New Spaces For the Ghost

When I came home yesterday, I couldn’t find Sable. I looked all over the library, then throughout the cat-room. I was certain she had not gotten outside, and almost as certain that she had not slipped into the furnace-room. That storage-space has open ceilings, and a cat who gets in there might not be found for a while, and a feral cat may be lost for a long time. But I’m confident in my precautions, and did not believe that Sabe had evaded them. Eventually, a thought struck me and I looked under my bed. There she was.

This was quite a step forward for her, though she may not have realised it. She was in the library when I left for work in the morning, which means she had to have come upstairs while it was light out, and the other cats would not all have been asleep. She may even have been near some of them. I don’t know if the proximity or behaviour of some of her fellow felines drove her under the bed, or if she was caught upstairs when I came home and it was the closest refuge she had. But previously, she had come up from the library after I had gone to bed, and before I awoke. This was a change.

However, she was then stuck under the bed for some time, not wanting to risk coming out while I was about. Nonetheless, she may have had to relieve herself by nightfall, and about 9.30, while I was actually in the bedroom, Sable emerged from the bed, hissed at Valkyrie, who was in her way, and hastened down the stairs, though she paused when I called her name.

While I consider this to have been a positive stage in Sable’s socialisation, I don’t know that I want it to happen every day, as she went without food for the whole time that she was under the bed. I am certain she would not have eaten if food had been offered, and it would have been impractical to put some under there. But the fact that she is exploring the house, possibly interacting with the other beasts, and risked coming out from her refuge with me just feet away indicates that she has moved forward in her acceptance, as gradual as it is, of her life in the Cosy Cabin.