Paloma, nee Whitney

I got a cat four days ago but have barely seen her since. The moment we arrived home, she ran under the couch and hid. I went down to my car to get her litter box and toys and food and when I got back to my apartment, the cat was nowhere to be found.

She wasn’t under the couch anymore. Nor was she behind it. She was neither under my bed nor in the bathtub nor on top of any tall shelves. I searched for her everywhere - everywhere - for fifteen minutes. My apartment is only three rooms big (and they are not big rooms), so fifteen minutes was an absurd amount of time to search for a single, solitary cat.

Cats hide themselves very effectively.

This one found her way into the frame of my couch. Yes, the frame. I have an IKEA couch with a removable cover that was partially unzipped - just unzipped enough to allow a smallish cat to fit inside. She crawled up in there and stayed, still and quiet as a houseplant, until I found her a couple of hours later.

I tried to tempt her out using my softest, kindest voice and a tempting little cat treat. I left her alone for a while, hoping she’d get lonely.

No dice. She stared at me, not budging, then stayed in the couch while I prepared dinner and watched one or four episodes of “How I Met Your Mother.” Love that show, btw.

Long story short, a while later I got the cat out of the couch, zipped the couch, pet her a bit and then let her go, and she went back under the couch and hid there for two days. Then, on Wednesday, I arrived home to find that she had gotten back into the couch again. I have no idea how. It was improbable, really. She’s small, but not that small, and there are just no holes in a fully zipped couch cover for a cat, even a smallish one, to fit inside.

My cat must be magic. But that is beside the point.

Her name, by the way, is Paloma. She is a beautiful calico girl with a mostly orange face and lovely amber eyes. She loves hiding, being coy and receiving neck massages. She does not, so far, like me. That will change.

She was called Whitney while she was an orphan. I like that name, but more for a person than a pet. Now she’s Paloma, after one of the main characters in “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.” You should all read “The Elegance of the Hedgehog.”

Paloma in the book is a brilliant but standoffish preteen who notices everything and is wise beyond her years. Paloma the cat is a shy but affectionate 8-month-old with a curious streak and a precocious look about her. I think she’ll do well for her name.

First, she has to come out from under the couch.

Paloma, master of non-violent resistance, is leading a sit-in under my couch to protest her adoption. She wants to go back to PetSmart so she can hang out in a cage with her good friend Jake, who is partially blind and way less fun than me. I don’t know what Paloma is thinking.

But I now know how to make her stop thinking and just come out from under the couch already, dammit.

The answer: tuna.

On a break from work, I bought a can of tuna from CVS and, once home, put some of it on a plate and put the plate under the couch. Paloma liked that. She liked it very much. She ate the entire plate, even though I was lying there, on the floor, watching her.

Then she wanted a neck massage. And she purred while she received one.

What this means for you: There will be cat pictures soon.