We ate in appreciative silence for a few minutes, the only sounds being the sound of our chewing and Curie’s increasingly plaintive meows as she tried to con us into feeding her. I noticed Jamison had adopted my strategy of gentle foot pushes, with the result that the cat was softly ping-ponging between us to no apparent ill effect. If anything, she seemed to be having a good time with it.
“Cats are weird,” I managed to get out between bites as I finally slowed down my consumption as I reached satiety.
Smirking, Jamison gave Curie another foot push. “She’s a determined little thing. I feel bad that Solo’s locked up while we hang out here with her, though.” He scooped up the last of the sauce on his plate with the last bite of his garlic bread. “I wonder if he’s going to be a beggar like she is.”
I waggled my head from side to side. “Who knows. I’d settle for him eating his own food without me having to coax him into it.”
“Hey now.” He wagged a finger at me. “It’s only the first night. I seem to recall you and Sandra reminding me over and over to not freak out if the girls hid for a while before warming up to me.”
I knew that, I did. I had listened to Sandra, and I had done my research about bringing new cats home. That didn’t make me feel any better now that it was actually happening, though. “I know,” I sighed. “I guess I was just hoping he’d be the exception.”
“Well,” he said reasonably, watching me eat my last bite, “his whole life has changed from one moment to the next.”
“I know that feel,” I muttered before I could stop myself, then winced. I didnotwant to get into the story of my last breakuporrehash my and Jamison’s risky first night together.
He watched me with thoughtful eyes for a long moment, and then apparently decided not to push. “I’ll tell you the same thing you guys told me: give him time and let him adjust. And then I’ll add my own advice: bribery. It worked with my girls!” He grinned. “I got them those lickable treat pouch things - thank you, Amazon same-day shipping - and then they had to come right up to me to get the yums. They made peace with facing me damn quick when tuna pate was on offer.”
“I don’t have any of those,” I said, frowning. “Just the little kibble-type crunchies that Curie likes. Do you think I should buy some for him?”
Jamison smiled widely. “No need.” He hopped to his feet and darted over to where he’d hung his coat, startling both me and Curie with the sudden movement. “I came prepared.” He reached into the coat pocket and brandished a handful of what looked sort of like ketchup packets. “I mean, feel free to order your own, but I brought a couple to try. We can at least see if he likes them.”
The man was a genius and I told him so: “You’re brilliant. Thank you.” I started to cross the room to him, then stopped and looked back at the table, catching Curie perched on the chair I’d been sitting on and raising one paw to the tabletop. “No!” I clapped loudly, startling her off the chair. “Guess I’d better cleanthis up before we run off to do fun stuff.” I walked back to the table and started gathering up the remnants of dinner. Jamison shoved the treat packets into the pocket of his jeans and came to help, and together we had the mess cleared and the dishes in the dishwasher within a few minutes.
“You’re stuck with cat food tonight,” he told Curie, wagging a finger at her.
I would swear Curie wrinkled her nose at that, and I laughed. “Save one of the treat packets for her and we’ll give it to her near the guest room door after we finish hanging out with Solo. Maybe then she’ll associate positive things with his scent.”
“Ooh.” He pointed at me. “You’re smart.”
“I try.” I gestured out of the kitchen toward the hallway the bedrooms lay off of, realizing as I did it that this was going to be Jamison’s first time venturing beyond the living room. “Guest room’s that way,” I said, pointing.
He turned his head to follow my pointing, then looked back at me and smirked. “Do I get to see your room, too?”
But the cat was in the guest room, why would he want to…oh. Ohhhh. I froze for a long moment, processing that, then swallowed. “If you want to,” I finally managed to say weakly.
His smirk warmed into a full-on smile. “Definitely.” But then, rather than continue flirting, he seemed to decide to focus on the matter at hand, and he headed past the closed door of my room to the guest room I’d indicated. “How do you want to do this?”
I shrugged, picturing the room as it had been the last few times I’d entered it. “He’s probably under the bed, so we should be able to just open the door and go in without worrying too much.” Matching deeds to words, I pushed open the door of the room and slipped inside, Jamison close behind me, almost clinging to my back.
We took in the apparently-empty room for a long moment, and then Jamison bent to look under the bed. “Either you’ve gota very quiet under-the-bed monster,” he told me, looking over his shoulder at me, “or that’s Solo’s eyes peeking back at me. Here, boy.” He danced his fingers lightly over the floor at the edge of the bed. “Come on out and see us.”
No response, not that I thought either of us had really expected one at this point. I took the opportunity to cross the room to check the food and water dishes, both of which showed signs of use. “Well, he’s been eating and drinking,” I said. “So he’s come out long enough to do that.”
“What a good boy!” Jamison cooed, still focused under the bed. “You’re so brave, Mr. Solo.”
I grinned at the honorific. “Maybe if we offer him treats, he’ll come out?” I suggested.
“Worth a try,” Jamison agreed, and shoved a hand into his pocket to extract one of the treat packets. He carefully ripped off a corner, exposing the edge of the paste inside, then looked thoughtfully from the packet to the glowing eyes under the bed, which hadn’t moved. “How much do you love your flooring?”
“Huh?” was all I could manage to that. What did my flooring have to do with any of this?
He squeezed a dollop of treat paste onto his index finger, then used it to gesture at the floor at the edge of the bed. “I was thinking I could smear some of this on the floor closer to him, so he can smell it. Then once he gets a whiff of it, maybe he’ll come closer to get more.”
“Oh.” I thought about it for a split second and decided that if my floors could hold up to dirty feet and a mop, they could probably hold up to a little stinky cat treat. “Go for it.”
Doing as he’d indicated, Jamison smeared his fingerful of treat on the floor about halfway between the edge of the bed and where Solo was crammed back against the wall. I squatted down, trying to get a better look, still couldn’t see much, and shortly found myself on my knees with my face almost pressed into thefloor and my ass up in the air as I peered at the cat. Jamison was stretched out on the floor next to me, also watching Solo avidly.
There was a moment where nobody moved or breathed, and then I saw Solo’s nose twitch. Jamison reached out and grasped my thigh in excitement, making an eager noise. A paw was extended and tapped gently into the smear of treat, then withdrawn and licked. I held my breath.
