We’ve made wonderful progress with Oberon. He’s come to truly enjoy having his head, ears, and neck scratched, and loves his butt scritchies. He’ll push his butt into our hands when we scratch him there. He rolls around on our feet whenever we go out and purrs non-stop, whether he’s being petted or not. I think he’s a naturally affectionate cat who never had the chance to be domesticated or learn to trust humans.
That doesn’t mean we can relax. Randy and I were standing in the kitchen the other night comparing our Obi scratches. One of Obi’s nicknames is Mr. Whackadoodle. He continues to strike out at hands that are in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s worst in the morning when Randy brings him the first food. Randy figures it’s because Obi is hungry and has had to endure a miserably cold night. For that reason, Randy has taken to wearing heavy leather gloves for the first feeding. He lets Obi whack the gloved hand, then leaves it there for Obi to smell. When Obi realizes his whacking isn’t having an effect, he usually gives up.
This morning, Obi got so excited about the scritchies that Randy was giving him, that he gave Randy a bite on the hand. Luckily, it didn’t get through the glove. We’ve made a note to watch out for excessive enthusiasm on Obi’s part.
Obi expresses his unhappiness when we have to go inside by attacking our legs and feet. He has strong opinions and uses his claws to express them. He wants us to stay out there with him all the time now.
It breaks our hearts to see him outside on these bitterly cold nights below freezing. We’ve discussed it and have decided that if it gets too much colder, we’ll put Kelly in my office, put Ozzy and Tuxita in Randy’s office, and try to get Obi to come inside, at which point we’d have to herd him into our utility room and close him in there. He probably wouldn’t like it, but at least he’d be warm overnight. I suspect many things could go wrong with this idea (understatement much?).
We’ve also had to change how much we’re feeding him. We were feeding him indiscriminately and turned him into a major chonk. The new approach is to measure out the correct amount of dry food in the morning in a container, then dole that out more carefully during the day and into the night. He’s still getting two bowls of soft food a day, so we’re not exactly starving him.
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