Chronicles of Athena – Eleven Weeks

It’s been another busy week for our Athena. Well, firstly there was a slight suspicion she may have been a boy. When we went to the vets on Monday, after some considerable genital palpitation, we decided we’re 98% certain she’s definitely a girl. Other choice quotes from our lovely vet:

“Definitely a mummy’s girl, aren’t we?” While Athena was crawling into my arms to escape the stethoscope.

“Oh yes there’s a stool in there.” While shoving a thermometer up her bum.

“We’re clearly the runt of the litter, aren’t we.” After I explained her appetite isn’t the biggest.

“She seems pretty lively, do you want me to try her temperature again?” At the end of what was possibly the most genital-obsessed ten minutes of Athena’s life. Needless to say we didn’t bother.

Overall I’m really pleased she got the all clear from the vets after her little bout of worms and the fact she’s not the best eater in the world. Our second dose of worming does seem to have really helped her in the litter box which is great news.

One of the reasons I wanted to keep this chronicle was because I wanted a record of the relationship between us. This week she’s started to develop some of the behaviours I consider to be an integral part of the cat-human bond. She’s started weaving at my feet when I’m about to feed her, and she has a more unique ‘food’ miaow which is beginning to be distinct from her other vocalisations.

She also has her little routines, like coming to greet me at the door when I come home from work, where she’s impatient for me to put all my stuff down before picking her up for a cuddle. And then after she’s had enough cuddling she’s off to her food bowl for fresh food.

One thing she doesn’t do, which surprises me slightly, is knead. She seems to have no real drive to start making biscuits, even when she’s happy and purring and very cuddly. Strangely enough, I miss it quite a bit!

And lastly, she’s getting bigger. She’s just under a kilo now and has long, gangly legs and long, fluffy tail to go with her over-large ears. She’s now having to learn to regulate her play fighting so as not to hurt people (and this may be my imagination but I’m convinced she’s more gentle with other people than with me, which I think is a lovely sign of confidence actually).

On Monday she’ll be three months old, really no longer a baby and more of a child. While the kitten phase was very cute, this is a much more interesting part for me, where we start working out how we live together.

Athena in a bed
Feeling a little bit poorly after her vaccinations, she was quite content to sleep under a blanket.

Chronicles of Athena – 10 Weeks

At ten weeks of age Athena took an upgrade in her cheekiness levels. She’s been pushing her newly established boundaries and because I’m a soft touch I expect she’s discovered that many of those boundaries are quite flexible. New habits include: scampering up my leg whenever she requires food or a cuddle, and playing the bitey game exceptionally hard when it’s time to wake up.

Incidentally, one of the courses I’m teaching on is currently discussing inadvertent training, and I had a great example in front of my eyes on Thursday night.

While we were waiting for Peaky Blinders to come back on the telly, Athena and I were having a good old play. As I’d been engaged in this for a number of hours, I decided to sit down on the sofa and relax. Athena had a good stretch on the rug, and undoubtedly realising that it felt somewhat like her scratching post, had a good scratch.

“Athena, no.”

She looked up at me with surprise, and then walked away, only to reach the edge of the rug and decide to try again.

“Athena, no. *Finger Click*”

Athena went all fluffy and scampered off to the far side of the room to play with a scrunched up bit of paper.

At this point, an idea must have formed in her head because after a moment of this, she ran back to the rug to give it an experimental claw. Predictably, I then gave her into trouble and she ran away, to run right back again. Athena had discovered a new game.

Now a number of things were happening here. My punishment for the rug, the angry voice, clicking fingers noise and occasionally me getting up to distract her were not considered aversive enough to really work for Athena, despite the fact they felt aversive to me (I don’t like giving my baby kitten into trouble). In fact I was inadvertently reinforcing the rug ripping by giving her attention every time she did it, and in this scenario, my attention was actually welcome (e.g.  the stimulus I was giving her was actually reinforcing the behaviour rather than punishing it).

As an owner, rather than a scientist, I’ve called this behaviour ‘cheeky’ and ‘gleeful’. And I’m quite happy to use those words for Athena, in the same way I’d use those words for a baby, but I don’t believe there’s any real malice or forethought in her actions. It was simply fun at the time.

