Both went into hiding instantly. Riker claimed the area under a recliner, while Mara bolted for a spot behind books on a shelf at ground level.

We checked in on both a few hours after moving in, and Riker decided to make a break for the bookshelf as well, then both cats moved into the corner where the shelves meet, somewhat exposed. We got out a can of wet food and Riker did take some off a spoon. Mara wasn’t interested, and her body language was screaming “scared”.

I set up a webcam connected to my workstation in the room, and fired up a program to stream the video, and send screenshots when motion was detected to e-mail. Just before we left, I was able to coax Riker out with a laser pointer. However, it appeared he was more interested in returning to the recliner. We left the cats alone and closed the door. Mara eventually joined Riker under the recliner a few minutes later, evidenced by the webcam stream.

At first I thought I had the motion detection configured wrong. We didn’t get any notifications all night. I went to work Friday and had the video stream on a monitor all day. No sign of either cat. All quiet.

On the way home around 4:30, I got a notification. Movement. Riker decided to crawl out, and Mara joined him a couple minutes later. Both checked out the food and water, the litter box, and did some investigating of the surroundings. This lasted for about half an hour, until I got home. They both heard me come in the front door and immediately returned to the recliner to hide.