in the floor, was looking around, just inspecting new additions (litter box, food station) to a room he, of course, was quite familiar with anyway. He did not approach Little Bit. I was back through that open screen in a flash and said sharply, “Pharaoh, OUT!” That is another word that they know quite well.
Pharaoh obeyed or at least tried to. He returned to the door, but here, he met the obstacle of that screen, which confused him. It wasn’t unzipped clear to the bottom just then, leaving about a foot and a half barrier there that he would have to jump, but he isn’t used to jumping to leave that room, and the difference threw him for a second. I picked him up and tossed him lightly through the opening back into the hall. I then apologized to Little Bit, stepped back through myself, and zipped up the screen barrier all the way.
Unplanned experiment, but thinking about it, that really could have gone worse. Little Bit jumped on the bed, but she did not vanish under it, and she also, in all of that, did not hiss. I think we’re making progress. The screen will come down eventually, but it will do so because I wanted to, not because Pharaoh jumped clear over Atticus and through the opening.
I also, reviewing that whole episode, had to be amused at Pharaoh. He is quite intelligent, more so than Atticus, and also has a neat sense of humor. He reminds me at times of Tenuto, my seal-point Siamese from years ago, who specialized at limits pushing. She was the bane of HRH Rosalind’s life, because Tenuto knew to the millimeter how far she could push Rosalind, and she loved living right at that line. Pharaoh doesn’t have the purebred Siamese extra dials on his meter that Tenuto did, but he does enjoy pushing things at times while looking at me with a smile in his eyes, just seeing how far he can get before I react. He’s nine years old now (incredible that the dumped litter is now nine years old), and he has always been that way through his life.
What I said this morning as I stepped out of the room was, “No, Atticus.” I didn’t mention Pharaoh. Of course, Atticus was the first one in line, right up against the open-just-then barrier, but knowing Pharaoh, he is quite capable of plugging that in, like a kid saying, “You told my brother not to do that, not me.” I’ll be sure to cover all bases in the future.
But meanwhile, we are making progress with introducing Little Bit to the others.
I decided, on further thought, to take Pharaoh’s assessment of the situation from the other day, so this morning, I have opened the screen.
Integration is going well so far. She has gotten hissy, which I expected, but hasn’t retreated under the bed. The others aren’t hissing at her at all. They are just curious. Hopefully, her line of tolerance will continue to move closer.
One of the first things the others did is steal her string toy.
Little Bit (left in scratch box), Psalm, and Mystery.
Mystery, Psalm, and Pharaoh with her string toy.
Well, day #1. It’s gone pretty well. Little Bit has not left “her” room. Everybody has been in to visit, some of them multiple times. She will hiss and proclaim her boundaries, but she hasn’t been hiding, and she has gone through her usual day (scratch box, snuggle, sun nap on the bed). Nobody else is hissing; the screen door did that for me, as the other seven got used to the idea of her being there. Hopefully this is going to work.
Yay! Thank you for the update.
It was a quiet night. I left the door wide open, figuring I’d rather know if problems were going to develop while I was here rather than while I’m gone Sunday, for instance. Not a peep. Little Bit was still in her room this morning; I don’t think she’s left it. But everybody was relatively peaceful.
Today was a test. I picked up a 12-hour aide shift, and with driving and extra weather margin added (though the predicted bad weather this morning ran a little after me; thank you, Lord), I was gone for a massive chunk of the day, dark to dark.
I left the guest room door open. On my return, 7 cats were in the rest of the house wearing halos, and Little Bit was in her room, though waiting near the door for me with that “you have failed in your duties” tortie expression. No fur tufts seen anywhere.
I am not sure how integrated this little cat will get. She is definitely independent. But at least I do think we will have peace on Erdenheim.
And Little Bit just came out of her room. First time that I’m aware of. She encountered a few other cats not far away, hissed and bushed up, and ran back to the guest room. I’m encouraged that she left, though. Progress. All good things take time.
Well, well, well.
I got up, fed the house cats as usual, and then headed for the library to give Little Bit her own small slice of Fancy Feast. Everything dark as I walked through the house, of course. I came around the corner into the guest room, turned on the light, and said, “Good morning, Little Bit. Are you hungry?”
She wasn’t in the snuggle. I was just walking around the bed to check the scratch box, her other favorite spot, when she came running through the guest room door BEHIND me, entering the room. She had been out elsewhere. She wasn’t at all ruffled this time and definitely was in full, “Breakfast? Breakfast? You have breakfast?” feline mode, right at my feet.
I shut the door as usual to give her privacy while she ate, because the other cats would finish their tidbit faster, and she settled into breakfast. But she definitely had been out of the guest room when I first came into it.
The other house cats sleep with me. I’m sure there is some activity going on, but whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, most of them are there most of the time, which I know because I scratch ears, going around the circle. I have very good sleeping cats right now, who aren’t usually up having mayhem in the wee small hours. But my bedroom is clear on the other end of the house (which is 76 feet long), with the whole great room in between that bedroom and the office/library/guest room complex on this end. Nighttime is an excellent unpopulated time for Little Bit to slip out of her room and begin some exploring of the house on her own, and she apparently is starting to take advantage of that. But of course, she will make a point not to miss breakfast.
A nice smile to start the day. She is settling in.
And while I was on the couch eating lunch, with several felines around, Little Bit came around the corner to the hall. First time I’ve ever seen her get that far, although of course, she might have been exploring in the dark when the rest of us are asleep. She came out a good 10 feet, eyeing Psalm, Atticus, and Solo who were with me and Mary on the back of the couch. After considering a few minutes, she turned around and went back.
I’m looking forward to getting a picture someday of her and Mary curled up. Those two are very, very similar. There are differences in markings, but you have to stop and deliberately draw the lines. At a quick look, either of them could pass for the other.
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