It took quite a while—we’re talking many months—for Wallace and Totti to leave the sanctuary of their room and venture into the rest of the house during the daytime. It didn’t take them long to figure out that we spent very little time in our bedroom during the day, so that might be a safe space.
That’s when they found the bed. Underneath the bed, to be exact. Forty square feet (not counting the edges) of “You can’t get me here!” space.
So now we had a new problem to solve. We didn’t want to do anything that would push them back into their room, but we also didn’t want to give them another place to hide with no opportunity for socialization. Thus began the “The Packing Box Project.”
After a bit of research, I found 4 x 4 x 36-inch cardboard packing boxes that would fit under the bed. Perfect! I had a plan.
Abruptly blocking off the space under the bed was not an option. We were creeping along toward socialization, so we started slowly. Each day, I would put four boxes under the bed, gradually shrinking the space available for them to burrow into and hide.
As we got closer to filling the space, (25 boxes and counting) I cut back to two boxes per day. They continued to find refuge under there until, eventually, it just wasn’t “the perfect place to hide” anymore.
Once the space was filled, there was a short relapse back to their sanctuary for a few days. But they had had a taste of the rest of the house, and eventually they came back out to explore.
The project was a success—to a point.
Totti was not going to give me the win on this one.
Many, many months later, I was searching for Totti and couldn’t find her anywhere. For some reason, I decided to look under the bed.
There she was, only an inch or two in from the bed frame.
Over time, that little one had managed to push the boxes in just far enough to make herself a little space under the bed.
That’s fine. She can have the win.
She rarely uses the space these days, and it’s there if she really needs it.
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