After a few weeks of watching his somewhat unusual eating patterns, and working on a tip from the woman who had been feeding him, I realized that although he is definitely eating enough during each day, he is still very much sticking to the feeding times he got used to with her, despite the fact that he now has food available 24hrs a day. (All of the strays I've worked with previously ate obsessively for the first week or so, until they realized that there was food available all the time, whenever they wanted.) On a hunch, I decided to alter my tactics once again. I still go about my business during the day, sitting at the computer etc, but now, I get under the bed with him for a while, specifically around the times he's used to being fed.
I started back at ground zero since I know I had previously made him uncomfortable doing this. Over the course of a few days, I was, once again, able to get my hand close enough to him to put treats directly under his nose. But it was this morning that we saw our first major successes of the week. First I tried making a small trail of treats between us, with a small pile of treats at the end, in front of me. Then I closed my eyes and waited. 'lo and behold, he inched his way forward along the trail until he was close enough that his eyebrow whiskers were tickling my face while he was eating. I'm so proud of him that he was willing to get that close! Even if he was heavily bribed to do so. ;)
But the big excitement of the night was this: he voluntarily (and rather daintily I might add) ate treats directly from my fingers!! And as long as he was still in the process of taking the treat from my fingers, I was allowed to gently pet his cheeks with a finger from that same hand. He continued to take the treats from my fingers for as long as I was willing to give them. (I eventually stopped since he'd had a rather large number of them by that point and I didn't want to upset his tummy)
But... huzzah!!!
You can't see it, but this is my happy face. :D
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