The Finalist

Eyes

People have been asking me how Wrigley has been doing with the move and my silence on cat matters has, I’m sure, been strange, coming from someone who has immersed herself in everything cats for the past 23 years.  Part of my silence has a lot to do with the fact that I was still getting over the sadness of parting with cats that I thought would be with me for the rest of their lives and I was reluctant to talk too much about anything that had to do with the worry and upset of the past months.

The worst part was placing my adult cats because I know that many people don’t feel the same bond with an adult cat as they do with cats they’ve gotten as kittens. Even though I’ve placed countless kittens in my 23 years as a breeder, worked in Abyssinian rescue for several years now and consider myself fairly competent at interviewing and ferreting out excellent homes for cats, I still worried about whether I was misjudging anybody.  People, as we all know, are capable of some pretty inconsistant behavior and I’ve regretted trusting people in the past.  Placing a cat with the wrong person and moving to Moscow leaves me with no possible way to help the situation or even get my cat back.   Well, a few months and a lot of worry has passed and I’m becoming more comfortable with my decisions and also more comfortable with being a one-cat person.

As many of you know, we had to pay $4,500 deposit per EACH CAT to allow them to stay in our apartment here in Moscow and were limited to 2 cats.  We paid our fee and concentrated on finding good homes for the healthiest and most resilient of our group.  The two we kept were Tempest, in the last stages of breast cancer and Kobiyashi Maru (or Wrigley per Dr. Zeplin) who we bottle raised as a kitten and was extremely attached to us as a result.   We placed all our cats and getting closer to our departure date, we began to realize that Tempest was losing ground at an alarming rate and would not be able to make the move to Russia.  This left Wrigley as the only Aby.

If you had asked me before the move if my cats were happy and if they had a good life, I wouldn’t have hesitated in telling you, “Absolutely!”  They all have been provided with the highest quality food, fresh water daily, clean litterboxes, a clean environment, daily attention, lots of toys, were rarely caged (only for fighting or sickness) and were divided in small groups so they wouldn’t have to deal with the politics and pecking orders of a multicat household.   Greg’s allergies and tendency to wake up at the slightest sound or movement prevented us for being able to allow the cats to sleep in our bed at night, but all in all, I would have said that they have had a good life.   Wrigley lived in our main living area with Tempest and T.S. (now Coco) and everyone seemed content.

Wrigley made the trip to Moscow with nary a peep or trauma (thus not being mentioned in the blog earlier) and moved into the apartment with no problem at all.  Then after we all recovered from the time change and jet lag, something changed: Wrigley blossomed.  Soon our quiet, well-mannered little cat was zooming around the apartment like her tail was on fire.  Walls have become Nascar embankments to be, literally, ran on.  Sleeping with us is a fabulous treat to be savored and soon she mastered the “tap on the head and ask for the covers to be lifted” move and divides her time happily sleeping next to or on one of us.  She’s taught us how to launch the coveted red sparkle ball so she can play fetch and has invented the “Hide, pounce, run, hide and ambush” game and now she and I are madly running around the apartment (me giggling, her trilling) trying to find new hiding spaces so we can surprise the other during the ambush.   She knows which cabinet the treats are kept and asks for (and receives) her freeze-dried meat treats many times a day.   When the door bell rings, she runs to the door, gets up on the chair next to the door and looks at the TV screen to see who is here to visit.  Wrigley has mastered Moscow!

I can now see that providing good physical care for my cats isn’t the only thing they really needed.  What they really craved was 24 hour a day, 100% access to interact with the people that they love.  To think that I was so misguided to think that providing for the physical needs of  the little souls I was in charge was enough for them is embarassing for someone who thinks they know a lot about cats.   Of course, I realize that I am just following what is probably a common human condition, taking for granted.   All I can say is that I’m grateful that I’ve been taught a lesson and can employ this lesson to the important living beings in my life for many years to come.