Introducing lucky #13: Pikelet

When I first had the idea of doing this website, our little Pikelet had just moved in and I was thinking to record her progress as it occurred. Fast forward two months later and I’m just getting ready to launch Calico’s friends and now find myself needing to do a recap of Pikelet’s journey. Fortunately I can refer to my photos, videos and the few thousand messages to the staff and volunteers from the RSPCA Queensland behaviour team, who were incredibly supportive, extremely generous answering questions and providing advice, and tolerant of my endless updates and stories bragging about Pikelet’s progress.

I’ll try keep this to a relatively brief recap of the first two months with Pikelet but one thing that will become abundantly apparent is that I am not succinct when it comes to writing about my animal friends.

Early days

We picked up Pikelet on the 11th June - it honestly looked like a carry crate with just a bundle of blankets with no evidence of a cat being inside but sure enough when I went back into our foster room, Pikelet had emerged and had settled into the box in the scratching post. She spent a lot of time there in the first few days. In those first few days we learnt that:

1. Pikelet was quite food motivated and would happily come forward for creamy paste treats, served from my finger to help build a positive association with hands and fingers (see video from day #1); and

2. Being only 3 months old, Pikelet also quite enjoyed the play sessions - within a few days she was jumping and pouncing on her prey, especially the feathery toys which she hunted until she was panting from exhaustion. This seemed to really help her confidence and within a few days she really owned the room - strutting about and getting quite chirpy with her meows!

Time to embarrass myself with a bold prediction

Confidence wasn't the issue

By the end of week #1, I was able to stroke her chin & cheeks - she wasn’t really leaning into it to initiate contact and it was mostly just within the box of her scratching post, but she wasn’t moving away and she was showing a lot of signs of confidence. By this stage, I was feeling pretty cocky, and proclaimed that my goal for week #2 was that by the end of the week that Pikelet would be coming to sit in my lap and looking for pats. I’m sure this declaration brought quite a lot of amusement to the RSPCA behaviour team.

I knew from previous experience with timid cats that patience is the key and that you just have to work on their timeline. However, Pikelet’s issue wasn’t confidence - it was just that she had a pretty firm “no touchy” rule. In hindsight, I think in week #1 in the scratching post box and then more so in week #2, I was pushing her too much. It began with her batting away my hand with an open paw and it went a bit downhill from there.

However, we did learn that Pikelet reacts to the smell of dogs on her human friends. Two months in and this is still the only time that she has sat on my lap.

In need of assistance

By week #3, I knew I was in trouble but fortunately the Behaviour Team came up with a plan. We completely stopped trying to touch Pikelet by hand and instead started using a “Mr Banana Man” toy. The progress was slow to begin - she was more interested in playing with it, but she gradually began to accept the pats from Mr Banana Man, within a few days gradually started leaning into it.

Finally, after two weeks (although it felt much longer) I was able to start transitioning from pats with Mr Banana Man to by hand - at first by starting with the toy then swapping mid-pat until eventually being able to start offering our hand… success!!!

Words can’t even begin to describe the happiness and relief after seven long weeks to finally have a cat who had seemingly had an epiphany that maybe these “pats” aren’t too bad after all. For the next two weeks, Pikelet began to seek out the pats more and more. But in that time, it’s felt like she’s always been on a bit of a knife’s edge and we’ve needed to be careful about how we engage her and pat her - always trying to read her and avoid her reacting. It was steady but slow progress for those two weeks, but things began to really change last Sunday… but that’s a story for the next post.

To be continued…