Birdie Update #3

Birdie is awesome.  She is always making progress, little by little, to acclimate fully into our house and to Darwin.  I think Bonkers is a lost cause.  If you’re not familiar with Birdie’s story, you can read more about her HERE, HERE, or HERE.  Last month I came out of the bedroom and found her on the floor in the upstairs hall, with Darwin watching from about 5 feet away.  He’s always letting her know he’s not a threat by rolling onto his side:

               

In the last picture her eyes are half closed, letting him know she’s not feeling threatened.

For the most part, she remains in her alcove, where she is Queen B:

        

And Bonkers doesn’t chase her anymore.  He still howls and meows at her when she’s up in the alcove, but she has learned he’s not a threat, so she ignores him.  2 weeks ago they were both on the stairs and I don’t honestly think Bonkers knew she was up there – but she sure knew he was at the bottom, and she didn’t run – HUGE improvement!  She just watched him:

       

Lately Darwin and Birdie have been “hanging out” more.  I say that in quotes because she still hisses to remind him who’s boss, but they spend a lot more time near each other than ever before:

        

The other night Birdie was snuggled up in her new black fleece igloo and Darwin decided he wanted a closer look:

       

He got a little too close and after a loud hiss from Birdie, he backed off.  Birdie came out to chase him off, but he showed her his belly, and they both relaxed:

        

Today I was home from work waiting for a contractor who ended up canceling at 10:30.  Helpful.  However, I had a lot of last minute holiday errands to do, so it worked out really well.  My biggest accomplishment was packaging up all the stuff I needed to mail, and getting it mailed in plenty of time for Christmas.  Phew!  I had a 90 minute conference call for work I had to participate in, so I got set up on the couch with my cell on speaker.  Birdie saw me down there and started pacing back and forth in the alcove, making adorable “mew!  mew!” sounds.  I motioned for her to come join me and she came down the platforms near the window and jumped to the couch.  Then immediately jumped back up and ran back to the alcove.  She did that about 5 times before feeling brave enough to stay down with me!

        

After checking out the coffee table, she headed up into the cat tree:

       

That was when Darwin realized she was down from the alcove:

But all he did was stare for 10 seconds, then leave her alone.  Sweet!

Bonkers was asleep under the dining room table the whole time:

        

After a good claw scratch, Birdie left the cat tree for a little more exploring:

        

       

She finally headed into the hallway where she had a confrontation with Darwin:

       

But after Birdie hissed, Darwin immediately veered away and rolled over:

       

She jumped back up onto her platforms but instead of heading up into the alcove she rounded the corner onto the living room platform above the wine rack, something she never usually does.  She proceeded to have a complete love affair with a bag of fleece dog toys:

        

Meanwhile, Darwin:

Birdie ended up taking a 2 hour nap [!] on the platform, and ended up using the pink dog toy as a pillow:

       

Birdie is an awesome cat, and every day she makes progress integrating herself into our household.  We love her!

I’ll end this post with an adorable picture of Nibbler and Clarabell eating tuna flakes: