House Cat

"I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul." - Jean Cocteau

Odin unpacks all his essentials--after all, home is where the blowfish is Odin has moved. After spending his entire lifetime (of 2 years) in Pennsylvania, he has relocated to the midwest.

Cats don't like to move. Cats don't like to do a lot of things, but they really don't like to move. They are, after all, territorial creatures. Whereas dogs are happy as long as they're with their people, cats get stressed when removed from their little kingdoms. It's how they define themselves. Dogs determine who they are as part of a pack. Cat's define themselves by their space.

My empty dining room, and window Odin used to sit in Same goes for people, of course. There are those who wander happily looking for adventure, and those who get overly attached to their homes. I'm the latter. Leaving my old house was probably as traumatic for me as for Odin. Those last days were tough, walking through empty, eerie rooms that had meant so much to me.

I like to think that not only had the house become part of me, but that I had become part of the house. It certainly has much of my blood, sweat, and tears in it. The new owners will make their own changes (and, unlike the people I bought the house from, I'll try to be cool about that). But even when they strip off all my wallpaper or paint over my colors or dig out my plants, I'll still be part of the house's history, part of its everchanging shape.

Odin enjoying the view from the dining room window Cats do that. The space doesn't just define them--they define the space. My old house changed because of Odin. What had simply been a dining room window became a daybed, the perfect spot to snooze in the sun and watch the action in the birdbath right outside. The attic became a mysterious forbidden place for a swashbuckling cat to explore and conquer. And the stairs a royal dais from which to greet visitors.

(A wonderful illustration of how cats become the soul of houses can be seen in the photo essay, Miss Shelley's Neighborhood. I love these picture of cats and their houses.)

Luckily, Odin has begun to become part of my new house, after a rough start. The first day, I was scared as I looked around my new, small, oh-so-different house, worried that I'd made a big mistake in deciding to move. All my stuff was here, but the place didn't feel like me. Odin had the same reaction. He hid, terrified by finding familiar scents in a strange place. He stayed under the loveseat all day and refused to join me upstairs at night.

Papasan Odin, finding his place But then the next morning I came downstairs and went out in the sunroom (yes, I bought the house in large part because it had a sunroom for Odin). Odin greeted me in the doorway, quivering his tail and chirping joyfully, "Look, mom, a room that's all windows!"

Little by little, he has since begun to make the house ours. Does he miss the old house? Who knows. He does seem to miss having the litterbox in my bathroom and is slightly offended that he must now do his personal business in the basement. But otherwise he has discovered much that this house has to offer. He loves to tear along the length of my upstairs, one long low room where he can get up a good head of steam. He's discovered a window where he can watch the neighborhood from above.

Odin sunning himself in the sunroom And, of course, he loves the sunroom and has made it his own.

All is right with the world.