Let's face it, moving is hard on anybody. It's particularly hard on cats. Everyone always says that cats are so attached to a place that it is worse for them to lose their place than it would be to lose their humans. That might be true with most cats, but luckily, it's not the case with ours. Which is not to say that they don't need some time to adjust, and it's certainly not to say that the transition is easy. We always try to make it easier on them by putting them in a single room together and staying with them as much as we can during the move. When we moved to our previous house, it was the finished room downstairs, so they could have the experience of getting to go up to explore the house rather than down. We set up a futon down there and slept with them for a few days until they got used to the sounds and smells of the new house. This time, we decided to put them in our bedroom upstairs, because it was the only room that made any sense in this house.
We also made the difficult decision to bring Mango over separately, and keep her separated from the other cats, probably permanently, in the garage. As hard as that is to admit out loud, the confrontations between the other cats and her were becoming increasingly frequent, and she seems to have reached a point where she's no longer happy being part of our family. (Not that she was ever particularly happy about it before, but it seems to have gotten worse.) We decided it was the kindest thing for her to make her a little warm nest in the garage, keep her fed and watered and clean up her messes, but let her do it by herself. More on that later.
We bundled them all into carriers the second day of our official move, once our bed and most of the bedroom furniture was over there, just to try to make it as "normal" as possible for them once they were over there. We had planned to do it earlier in the day, but the day kept getting away from us, so the next thing we knew, it was 10pm on Friday night before we had them all loaded up. Sean took Wanda, Otto, Elroy and Reggie and I took Mister, as well as the cleaned litter boxes, and other sundries. Sean headed out before me, but he took a wrong turn in the dark and rain and I ended up beating him to the new house. In a way, I was glad that Mister was getting the opportunity to be the first one there. He's done a lot of moving in his now sixteen years with me. At last count, he's lived in two different apartments and four different houses. Now he was moving to his seventh abode, and I seriously hoped he would like it. It seemed like the least I could do was let him decide this was his house before the other cats got here.
There were complications. First of all, we have a bear. Not, like, chained in the backyard or anything, but a bear who comes down from the mountain and regularly traverses our yard in search of tasty garbage can morsals. The last time the bear had been seen was the week before in the rain, so you can bet I was looking over my shoulder as I let us into the house, hoping the bear didn't consider this delivery food. (Not that black bears would even eat a cat, but that's where your brain goes when it's dark and wet and you're exhausted from moving for two days straight.) Plus, we needed a litter box set up, which wasn't done yet.
As fast as I could, I got Mister up the stairs to our bedroom and got the litter box set up so he could use it. A few minutes later, Sean showed up with the other four, and we trundled them all upstairs to join Mister. Once everyone was in there and the door was closed, we started letting cats out. We immediately had to clean off Reggie because he (you guessed it) pooped and vomited all over himself--again. We hadn't yet put our bed frame together, so we were sleeping on our mattress on the floor, which meant that nobody could dive under the bed. Instead, they dove under the covers, sometimes on the bed, sometimes at the foot of the bed on the floor, where the covers fell over the side and could keep them hidden.
Reggie seemed to be the most freaked out. He mostly just stayed on the bed, trying to be small (quite a task for the FelineTick). Wanda kept trying to look out the full-length glass doors leading out to the upper deck, but it was too dark and rainy for her to see anything. Mister hid between the mattress and the wall, and the others were in varying stages of curiosity and mild terror. Finally, the two Big Buddies piled into bed and discovered a mosh pit of kitties who were all very interested in cuddling that night.
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