Silkie Is Becoming More Affectionate

Friday morning, I explained to a dear friend that my Silkie was nowhere near as affectionate as any of my previous gazillion kitties. However, Silkie is also my first shelter cat. The others all came to me either by accident or by way of friends.

Silkie was 1-1/2 when we brought her home. She was a big girl. And she hid under the one bed for three days.

That was back in January of 2013. So, she’s been here in this home for almost 2-1/2 years. 

It took her a whole year to first sit on my lap. And that’s not exactly as it sounds. She doesn’t sit on my lap. She waits until I get onto a now-deceased family friend’s lift chair and waits until I raise the footrest and am leaning back, almost fully reclined. Then she’ll hop up and stretch lengthwise from chest to tops of thighs. She will sometime fall asleep there, for up to an hour.

And it took about that long for her to first purr. 

During the night, she will occasionally jump onto my bed and flop, from groin to chest, on my belly, for no more than 10 minutes. 

Other than that, there is no real display of affection. Oh, well, I don’t count the meow when she wants food, or wants the back door open. 

Once in a great while, she will take a kittenish swipe at my foot as I walk past her.

So, after I opened my big mouth and bemoaned the fact that this one was not really affectionate, she ups and does some new things. Two, within a day or two of each other.

The other day, I had to walk barefoot from the front of the house to the back of the house because Silkie had fallen asleep with her head on my one slipper (sigh) - she's never done that before and it's so "cat" and it was so "cute" - I just couldn't disturb her!

Now, tonight, another new gesture. I like to sit outside at the top of the back steps in the evening, reading whatever magazines have begun to accumulate. Usually, she’ll use this sort-of bonding quality time by sitting at the bottom of the steps, or on the cement driveway nearby. Tonight, she decided to stretch out right beside me on the landing at the top of the back steps. Then, surprisingly, she snuggled up alongside my hip and thigh. She stayed there for over half an hour.

So – now, I’m wondering. Did she somehow ‘bug’ my purse Friday morning and hear me worrying about her lack of affection? Or is she finally relaxing a little and trusting me more? 

I hope this means she is slowly overcoming whatever she went through in her first home. It’s such a wonderful feeling when she shows she cares – even if just a little.