The new guy

Horace got a clean bill of health from the vet, and so at least for now he's living with us. He spent the first few days closed off in our spare bedroom, but we introduced him to the other cats and they all get along so the whole house is open now. I haven't captured it on camera yet, but he does this very cute submissive routine with them where he rolls onto his back and reaches out to them with his front paws.

He is still quite afraid of people, running away in terror if we come near him, but he seems to forget his fear at meal times so we think he's making progress. His body language is slowly becoming more confident and while he spends almost all of his time hiding, he's spending more time in the hiding spots closer to people. When he was confined, we were able to scratch his head and neck a bit, but now that he has open space, he just runs away if we reach towards him, so we've stopped trying to initiate contact. We figure he'll see the other boys enjoying it and eventually come give it a try.

Now that he's part of the family, we've considered changing his name. "Horace" sounds too much like "Hattori" and isn't even a Japanese character from a movie. The problem is that we've been calling him Horace ever since we first saw him running around outside back in August, so it is really hard to change direction. We tried switching to "Wallace," figuring it would be easier to switch to a name that sounded similar to what we've been calling him, and that it could be a tribute to Alfred Wallace. (Or Rasheed.) But the best I've been able to do is call him "Horace Wallace" which is unbearable.

In summary, he meows when he uses the litter box, which is convenient as an early warning stink alarm.