What my rescue cat taught me about patience

When I brought Milo home from the shelter, the woman at the desk warned me: give her time. I nodded and thought, sure, a day or two. She spent eleven days under my bed.

I could see one paw from where I sat on the floor. That was the whole relationship for a while. One paw, occasionally withdrawn.

Patience is a skill pets teach better than people do

Everything in me wanted to reach in, pull her out, hold her, show her the good life. But cats do not work that way. Trust is not something you can hand over. It has to be left on the floor, near the bed, like a treat at 2am that disappears by morning.

So I stopped reaching. I sat in the same spot each evening and read aloud, badly, whatever book was nearby. She never came out. I kept going anyway.

On day twelve she came out while I was making tea. Just to watch. On day fourteen she ate while I was in the room. By the third week she was sleeping on the chair next to me, and by the second month she had claimed my laptop as a heated bed.

What this has to do with work

I run a pet products company now, and people are surprised when I say the best part of the job is still this: learning that animals set the pace. You cannot rush a cat out from under a bed, and you cannot rush a design into being good either. You test, you wait, you adjust.

Milo tests every product that comes through our office. The ones she ignores go back to the drawing board. The ones she sleeps on, we ship.

If you have just adopted a shy cat, my only advice is this: sit on the floor, read something out loud, and count the days in paws, not hours.