The Ghost of the Library

Yesterday’s blog-entry was incomplete. I wrote it during the day, after I had cleaned up the litter-boxes, fed the cats and gone to work. During my prolonged absence, the door to the cat-room was closed, with Sable safe inside. I came home and realised that yesterday’s story needed concluding.

I found that Sable had not touched any of the food left in the cat-room for her. She had not used the litter-box. This was worrying. But an explanation was at hand. I gently pulled on the enclosed cat-bed to make sure she was inside. She was not. She was not in the cat-room at all. That morning, I had inadvertently locked her out of her room.

I had thought - in my defence, I want to say naturally thought - that even if Sable had explored during the night, she had, by the time I rose, returned to the cat-room. She clearly had not. After an anxious quarter-hour, I found her in the library downstairs, hiding behind some boxes. She had probably been there all day, except, perhaps, for a trip back to the cat-room - only to find the door closed against her.

I suspect she had been without food all day - I don’t keep any downstairs for the beasts to eat - but, I think, had used the litter-box downstairs. The previous night she had wet in the cat-room’s box; the library boxes contained only poop, probably Sabe’s. In fact, I had wondered why that morning the other cats had used the upstairs litter-boxes extensively; they usually visit the ones in the library. The answer I know now is that they were likely unnerved by the unseen but clearly felt presence of something abnormal in the library…

Sable didn’t feel comfortable coming back upstairs during the daytime. I believed that she would return once I had gone to bed. Sure enough, I woke about 12.30 this morning and, having left the cat-room door open for her, saw her on a cat-tree in that room. In the morning, the litter-box had been used and the hard-food bowl kept in the cat-room over-night (Sable has the privilege of over-night refreshment) had been emptied: she’d gone without food most of the previous day in the library, after all.

But the story isn’t over yet.

This morning, she was gone again from the cat-room. After I had seen her at 12.30, she had evidently gone exploring and, once again, been trapped downstairs when I woke. (If I had been thinking, I would have shut the cat-room door when I spied her at 12.30.) She was hiding again, though it took me longer to find her, as she had chosen a different location. This time, I placed water and food downstairs for her to enjoy during her little exile, and left the cat-room door open, in case she wanted to return.

This adventurous side to Sable took me by surprise. I thought she might explore, but not to this extent, and for her to do the same thing twice suggests that she wanted to roam a bit, to learn about her new environment, that it wasn’t an accident the first time. On the other hand, until she becomes braver, at least with her fellow felines, she will inconvenience herself by feeling she must hide much of the time.

Nonetheless, this is a step forward for my hopefully-soon-to-be-formerly-feral, and the more she learns about her new world, the more comfortable she will be in it.