random thoughts – Day 1,518 – (Wednesday) – soul mate

Kiki came out of hiding this morning. I was on the couch, engaged in the pre-work morning coffee consumption ritual when Kiki emerged from behind the couch and headed to the hidey bed under the buffet at the recently new, slower pace. She used to cover the distance at an Olympic-level sprint, but in the last week or so, she has begun to take it at more of a casual saunter.

Kiki on exhibit.

She paused outside the little bed area and composed herself in a tidy arrangement like a work of art, sitting under the buffet in my view long enough for me to notice, turn on the phone camera, and take seven quick photos of varying but mostly crappy quality. 

After the brief photo shoot, she stood, turned 180 degrees, and delicately stepped into her special little space. When she sits towards the back of the little covered bed, she is hidden deep in shadow and the only way I can see her is to kneel on the floor and peek inside with the aid of the flashlight on my phone. Sometimes she lets me rub her face.

When I returned from the office, Kiki was nowhere to be seen. After 2.5 hours without even a peep from her, I kneeled on the couch to look behind it. Keeks was curled up in the space between the back of the couch and the wall. She spends a lot of time back there, probably contemplating life or maybe devising new and even more clever ways to avoid me. 

Miss Kiki has expertly calculated the length of my arm plus about a half-inch, and remains precisely that far away from me most of the time. She might let me inch close enough to rub her head or cheek or massage her little shoulder blades, but it is always on her terms and only if she is in the mood for it.

This mindset is not a foreign concept to me. I get it, little Kiki. I really, really get it. Hiding out in the house, not speaking for hours, avoiding others until it gets boring, push-pull behavior. We seem to be cut from the same cloth and it seems I’ve met my soul mate.