Oliver Kitteh - Chapter Eleven : Treats of Oliver's new rehabilitation games

As told by Ms Brownlow (italic narration by Mabel).

Click here for chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten.

I think the people are itching to get to Modern Day Oliver pics. So I'll make these posts a bit longer and squish in more delicious kittenatude! We're just getting to the time when he started to work on his back legs...

Once he was able to regularly make it into the living room he discovered a favorite and universal kitten game: Lying in wait and then pouncing when someone went by. In Oliver's case, the 'lying in wait' was literal.

Cutest. Picture. Evah.

He could scoot around underneath a low chair while lying on his back by grabbing onto the fabric
underside.  He could watch all the comings and goings while remaining well hidden.  Then he could push himself out from underneath, from any of the sides, and quickly grab an ankle or a leg, then quickly scoot back underneath, completely out of anyone's reach. His favorite for a long time.  And it gave his little arms, and later his legs as well, a very good workout.

 

Here he is at almost 8 weeks. He's still spending a lot of time with the little structure I got from
PetCo.  He was climbing in through the windows and trying to climb up onto the top.

Can you see Oliver's paws sticking out of the end of this box?

That's the box a long scratching post came in. At this time, even though Oliver was able to cover much more ground, and was speeding up a lot, he still kept his back legs completely splayed out to the sides and his little belly stayed on the ground.

I thought if I could get him to use the box for crawling through he would be forced to put his back legs under him more, or at least work out some way to get around with his legs closer to his body.  I thought it was worth a try.  First, of course, I had to get him want to go into the box and go through it.
No problem there.  All I had to do was put it down in front of him and make sure the flaps at each end were open enough for him to get the idea that it would be interesting to explore all the way inside and through.  He loved it immediately.

Smart thinking Ms. Brownlow! And what cat can resist an empty box? It's in the DNA!