Steady Progress

It's hard to know where to begin with Coco.  She's awesome, but she's also a bit of a mess.  She's tiny, but she has so much hair she looks like a walking carpet.  Her legs are already short, not unlike Zelda's, but she's got so much hair covering them that it looks like they're about three inches long.

And I'm completely smitten.

Coco's evolution with us has been two steps forward and one step back.  It's not surprising, really.  Coco is a refugee from a pretty intense hoarding situation.  Without going into too many details, let's just say that the cat comes to us with quite a bit of baggage.  The fact that she trusts us at all and that she spends every night cuddling with me is some kind of miracle.  And if she spends a lot of time under the bed, getting the lay of the land, I think that's just to be expected.  I can only imagine the horrors she endured as part of a hoarded colony of cats.  I try not to think about it too much.   

The important thing is that she's demonstrating more confidence and seems happier more of the time.  She's spending less time under the bed now, and her cuddling has stopped seeming as needy and just seems like she kind of enjoys spending time with us now.  She still gazes at me with that adoring look that Wanda and Otto used to give, unless I do something really scary like stand up too suddenly or walk into a room.  (Seriously, we considered it a milestone when we could walk into the guest bedroom without her diving headfirst under the bed.)

It's pretty much the exact opposite of when we introduced Zelda (see http://dabuddies.blogspot.com/2014/05/were-running-out-of-room-under-bed.html), in that she's the one under the bed and everyone else is carrying on as though nothing has happened.  But there's something about the flash in her eyes and the sauciness of her step that makes me feel like it's only a matter of time before she comes out from under the bed permanently, and when she does, watch out world.