We arrived home about 3:30 Thursday afternoon. As we walked along our driveway to the house, we could see Kali on the high perch of her cat tree, looking out at us through the window overlooking the front porch. So we expected that once we got into the house, all the cats would be eagerly waiting to greet us.

No so much. Cats are not dogs, to state the obvious.

Romeo, the senior citizen, was there and he did greet us, but Kali and Kinikini were nowhere to be found. After a few minutes, Kali ran from a hiding place under a chair in the living room and disappeared in the general direction of the bedroom. Then, silence. I called their names as I walked through the house, and repeated the process several times.

These two, it seemed, had regressed to the habits learned in their former home, a cat colony at the top of Aiea Heights.

They were seriously into hiding.

Finally, after being invisible for 5-10 minutes, Kali came slinking into view. She seemed scared to be out in the open, but her desire to connect with us won out. So she nervously accepted a good bit of petting before skittering away again.

Kinikini was a tougher case. I think he might have squeezed himself under our bed. He eventually emerged after another 10 minutes or so, also all spooked out. You could see his little brain working overtime with questions like, “How do I know it’s REALLY them?”

At one point, I sat down on our bed and Kinikini jumped up next to me. That seemed like a good sign. He accepted some petting. So I thought I would get a selfie, nose-to-nose with my loving orange adoptee. So I held the camera out, aimed in our general direction, leaned down and aimed my nose towards his.

The motion of cat paw and claw cutting through the afternoon air let me know he was not yet comfortable with such a close encounter. Luckily, it was only a warning shot and I escaped unscathed, apart from the blow to my self esteem.

Sometime overnight we were apparently rehabilitated, since both Kinikini and Kali made repeated passes through our bed, and settled down several times to sleep before heading off on their evening rounds. About 4 a.m., Kinikini was into serious kneading and drooling, pushing his head under my hand for petting, and eventually crawling up and stretching out on me as I tried to go back to sleep.

In any case, I was able to get enough pictures after our arrival to populate a Feline Friday photo album. And here it is!