Feline paralysis

It's been a quiet week 'round the house. We watched the first F1 race of the season with Mark (Hooray for Lewis Hamilton!). And I baked some delicious ginger cookies (I'll share the recipe if you want). Tim got some nice compliments for a program he completed at work. And the Bradford pear trees in the neighborhood bloomed and it rained a couple times. So that's all quite nice.

But the biggest news this week is all about the Millie cat.

Miss Millicent is an interesting cat. She loves to be around her people. It is very rare to find her in a room alone. She'd just rather be with us. She even slept on our bed her very first night here. She will even walk right up to strangers & expect them to give her a nice scratch behind the ears. She's quite friendly in her own way. However, she has never been a lap cat. She might curl up near us on the couch or even sleep by my side at night, but she has showed very little interest in snuggling up on our laps ... until this week.

On Tuesday morning, Millie approached me while I was on the couch and she gingerly stepped on my leg. Before I really realized what was happening, she sat down in my lap. She sat there for a full 10 minutes before she got up and wandered off. This was a major achievement! I was so excited I almost sent Tim an e-mail about it. But it got better! Later that afternoon, Miss Mills curled up in my lap and stayed there for 2 hours and 40 minutes! Hooray! What a break-through! The only problem, of course, is that I didn't want to get up & disturb her - a condition Tim calls "feline paralysis" - so I wasn't able to run the errands I had intended to. But no matter. Millie was snoozing on my lap and I was pleased as Punch.

In the few days since Millie started sitting in my lap, I've been doing everything I can to encourage her. Yesterday she sat on my lap on 4 seperate occasions & slept by my side all night, too. Today I've been a bit busier, but she managed to sit on my lap for a while after I returned from the grocery store. This is really encouraging. More and more, she feels less like some distant relative who is staying with us for a while and is feeling more like our own, sweet baby cat.