The first 24 hours in the crate

July 6, 2021

As I am writing this, the first 24 hours have passed fairly quietly. After her breakfast (that she has not touched yet, at 7:45 pm), I popped in once late morning to check on her. Did not go close to the crate, just said hello and did a slow eye-blink to signal things are OK. She was lying with her head outside of the Nest, which seems to be her favorite position right now.

I had some computerwork to do, so I kept the cat cam on and saw that she was sleeping, on and off, in the Nest. I only went downstairs to add some new food. Closing the Nest door freaked her out a bit, unfortunately, so I am not sure I will do that again next time.

It was one of the safety procedures recommended to us: not open the crate door without first securing the cat. So we had developed a system. We had used a carabiner to secure the door of the Nest to the side of the crate. Before changing her litter and/or refreshing food, we unclipped it and pushed to close. Then we opened the crate door and, with bite gloves on, we would lock the Nest door. Then, we did not have to worry about a sudden escape or attack whiles doing our service calls.

But, all in all, she seems to stay all the way in the back of the Nest when we arrive, and the locking of the Nest door freaks her out a lot. So there seems to be no need to put her through all of that fuzz. She stays calm and hidden as we do our thing. She does not want to attack or escape. So the next time I will just trust the process and refresh food, water and litter quickly, trying to not touch the Nest.

I found the basement very frigid, and when I heard her sneeze once this afternoon, I decided to put Dixie’s old heating pad under the blankie that is right outside her shelter. I put some new food there as well, closer to the carrier, so maybe she will muster up the courage to eat it. She has not in the past 3 hours, but hopefully she will during the night, like she did last night.

It would be best to see her eat wet food, rather than kibble, because I don’t want her to get dehydrated. I would love to see her walk around a bit more, then again, there is not much to do for her. I did put in some toys with catnip before. You never know. I am not sure that she even knows how to play, but when she still lived outside, I put out some small closed envelopes with catnip and she chewed on them. I had read about that online, they can enjoy the catnip and satisfy the need to chew and the paper of the envelope will not hurt them. But here, in Basecamp, she shows no interest in catnip.

We will not disturb her for the rest of the night. I think sleep is a good way to recuperate, especially because of the pregnancy. It may take her another full day to get back to herself a bit more. Good that we fattened her up in recent days, she must have some reserves. Or worms 🙂 Which I cannot tell because she has not endeared us with fresh poop yet. Maybe tonight….

Below is a 2-part timelapse (high speed) of her first night with us. As you can see, it took her awhile to get active, but she did come out to eat and explore…

Leave a Comment

error: Content is protected !!