But what’s interesting is that to stop the behaviour I had to give her negative punishment (i.e. withdraw my attention when she was ripping the rug) and then positively reinforce a different behaviour at the same time (i.e. I started playing with Mr Ducky on the sofa instead). And she gave it up. While we’ve been testing the rug game since then, she’s been much quicker to give it up when I tell her ‘no’.

 

Sponsored by Samsung, Naturally
Sponsored by Samsung, Naturally

 

All of this has got me thinking about blogging about training, particularly as I’ve seen how my students have been thinking about it on the course. I’ve never found it the most intuitive of subjects . . . but that’s for another time.

 

Another element of Athena’s development this week has been that she now has free range of the whole flat. I have noticed, coming home from work, suspiciously kitten shaped dents all over the duvet. The other day she was a little reluctant to leave her bed because it was chilly. These little glimpses of the cat she will become are very exciting, and much as I’m enjoying the kitten period, I keep seeing a sleek little cat who’s happy and confident and has never had anything to worry about in her life. I hadn’t always intended to get a kitten, but there’s something to be said for helping to shape the grown up she’ll become.

Oh – and we’re also weaning ourselves off of Royal Canin kitten food and onto Whiskas. The lamb flavour was a huge success with little growls coming from the miniature tiger hunched over her bowl.

 

Chronicles of Athena – Nine Weeks

For the forseeable future, instead of Fluffy Fridays, we’ll be getting updates on Athena instead. As I’m counting her age based on weeks at the moment, these will probably be at the weekend, and we’ll be talking about the development that happened in the previous seven days.

At the age of nine weeks, coupled with the fact she moved houses, there were a LOT of little connections being made in the little lady’s tiny brain. This has been characterised by bouts of very enthusiastic play behaviour (interestingly, most of it focussed around people, I think because the change in her circumstances at the start of the week made her keen for reassurance. Her favourite way to play is sit on someone’s lap and bat at her toys, or play fight with a person’s hand) and then deep sleeps (which she also prefers to do on someone’s lap). All in all, for a lady who was mostly hand reared I have to say she’s extremely well adjusted, if a little clingy.

Between 8-10 weeks, kittens go through something called a socialisation period – the things they experience this week, particularly people, will set their expectations up for the rest of their life. So I’ve been having guests around and making sure to do things like laundry, hoovering, hair drying, changing the bed linens, etc. I live in a busy tenement flat so she’s been hearing all sorts of household noises (her first siren made her eyes go VERY wide indeed).

The physiology and behaviour is all very interesting, but I thought this would be a cool opportunity to look at how a bond between a human and an animal develops. When will she do the things that are characteristics of my cats, when does she teach me the things she wants?

So in that vein, here are some of the more personal developments:

She’s a big cuddler, and really prefers to be close to your face. Today she’s discovered she can lie on the top of the sofa’s pillows and rest her head on my shoulder while gaming. This is the best place to be and she’ll purr very loudly.

She’s discovered the view outside the window, and was especially fascinated when the football crowds were walking past.

When she’s feeling insecure she hides in the bottom shelf of the TV stand, behind my basket of miscellaneous games controllers, DVDs and chargers. She has not quite figured out what her igloo bed is for.

She very quickly got into the habit of using her scratching tree and is only mildly confused by my rug which is of a similar material. Climbing the scratching tree to the top platform is how she shows off to guests.

Guests are awesome, they mean extra cuddles.

Bedtime is also awesome, because it opens up a whole new type of game to play (the crawl under the covers and tickle Jilly game – if one day I blog about the sad incident where I squashed the kitten, this will be the cause of it), but she’s beginning to think about sleeping in one of her beds as she becomes less reliant on me.

She’s not super amazing at cleaning herself and has a semi permanent gravy stain on her chin.

She thinks claw trimming is great fun.

 

Things I’d forgotten but quickly learned:

The dangerous way that kittens will feedback into the gaming loop where you can’t stop gaming because you’d move the kitten and that would be cruel.

The scratches all up and down your arm.

Being catted but also desperately hungry.