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PJ the man cat
May 30, 2006 |
I realize that with all of the business surrounding the rabbits new home, finals week, house projects, and the like, I haven’t posted about PJ in a couple weeks.
He’s doing well, though introductions have been put on the back burner because of all the work being done in the house. I didn’t feel we needed to add agitated cats to the already hectic environment, so we’re waiting until things settle down a bit.
We’ve started letting him roam the house for a few hours each day, during the girls’ ‘nap time’; they sleep in my room and he gets a chance to explore his domain. He loves playing with the girls’ toys, and if it bothers them, they don’t show it; they’ll still play with them, which I’m assuming is a good sign. There are occasional hisses and growls exchanged under the door, but I don’t blame them for that.
Around the humans PJ is, to put it plainly, a socially awkward cat. He doesn’t seem to know what the appropriate response is in a given situation, and it has caused some tense misunderstandings. PJ doesn’t understand that he can’t attack our hands in play, and when we cry out, he looks slightly confused. He also has a hard time grasping that he does not own everything in this house, and last week he hissed at Hannah when she attempted to remove a key chain that he had been chewing on. He isn’t punished for this, of course, it’s a perfectly natural reaction. But it’s also inappropriate, so lately we’ve been working on “Remove, Redirect, Reward” and we’re seeing good results.
In many ways we’re still in the “Getting to know you…” phase. Having lived with his sisters since birth, their vocalizations and body language are easily understood, but PJ has a whole different set of mannerisms that we’ve had to learn. For instance, he doesn’t like a lot of physical contact. The girls allow a good deal of manhandling (gently, of course), but PJ gets really peeved if you don’t give him his space. So that’s a learning curve for us.
Other than that, he’s doing great. Perfectly healthy in every way, says the vet. He’s really taken to the raw food diet and his coat looks great. And if there’s one thing he does share with his sisters (besides amazingly good looks), it’s his vocabulary. That boy is talkative with a capital T. You’d think their father was a Siamese or something…
