BerthaBlog

By now Duchess has gotten used to Devant’s presence, at least enough that she no longer needs to hide under our bed all day. She comes out when he’s around, and even crept over to have a sniff at him once. But she’s still skittish, because she’s a timid creature—it took her weeks to get used to Alpha Geek and the boys.

Devant lives with cats himself, and is rather hurt by her reticence. “I’m going to make friends with your cat,” he declared this evening, and set about trying to win Duchess over.

Unfortunately though he lives with cats, and likes them, he doesn’t appear to understand them. He doesn’t know how to relate to a timid cat in a way that reassures her. He approaches her as he would one of the cats with whom he’s familiar, animals who know him and will come willingly for petting.

Naturally this approach freaks Duchess out. She’s gotten to where she’ll come out and be with us, and even play, while Devant is around, but she feels very uncomfortable at having him advance on her. Whenever he attempts it, she flees to the basement.

He seems to have abandoned the effort for the evening. Duchess has curled up right beside me, where it’s safe.

Duchess loves to play with us.

She’ll perk up when the kids appear; she darts to the closet where we keep her cat fishing pole and tries to entice them into getting it out.

If anyone sits on the couch, she’ll come over and watch attentively to see if they pick up the laser pointer.

She’ll crouch under the coffee table and stare at our toes. One of these days she’ll work up the nerve to leap on them.

But there’s one game that she only plays with me: she pounces at me.

When I come down the hall, she’ll lurk around the corner and pounce as I enter the room, spreading her arms and looking for all the world like a little kid going “Boo!” Then she’ll dart gleefully off through the dining room.

Whenever I walk back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, she’ll charge after me. Sometimes I don’t even see her, I just hear the galloping of little feet as she tears past behind me. When I return to the living room she’ll charge after me again. If I make several trips in a short time she’ll get so excited her tail will bush out.

(That’s another of her quirks—her tail is very reactive to her emotional state. If she’s frightened, or startled, or even just really excited, that tail will bush right out.)

Sometimes she’ll chase me down the hall to the bathroom. When I come out, I’ll chase her back down the hall to the living room. Then when I sit down she’ll prrt and run over to me, as if to say, “Hey, that was fun, wasn’t it?” I’ll pet her and tell her she’s a crazy kitty.

She doesn’t play the pounce/chase game with anyone else in the house, just with me. I suspect it’s because I’m the most familiar with cats, and I act in a way that makes her feel comfortable enough to initiate a really exciting game. The rest of the family adores her, but whatever it is I’m doing, they haven’t yet learned how to do it, too.

And the thing is, I don’t even know what it is I’m doing that makes her feel she can play this game with me, so I can’t tell them how to do it, too. Alpha Geek has asked several times, “Why doesn’t she do that with anyone else?” If I knew, I’d tell him. Maybe it’s just a lot of little things that become second nature after you spend a lot of time around cats.

Or maybe it’s just the cat-magnet thing again.