The first 24 hours

As I am writing this, the first 24 hours have passed fairly quietly. After her breakfast (that she has not touched yet, at 7:45 pm), I popped in once late morning to check on her. Did not go close to the crate, just said hello and did a slow eye-blink to signal things are OK. She was lying with her head outside of the Nest, which seems to be her favorite position right now.

I had some computerwork to do, so I kept the cat cam on and saw that she was sleeping, on and off, in the Nest. I only went downstairs to add some new food. Closing the Nest door freaked her out a bit, unfortunately, so I am not sure I will do that again next time. If she hides in the back of the Nest, there is really no need to put her through all of that fuzz. She does not want to attack or escape, she rather moves away from me. So the next time I will just trust the process and refresh food, water and litter without touching the Nest, that is supposed to be her safe place anyway.

I found the basement very frigid, and when I heard her sneeze once this afternoon, I decided to put Dixie’s old heating pad under the blankie that is right outside her shelter. I put some new food there as well, closer to the carrier, so maybe she will muster up the courage to eat it. She has not in the past 3 hours, but hopefully she will during the night, like she did last night.

It would be best to see her eat wet food, rather than kibble, because I don’t want her to get dehydrated. I would love to see her walk around a bit more, then again, there is not much to do for her. I did put in some toys with catnip before. You never know. I am not sure that she even knows how to play, but she has chewed on one of them, when she stepped in the basement a while ago, as part of an experiment to get her inside. At the time, she was very interested in the basement space, but never committed to truly coming in. Which is why I tried to use catnip. I had read somewhere that you can put some catnip in a small paper envelop. When they chew it, nothing will hurt them and when they leave it in nature it will automatically dissolve. She did sniff it and headbumped it at the time but now, in Basecamp, all bets are off.

We will not disturb her for the rest of the night. I think sleep is a good way to recuperate, especially because of the pregnancy. It may take her another full day to get back to herself a bit more. Good that we fattened her up in recent days, she must have some reserves. Or worms 🙂 Which I cannot tell because she has not endeared us with fresh poop yet. Maybe tonight….

Below is a 2-part timelapse of her first night with us. As you can see, it took her awhile to get active, but she did come out to eat and explore…