short-term thinking

[cellio]

It appears that, sometime in the past, someone either taught Giovanni to be a shoulder-and-neck-sitter or declined to discourage the behavior. That's really cute with a 2-pound kitten. Ahem: they do not stay two-pound kittens forever. This is a terrible picture (Giovanni loves to investigate the camera instead of sitting still if he detects it), but to get an idea of scale:

And here are a couple pictures of Orlando:

Orlando did not go into hiding again after the vet visit, and yesterday afternoon he spent an hour or so in my lap in the living room (yay). Giovanni likes my office, particularly the computer desk, but is reluctant to explore the house much -- coming into the room next door while I was watching TV last night was a big stretch, and he's made some brief late-night forays into the bedroom. So far as I know he has not yet been downstairs under his own power. How do I nudge him along in that? I don't want a litterbox in my office forever.

For all the suitable places in the house, particularly for Orlando, I'm surprised that they both tend to sleep under the same chair in my office, concurrently.

Comments

[dsrtao]

Introducing a cat to a litterbox:

1. Take cat to clean litterbox
2. Put cat in litterbox.
3. Gently grasp cat forearms and make little digging/scraping motions in the litter, as though the cat were covering up waste. Four or five should do.
4. Let the cat go.
5. Walk away.
6. Repeat if the cat does not get the idea.

[cellio]

He understands how to use a box, but when I carried him downstairs to the basement to introduce him to those ones he bolted back upstairs. I'm hesitant to take away the box in my office to force the matter, and as I'll comment to kmelion, the options for gradually moving it are limited.

I think I need him to be comfortable in the rest of the house first, and from there the boxes in the basement should follow. Orlando figured that out just fine. But I'm not sure how to get him to be comfortable in the rest of the house; possibly the answer is "wait another couple weeks".