We got a new cat, Miss Smoky. She is a rescue cat, about a year old. We picked her up on 03/27/2011.

We brought Miss Smoky home, opened the carrier and she walks out, starts to explore and walks behind the couch and then under it. It is a recliner couch so I recline it so I can see her. She seems happy, so I walk on. Not 5 minutes later Katie says what is Smoky doing, I hear scratching. Cannot find her. Look all around, they we hear sound from the couch. We end up rolling the couch over to find she has climbed up into the back of it. Roll it back over and let her be, well 2 hours later we are headed out and Katie says, she is not staying in the couch. So we roll it over and I pull the staples to remove the back, reach in and remove her from the couch. We confine her to the bath room with food, water and litter box and head out. We get back a couple hour later and Katie goes into the Bathroom and Smoky is not there. Well she is, she opened the cabinet under the sink and crawled into the very back. This is Sunday. We move her to the bedroom to force her to be with us at night and to give her more room. She goes straight under the bed to the very middle back. We leave her. She stays there till we go to bed. As soon as we are in bed and the lights are out she is out and all over the room. She eats an entire bowl of food that night. In the morning when I get up, still dark out, she is out and walking around. As soon as the sun starts to come up, down under the bed she goes, a real night owl. We refill food.

Monday when we get home from work, she is still under the bed, food not touched, litter box not touched. We turn out the lights and bang she is out and about. That night she eats an entire bowl and food, uses the litter box. As the sun comes up, under the bed she goes.

Katie will not have this, so Tuesday after work we get some cardboard and block off the underside of the bed. We get home from work and Katie looks in through the slider, she is out and on the bed, good news. Katie goes into the house and Smoky is not to be found. After some looking we find her in the bed under the covers next to a pillow. In the time to get from the garage into the master bedroom she disappeared.

She is not a runner, she is a slinker. She walks slow and careful. Once we are in the room she does not hide, but when she hears us coming she slinks into a corner or up into the bed under the covers.

On Wednesday evening we opened the bedroom door to let her explore out into the house while we were watching TV. She did not leave the bedroom. She is comfortable in there. So I sit in the hall on the floor looking into the bedroom and into the rest of the house. She walks out to see me, then back into the room. She does the a number of times, each time going a little further, look into the kitchen then back, step into the kitchen then back. She must have done that 50 times before she made it to the corner of the front room.

Very slowly she is getting out into the house.

She ate less food last night, I think she is now trusting that there will be food there all the time. She is also eating a little during the day. She was up most of the day yesterday, but she did move to sleeping in the master bath sink yesterday afternoon. She was there most of the night.

Crazy cat.

Bob & Katie

6/18/2011 Update
A friend at works runs the Poly Cat program. They maintain the feral cats on campus. They also collect, save, foster and adopt out cats. I was in her office just after we got Smoky and she had little Kaylee in her office. She was only a few weeks old and just as cute as a button. Katie and I were looking to get a second cat to keep Smoky company while we are at work. Kaylee was spoken for and that ended that. We kept our eyes open and Tabitha fell into our hands (also from the cat program). Then two weeks after we took Tabitha the adoption of Kaylee fell through and she was available. Next thing I knew we had three cats.

Bob