Dealing with change

I used to be the only cat in my human's house. Now, I share a bedroom with - get this - 22 other cats. Talk of having to adapt to a change.

It's not as cramped as you think. One of the bedroom walls has a hole in it at floor-level, meant for an airconditioner. [You can see the hole on the extreme right edge in the picture.] The hole gives me and my 22 roomies an access route to a garden outside. Most of us spend the morning basking out in the garden, which is rather nice. It is fenced in and has an awning. It is bright but it keeps us dry if it rains.

At night, when the temperature drops, most of us head back into the bedroom.

I used to be able to go where I pleased in my human's home, except for the two bedrooms. I would walk all over the place, and even sneak into the bedrooms whenever she wasn't looking, or when she had forgotten to shut the bedroom door before going out.

Now that I share this bedroom with 22 other cats, each with his or her own smell and story, I can't mark where I please. Until I suss out the dynamics in play among them here, I don't think I'll do much yet. But one thing is clear though: I'm one of the biggest moggies in this room, so none of them had better mess with me.

For now, when I wake up in the mornings, I head up to the upper bunk of the double-decker bed in the room. It's so I can escape the smell at floor level. The air is fresher 2 metres off the ground. Heck, with 23 of us in there having slept through the night, it can, of course, get downright funky. And half of us do use the row of litter pans there in the mornings, so until B [Auntie S' maid] comes in to clean the pans and feed us in the mid-morning, it's a whole bad-air zone.

Sometimes, when I wake up, I forget momentarily where I am. [So shoot me. For almost nine years, I woke up in the comfort of my own basket and would be fed kibble about an hour later, after I got my eyes and ears cleaned.] Then the smell hits me.
Sometimes, those roomies get too close for comfort. I tell them off with a growl and hiss that I'm not ready to be that chummy yet.

It's a funny thing, Change. The thought of impending change is sometimes more daunting than the change itself. It might even be better to be surprised with change than to be told in advance of its arrival. Advance warning just gives room for worry.

...that is, if it's an unpleasant change. Nice changes just breed anticipation. Then again, we aren't talking of a nice change in my case, are we? In my case, I didn't have much of a warning. She just talked to me, gave me my snacks and put me in the carrier and drove me out here.

Getting into the car is always bad news to me. It can mean either of two things: Going to the vet, or going to the Pet Hotel. Both occasions freak me out.

Of course, on Feb 7, 2006, I found out the third meaning of being bundled into my purple pet carrier and being put into the car. I was to be dumped in a new place. Ten minutes into the drive, I stopped meowing and went quiet. It was when a bad, bad feeling came over me.

The feeling was fear... fear that it wasn't the vet or the Pet Hotel. No matter how bad those two other types of outings were, they always ended with me being brought back home. Not this time.

I reckon I have another five years or so of life. Is this where it's all going to end? Or maybe my human might come and bring me home again one day? As long as she comes to visit without lugging a pet carrier, I know it's not going to happen. So it looks like I'll just have to adapt, find a new routine, set up a new paradigm. [Wow, I used that word. I'm so with-it in management-speak.]