We rescued and adopted our 4th cat in this cohort back in September when she was a just growing out of the kitten stage. She’s white with black spots, so we named her Kiko, a Hawaiian word for spots or spotted (among other meanings).

She turned out to be very adept at managing her relations with the three older cats. Amazingly, she quickly was not only holding her own when bullied by Kinikini, the big orange Tabby, but taking the action to him. Now it’s common for him to enter a room, and have Kiko race across the room and jump on him, draping herself across his shoulders and proceeding to chew on his years. The amazing thing is that he likes this and seems to accept it as a display of affection.

But when we unsuccessful at introducing her to our bed, where prior generations of our cats tended to congregate many nights. I finally began carrying her into the bedroom and depositing her on the bed, trying to plant the idea that it is permitted behavior. But I’m afraid that the first couple of times Kinikini gave her a swat and sent her running.

That was pretty much the status quo for the first five or six months of her life with us. But it recently changed, much to our surprise. A few weeks ago, I noticed that she was asleep on the bed in the very early morning hours. She staked out territory between Meda and my sides of the bed, down around our knees, where she would curl up into a classic cat pose until, at some point, she started her funny cat yoga moves.

And then within the past week, I woke up early and, much to my surprise, found Kinikini sleeping next to Kiko. I think they were even touching! I decided to take a photo “for the record.” The first attempt failed. It was just too dark. So I dragged myself out of bed, turned on a light in the hallway to the bathroom, and tried again. The clock said it was 4:17 a.m. This time my iPhone went into it’s night mode, instructed me to hold the phone still, and got the photo!

And quickly this has generalized to include joining me in afternoon naps!

I guess this means Kiko’s integration into the household is pretty much complete and fully successful!

Sometimes Ms. Kali will be there as well. Her favored spot in splayed out on Meda, where she will stay for hours until manually displaced.

So…it is Feline Friday, and the cats are waiting!