SMALL WINS

It's been up and down with Malvolio. The up is that he has a fantastic appetite and perfect litterbox habits, to many those might seem like not such a big deal and to be expected; but when your dealing with as many other issues as we're uncovering with this little guy............those have us very grateful!

It has taken us 11 days to get to point you see above. That's Malvolio content to sleep in the cat bed ON TOP of the fuzzy housecoat instead of using it to bury himself underneath of it to hide. This past weekend we tried giving him access to the rest of the house and our boys. Surprisingly, he didn't do too badly with the latter, but he found his way to the basement on Friday night and stayed in the same spot until Sunday morning - not moving, not coming out to eat or drink, having buried himself in the smallest corner he could find behind a tonne of stuff where we had to take a flashlight to find him. So we got him out of there and back up to his guestroom, where now instead of hiding, hissing, and growling every time we enter the room or he hears a noise, he's now enjoying the comforts of the cat bed and will do so in front of us.

He startles easily, is very freaked out by sudden hand movements, and petting him is an art form because you have to wait until his pupils are not the size of saucers (meaning he's not as stressed), and even then you can start only to find that within three seconds he's terrified all over again.

So here we are celebrating the small stuff and hoping that the big stuff will come.