The First 24 Hours

        She's home!

       The past 24 hours have been interesting, to say the least. I picked Kaida (yes, I'm still using her original name for now) up at around 4pm yesterday. She cried a little bit on the ride home, but all in all she was very, very brave. 

          We were warned by pretty much every source imaginable that she would be frightened once we got her home, and that she might hide for hours or days. That didn't end up happening. She was out of the carrier within 2 minutes, and within 10 minutes was alternating between my and my mother's laps. 

           Kaida is, by all accounts, a lap kitten. All I have to do is sit on the floor cross-legged, and she settles herself right in the opening between my legs.

        So far she's doing almost everything right. She hasn't made one scratching mistake; in fact she was on the Petstages scratcher within a few minutes.

          She hasn't shown much interest in the toys yet, though. The only way I can get her playing is to tap or shake the toys over her. As soon as I drop them, she quickly looses interest in them. I'm wondering if that will change once she begins to be left alone. She hasn't had more than 90 minutes completely to herself since arriving home.

        The only problem we've had so far has been at night. I got almost no sleep last night because of the constant crying and meowing. I know she's a Siamese, and they are incredibly vocal. I also know that she was probably experiencing separation anxiety, and because of this I was very conflicted about how I should react to her cries. I read that I shouldn't give in to her pleads that I get up and interact with her, that doing so would only reinforce the behavior and encourage her to meow loudly to get what she wants. But at the same time, she was a crying baby spending her first night away from her mom. I gave in a couple of times early in the night, but eventually I drew the comforter over my head in an attempt to ignore her.

      Her cries didn't die down once I got up in the morning, and we soon became aware of a new problem. She hadn't used the litter box yet. Now, she hadn't missed the box either, and we had clearly seen her both eating and drinking water the evening before. As it turned out, all we had to do was turn off the very old air conditioner running in the window above the box. Once we put her in the box after the air conditioner was off, she used it without a problem. She's used the box twice now, but both times she meowed constantly and waited until I set her in the box. I really won't be convinced of her litter box habits until I see her walk to the box and use it on her own. 

     Here's hoping for a better night's sleep tonight!