4 years ago when we finally committed to moving permanently to Sweden, we faced the dilemma of what do we take with us, and what do we leave behind. When you're talking about a straight line journey of about 17,000km, you have to start being both brutal and realistic about the value of one's worldly posessions. We did a fair bit of slash and burn, but still arrived with about 80% of what one needs to set up a house again.
One item of goods which never came into question was our animals. They were booked a seat on the plane right from day one. Ok, their tickets costs more than our own, but who leaves their children behind ? Today when I look back, I'm pretty convinced that the cat, dog, and horse, are all thankful that they could follow with us. Say what you like about Sweden, but animals have a pretty good life here. Our 3 babies certianly have it way better than they ever could have had in NZ.
Sadly our little American cocker spaniel left us last Christmas. But I like to think that she had a very happy and rather action packed life. The horse is thriving and is barely recognisable from the creature that was loaded up into a horse transport truck fom his NZ paddock. It will be a few more years before I've been to as many countries as he travelled through between Dunedin and Boden. I'm quite envious of his passport.
Which brings us to the cat. A sad little long hair tortoise shell moggie of dubious parentage, who was left to fend for herself in the forest when her family up and moved. It's hard to know exactly how old she is but, as she was an adult when we took her in, we figure that she's got to be around the 15 years mark today.
During the years she lived with us in NZ, she was primarily an outdoor cat. She would come in for a meal, but then was generally quite happy being outside day and night. It was a concern for us how she would adjust to her loss of freedom when she became a Swedish apartment cat. 3 years later, I somehow doubt that she considers it to be much of a loss. A 23 deg warm apartment, sunlight to follow from room to room, and a big soft cat bed directly under a warm radiator. No, I suspect she considers it to be anything but a loss. On the odd occassion that the apartment door is open for any length of time, she stares out with a degree of suspicion and then scuttles back to the comfort of her radiator. Last winter she even perfected the art of warming her toes directly on the radiator. It's a terrible life.
Life does start to catch up with the best of us, and so it has been for our baby. A few more trips to the vet than normal, an arthritic back, and a few more bumps and lumps on her body than there had been. The later not being helped by her managing to get her neck trapped in the bathroom door and then a wardrobe door within the space of a minute last week. Her eyesight is still reasonably good, but lately we've been starting to question her hearing. She has a rather cute party trick of always replying whenever anyone says "hej" to her. As with the horse, the cat became bi-lingual long before I ever did. Anyway, lately we've noticed that we've had to raise our voices a bit to her, in order to get a reponse out of her. Yesterday, I decided to carry out a little experiment of my own. And what I discovered, what I'm pretty damn sure of, is that she is lip reading. She knows the mouth shape of "hej", and that's what she is responding to. Now how clever is that ?
Forget about old dogs and new tricks. Cats have it all over them. Probably why dogs hate cats.
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