Safe Place
One of my cats, Christy, is a little calico I'm fostering because she was so stressed at the shelter that her health started to suffer. She's always been nervous. Other cats make her nervous. Changes in schedule make her nervous. Sounds make her nervous. She doesn't relax anywhere.

When she first came, after she came out of isolation she spent all her time hiding; so I gave her more places to hide--little cubbyholes, boxes, tunnels, and places where she could have a high vantage point, and her back to the wall. She spent a lot of time in these cubbyholes. I made sure she had a cubbyhole in every room, more than one in most places. Eventually, she stopped dashing quickly from place to place, and started walking with a little more confidence to eat, use the litter box and scratching posts and have a quick look outside at the window perches.

I bought her cardboard cat scratching pads; they come with catnip and are made of corrugated cardboard. Those scratch pads were the first place she sat when she came out of hiding; so I bought her more scratch pads. There are four of them now in my apartment, and she uses them for safe places to sit.

Christy's diversifying her places now, too. She's claimed a window perch, where I fed her treats and where she's learned to come whenever she hears the treat bag rattling. And, though she's not entirely comfortable there yet, she willingly climbs up into my lap and purrs while she's there. She'll always be a nervous cat; and she'll always have to be warned when you're going to vacuum and shown exactly where you've moved the litter box or the food bowl. She'll always have to be reassured that claw-clipping doesn't hurt and flea medicine isn't as bad as you think it is; but when I think of the first time I saw her, bunched in the back of the a linen closet at the cat shelter (quite the reverse Houdini, always finding tight spaces to fit herself into), I know exactly how far she's come.

What if, instead of letting Christy have her hiding places, I had decided that she needed to be forced out of her shell, forced to engage with the world? What if I had dragged her out of her cubbyholes, removed all the places where she could hide, and put treats in the center of the room instead of on a safe window perch? What if, instead of letting her hide when she needed to, I had decided to insist on her learning not to hide?

Well, if I had done that, Christy probably wouldn't have survived the year and a half she's lived with me.

But how can that be? I wouldn't have been doing anything mean! I wouldn't have been hitting her, or hurting her. I wouldn't have been denying her food (though most likely I wouldn't have put the food bowls near a hiding spot). I would even have been giving her treats for coming into the middle of the floor, instead of hiding at the edges! I would just have been preventing her from isolating herself. After all, a cat is supposed to be social, right? A cat is supposed to be a bundle of purrs which will allow herself to be hauled around and become a lap animal; and hiding like that is just unhealthy!

...or is it?

Is it really unhealthy to hide?

I say no. Not when you need it. Not when you're a small cat in a very large, very overwhelming, messy, noisy, smelly, and hostile world. Not when the only way you will ever be confident is to have a safe place to sit and contemplate things before you step out into them. The most congenial surroundings are still hostile when you are trapped in them, without a place to retreat to, where you can be in control, where you know exactly what to expect.

So Christy sits in her safe place, and I sit in mine; and carefully, with much planning and observation, we step out into a chaotic world, knowing that there exists a home base, the eye of the storm, whenever we need it.