Is There a Kitten in the House?

  I promised you at the end of my last blog to let you have news of an event after we returned from Lille. The sad death of Charlotte had left an empty space in our household, even though Mu-Mu or Mounette, as her official name is, had tried to comfort us with extra cuddles. Then Kim, surfing on the site of Annabel Hinchcliffe, who re-homes loads of kittens, had an appeal for a tri-colour kitten,  who had the name of  Lottie! We felt this was an omen, and after discussion agreed to take her on.
She was said to be extremely shy and really needed special care to win her trust with humans.
Annabel`s house is in the Dordogne, a couple of hours from here, but we are not fazed by distance and set out to fetch the kitten. Unfortunately, it was a day of mist and drizzle, as seems common lately, but we arrived ok, after a rather idiosyncratic route provided by the GPS, and found the house with not too much difficulty. Annabel was sorry to see the kitten go, she is a lovely lady and has the same attitude to cats as we do.... After coming back by a more direct
route suggested by the other GPS, we installed the new kitten in our isolation room, otherwise known as the salon. This has a wire door so the new arrival can see the other animals but there is no further interaction.

At first, the kitten hid, each time in a new hiding place, so each time we wished to cuddle her, it was a game of hide and seek. She even spat and clawed the first time we pulled her from her refuge. The strange thing was, once placed on a knee, she was quite tame and affectionate and seemed to relax under caresses, even to purr. Yet once released, it was the same game again, we even re-named her Cache-cache, the French for hide and seek, with a more formal name of  Cacharelle. Still, there are only so many hideaways, even in so cluttered a room as our lounge, so we unearthed her each time, and now she has gained confidence she can usually be found sitting in `her` armchair. We also have
been taking her on our laps in the kitchen, when we are looking at the TV in the evenings. Gradually
we are winning her confidence and in a few weeks we will risk letting her out of quarantine!

  Bye for now, going to play with Cache-cache. Kim is unfortunately suffering from a painful kidney stone and has gone back to bed with a hot-water-bottle.