Saturday, February 16, 2008

Cat Question: What if my humans move house?

Dear George
My primary care giver has been talking about "moving house". This has been going on ages now and they may not get round to it but I'm not sure I approve. I have everything I want here, although the large garden which is mentioned sounds good. What do you think?
I would rather not dump them as I am not going back to the streets and like the regular meals, cat flap, litter tray at this cold tie of year and sit down cuddles/ treats on the sofa. Plus I got tuna for breakfast and a new toy recently - a flat mouse shaped leather tag on a leather string, it came with a "work/documents" file which is useless for playing with so the human got that, I think my end of the deal is best. The flat mouse is good though, and smells nice and animal like, so the humans are worth holding onto.
Smudge


ANSWER:
The human obsession with moving house shows their complete inability to grasp the meaning of territory. "Territory is security" is a well known saying among wise cats. We need core territory, a place to eat, sleep and if necessary hide. We also need the home hunting range. We know the home range intimately - the patch of ivy near the garden shed where a family of wood mice hang out, the box shrub that smells like cat pee so we mark on it, the garden wall next door where we can sit and terrorize next door's smaller cat, the frightening front steps near the pavement where passing dogs leave THEIR marks. We know it. We love it. We feel happy in it.
Moving house just ruins everything for us.
Consider your options. Is there a friendly neighbour you could move in on? Is this the time to develop a huge and very visible series of panic attacks? Run from even the slightest noise, hide under the bed, make strange wailing noises? This might persuade your humans that you are going through a nervous breakdown and should not be moved. Also pee on the property pages of the newspapers NOW. Show them what you think of the idea. When they are consulting websites like Prime Location jump on the keyboard with all four paws to make them disappear.

1 comment:

  1. Good advice. I'll have to keep this in mind, because I hear my humans talking from time to time about HAVING to move because of commercial development buying MY house and territory. I DON'T WANT TO MOVE!

    ReplyDelete

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

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