Moving, Part 1: in which I ramble on about the cat
Hey, look, an Internet!! We've got a connection at the new place, and that means we really live there, right? Of course, we don't have coffee, or tables, so we're at a handy cafe. More on the apartment later. This is all about traveling with the stupid cat.
First of all, consider - we drove almost three hours on Saturday, only 1.5-2 or so on Sunday, 5.5 on Monday, and 7.5 on Tuesday. It doesn't seem to matter how long we drove, the cat calmed down about halfway into the trip. She only complained for 45 minutes or so on Sunday, but driving across New York state on Tuesday, she was stomping around the car announcing how much she hated us for at least 3 hours. After that, though, she pretty much settled down - at first sitting on one of us for comfort, then sprawling out on the arm-rest acting all emo.
Saturday: "This is really weird, but it's better if I sit on someone." (also highly amusing watching her try to walk while the car was moving around - not so graceful!)
Sunday: "I hate you, let me go all over the car in awkward places and make a lot of noise"
Monday: "okay, fine, I'll just drape myself here on this handy armrest and pine for normality." Cheer up, emo cat.
And by the way, she's not very happy.
There are probably other factors involved, not that the cat picked up on psychic waves to know how much longer we had to go - notice that the trips got longer each day. Also the relative excitement of the overnights was stepping up as we went. In Kalamazoo, she stayed in an office during the day and slept with us overnight. In Ann Arbor, she stayed in the basement, and had conversations with the local cat through the door, and we didn't let her into our bedroom. In Buffalo, she had the option of a room of her own, but seemed convinced that we were abandoning her, so we let her out, at which point she met each of the 5 other cats of the house. The advantage of having 5 cats is that they just sort of shrug and say "oh, great, another one", do a cursory sniff, maybe growl a bit, then would be content to mind their own business.
We were staying with
fromtheboonies, who we put one cat closer to "crazy cat lady" status - she maintains that 7 cats is the limit, but I suspect that it's actually a complicated formula related to the number of people in the house and the urban-ness of the environment. (i.e. one person with only 5 cats in a 1-BR flat is a crazy cat lady, but a couple with a kid and 7 cats in a rural environment still have a ways to go, especially if there's a barn involved.) The most fun part of it was that her Pumpkin looks remarkably like our Tessa - they're both generic Grey Stripey Cat (TM) with their own variations, easily distinguished if you look (orange vs green eyes most obviously, general body shape a bit different also) but while we were siting around the living room playing tunes, both of us kept saying "was that my cat?"
But now, we're safely arrived. For a while it seemed like the Contessa's purr box was broken - she was content enough to hang around us, and malleable enough to pick up, and was totally willing to eat what was put in front of her, but she wasn't acting like she enjoyed it at all. Fortunately, she was pretty much back to normal this morning, purring around and demanding love and attention. Trauma forgotten.
First of all, consider - we drove almost three hours on Saturday, only 1.5-2 or so on Sunday, 5.5 on Monday, and 7.5 on Tuesday. It doesn't seem to matter how long we drove, the cat calmed down about halfway into the trip. She only complained for 45 minutes or so on Sunday, but driving across New York state on Tuesday, she was stomping around the car announcing how much she hated us for at least 3 hours. After that, though, she pretty much settled down - at first sitting on one of us for comfort, then sprawling out on the arm-rest acting all emo.
Saturday: "This is really weird, but it's better if I sit on someone." (also highly amusing watching her try to walk while the car was moving around - not so graceful!)
Sunday: "I hate you, let me go all over the car in awkward places and make a lot of noise"
Monday: "okay, fine, I'll just drape myself here on this handy armrest and pine for normality." Cheer up, emo cat.
And by the way, she's not very happy.
There are probably other factors involved, not that the cat picked up on psychic waves to know how much longer we had to go - notice that the trips got longer each day. Also the relative excitement of the overnights was stepping up as we went. In Kalamazoo, she stayed in an office during the day and slept with us overnight. In Ann Arbor, she stayed in the basement, and had conversations with the local cat through the door, and we didn't let her into our bedroom. In Buffalo, she had the option of a room of her own, but seemed convinced that we were abandoning her, so we let her out, at which point she met each of the 5 other cats of the house. The advantage of having 5 cats is that they just sort of shrug and say "oh, great, another one", do a cursory sniff, maybe growl a bit, then would be content to mind their own business.
We were staying with
fromtheboonies, who we put one cat closer to "crazy cat lady" status - she maintains that 7 cats is the limit, but I suspect that it's actually a complicated formula related to the number of people in the house and the urban-ness of the environment. (i.e. one person with only 5 cats in a 1-BR flat is a crazy cat lady, but a couple with a kid and 7 cats in a rural environment still have a ways to go, especially if there's a barn involved.) The most fun part of it was that her Pumpkin looks remarkably like our Tessa - they're both generic Grey Stripey Cat (TM) with their own variations, easily distinguished if you look (orange vs green eyes most obviously, general body shape a bit different also) but while we were siting around the living room playing tunes, both of us kept saying "was that my cat?"
But now, we're safely arrived. For a while it seemed like the Contessa's purr box was broken - she was content enough to hang around us, and malleable enough to pick up, and was totally willing to eat what was put in front of her, but she wasn't acting like she enjoyed it at all. Fortunately, she was pretty much back to normal this morning, purring around and demanding love and attention. Trauma forgotten.