My animal did not particularly enjoy her trip back to her birth state.
On the drive from Boston to Jackson, Peach sat in the backseat, curled up fairly compactly, and refused to move or eat or drink or use her litter box for the entirety of the 14 hour trip.
And when we carried her into my parents’ house, she flipped a lid at having eight people, two friendly Corgis, and a foreign cat all in her face. I was bitten, Lance scratched, and she hid under a foot stool and swiped at her offenders with her claws all evening.
I learned that my cat can growl! Which she did toward Moonshine right on through our trip, never letting her enter the room without at least an intimidating hiss.
She also hissed at my parents, my sisters, and me. We penned her up in Dorothy’s room during the day, and she spent nights perched on the arm of the sofa that was my bed. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to see her 2 inches from my head, gazing intently into the ceiling fan. And when our eyes met, she would give me a good hiss too.
Anyway, then she had an appointment at the Reproductive Organ Removal Facility. I was in Ohio with my mother for two days, so my sister Betsy was so kind as to fetch her from her surgery. The drugs must have done her some good because from there on out, she was a changed cat. She let everyone pet, often to the point where I wondered what happened to her old fighting, biting spirit. Was her personality due to too much kitty estrogen? It was strange. She cozied up to the dogs, although they wouldn’t come near her after she’d swiped their noses a few times on that first night. She roamed the house freely instead of hiding in the fireplace all day, or behind a couch.
The abundance of loud voices and slammed doors and barking dogs still frightened her multiple times daily. And of course, she and Moonshine still had territory wars, but no actual catfighting took place. Which was for the best. My Peach has a freaking creepy growl, but Moonshine lives Outside, with Other Animals With Claws and Teeth.
I spent some time fretting over my antisocial animal.
“Are you upset because it’s your fault that your cat is hissing? Do you think you broke her?” my dad ask.
Which I could tell was code for, “Do you REALLY think you can control your cat in ANY way, you silly girl? I could barely control you as a child and you were a HUMAN for Pete’s sake!”
But no, I wasn’t upset about that. I was mostly upset that my animal was being such a poor houseguest. Like when somebody invites their grumpy boyfriend over and he gets mad at the world and then everyone rolls their eyes at that particular sister? I was that sister, and while my actual grumpy boyfriend spent most of the week in Lapeer with his family, my cat was an annoying stand in.
And also, ever since we got Peach, I’ve wanted another cat, someday when we have a slightly larger abode. Watching my cat claw at other animals dampened my menagerie-related spirits just a bit.
But I guess she ended up okay.
She’s now back in her home, where she hasn’t hissed once, where she eats, drinks, uses the litter box, and wakes me up every morning so I can pull her security blanket onto the bed she she can lay with me. She fights. She bites. She loves our abundance of moving boxes.
It’s just the *actual* moving I’m concerned about. We are moving in with a roommate. And I will be bringing both a freeloading friend of Lance’s who is looking to move to Boston, AND an antisocial cat who, on her better days, has a tendency toward ankle biting.
Everyone cross their adorable little paws for me.
