watch out for the toilet monster, which doesn't have a name either

I brought home our new kitty on Tuesday. I set up the upstairs so that just my bedroom and bathroom are open to her. On the first day, she spent almost all her time in her carrier. At one point, she stuck her head out, looked around, and suddenly, the toilet started running. Oh no! It's the toilet monster! She ducked back into the carrier and stayed there a while longer.

Eventually, I went to bed. When I got up, neither the litter box nor the food had been touched. She was nowhere to be found, but I suspected I knew where she was, and I was right. My bathroom has an interesting ceiling. The shower for the next-door bathroom is actually in my bathroom, surrounded by walls and a ceiling. It all looks very normal in both bathrooms, but it means that above the next-door shower, there's a shelf that's about four feet wide, two feet deep, and maybe a foot-and-a-half to two feet high. I imagine that by jumping on the sink, then on the marble rail around the top of my shower, an agile cat could easily hop up onto the shelf.

And that's been the base of operations for her first few days. After about 24 hours, she hadn't come down, and I started to worry. Would we be cleaning up a cat skeleton any time soon? I brought her a tiny amount of food, and she slurped it up. Good sign. Robert has been able to pat her up there (he stands on the counter-top) and she's happy to be petted. She purrs and rolls around and, perhaps even more important, she doesn't retreat or run away. She's been cleaning herself, too, which is also a good sign. I've been leaving her little bits of dry food on the marble railing, and it's been disappearing.

And then at night, she hops down, eats lots of food, uses the litter box, comes into my bedroom and scratches on the scratching post. One night, she hopped on my bed while I was asleep, jumped up on the headboard, and walked back and forth before jumping down again.

She has let me pet her a little bit, though I can't reach very far on the shelf. She has also come to the edge to observe me when I'm in other parts of the bathroom.

So she's coming out of her shell, and we're seeing tiny amounts of progress. It may be a while, but we're patient people.

My theory right now is that she needs to get used to the sounds and patterns of the house, and it will help if we visit her in an environment in which she feels most comfortable. The other option, of course, is to neglect her entirely until she comes to us, but somehow, meeting her part-way seems like the right course right now.

As for names, several people have said that the right name will come to us. Love Bug is fine, though she doesn't seem to respond to it. My niece suggested Jenny, which is a lovely name, lovely enough for several of our friends to either have that name or a similar one. Another friend suggested a name that means courage or bravery. This little kitty is trying so hard that she clearly is brave, and perhaps a name connoting such would help.

It turns out, of course, that most of the names meaning courage, bravery, or daring are boys' names. (Hmm, what a coincidence.) So for now, we're still thinking about it.