Bartleby, the Maladjusted

I'm not sure if Bartleby is coping well with having other cats around quite yet. She's taken to living out of a suitcase. Literally.

Whenever I slide open the lanai door to feed the little mama, she charges inside as is her wont, and  . . . usually . . . charges right back out again (since that is where I and the food now are) but, now and then, she'll just continue on in to Bartleby's plate and try to eat off of that. It's to the point where I'll move Bartleby's dish  up onto the roll top desk if there's any food in it before I even open the lanai door. Bartleby, needless to say is not pleased by this rudeness but her response is to run and hide.

Specifically, she runs into my brother's room, into his walk-in closet and into a sort of stiff-sided red duffel bag thing she found in there. The past two weeks she has spent almost all her time in the bag, as it were, coming out only to eat and use her litter box. The rest of the time she spends curled up in her suitcase in the dark.  I've only been able to trick her into going outdoors once (same results my brother got) and then she wanted to come right back in again, standing up, pounding on the door and whining until I told her she had to stay out for at least an hour. (It was a short hour. It started to rain after 45 minutes, and I relented.) She'll sit before her water dish, facing the wall, head down and just stare at the wall for uncomfortable lengths of time.

When she does go outside, she'll stop to lick one of the small gray stone urns by the front door or sit in it pretending to be a flower.

Can cats get depressed?

On another note, depressing to the human inhabitants of our house: I spotted another cat skulking about the yard, brownish with subtle tiger striping. Could be the father. Could just be another mooch got the word.

On still another note: The kittens' eyes are open and they're bumbling their way around their box climbing all over each other and up the walls. Neighbor Dan brought over a larger box. He thinks they're three girls and a boy. Neighbor Dan's daughters are counting the days until they can take the kittens home. So am I.