Have switched Badger’s feeding times to 9AM/9PM and it seems to be going great with much less whining

It’s annoying sometimes but it’s honestly kinda touching that Badger cares where I am and how I’m doing because he likes hanging out with me

Told my phone to show me pictures of dogs and it showed me the most 11 doglike pictures of Badger

The best is when Badger presents himself for attention and I don’t even pet him I just look at him and he starts softly purring

After a big yowly production to get me to open the front door, Badger is disappointed to find it’s snowing out that way, too

like once a day I look at my cat and think “I’m so glad I have such a good relationship with my cat”, so I guess I’m meta-glad

Honestly I think part of my having such a good relationship with Badger is having a sense of when to push back/not give in?

Like I have a sense of what’s reasonable to indulge him over and sometimes he’s unreasonable and I put up with it but sometimes I throw him out of the room and shut the door and sometimes he sees himself spending several hours being obnoxiously plaintive to no end then he gets fed at 11 anyway

So the flow of Badger’s behavior around meals:

2100 - he’ll start meowing whenever I walk into the kitchen

2200 - he’ll actively seek me out to meow at me, I have to close my bedroom door to avoid him

2300 - I’ll feed him 2/3 can wet

0900 - he’ll post up at my door and meow if I come out to use the bathroom

1000 - he’ll come in to my room to do it if I don’t shut him out

1030 - first time I wake after this I’ll give him 2/3 can wet

1100 - he’ll mrr loud and often enough to irritate me out of bed if I’m at all conscious and meow loudly if I show signs of movement

1500 - he’ll start banging my door if I haven’t woken up to feed him yet

Badger making a new cat friend is nice but it means he’s out a lot where he had started spending the entire daytime indoors

Badger just dropped off a mouse corpse fresh enough to judge and putting on my CSI cap, he slashed it across the belly to make it bleed then severed its spine by biting up through the point of its head behind the jaw. Now I know!

Badger’s gotten a lot more relaxed in the last two months. Still neurotic, following inscrutable patterns and rules, but much less of a startle response – he follows strange noises and my comings and goings as something of interest, but that he doesn’t have to prepare to respond to, and he’ll fall and stay asleep in contact with me for the first time

like I think my level of bond with Badger has become such we can communicate conditionals covering 2 hours

kontextmaschine:

I only had a motorcycle at that point, but in fairness she was the one who first alerted me to the Cat Adoption Team’s annual Kittenpalooza

She was the one who took this picture that day:

I only had a motorcycle at that point, but in fairness she was the one who first alerted me to the Cat Adoption Team’s annual Kittenpalooza

Badger started jumping up between my legs in bed last week and I fell asleep with him still there on Sunday and I woke up with him there this morning and that’s honestly a big deal

The vet’s instruction to cut back to only 1 can/day wet seems to be taking effect; Badger’s trying to scavenge/steal my food for the first time and when I pet him I noticed that without the fat, he’s buff

>that moment when coming back from an errand I encounter Badger on the street like 3 blocks from our house

so we look at each other

then he trots over to rub his scent on me and I pet him

and we look at each other

then continue on our separate ways

It's… something to me to realize that while Badger’s totally neurotic, i.e. as I encounter him he seems extremely hesitant or pained to violate inscrutable rules and boundaries he established himself, since Leo left he has made himself the dominant force in every neighborhood cat relationship I am aware of

He’s cool, now fully tapered off the dry food and taking ½ can wet twice daily, some combination of that and this being his first fully adult cold/wet season, he’s settling in in one place and not coming in and out bugging me all night. I saw him following that chocolate chip cat with the colored collar today, so they seem to have gotten acquainted.