My only previous cat had this moving thing down. I owned her while I was in college, so I would truck her from my folks’ house to our apartment and back for long stays. I moved her eight hours north after college. She moved three more places with me while she lived, and she toughed it all out.

She’d yowl in the carrier and make a stinking mess on the longer trips, but once we got the wherever we were going, I’d let her out indoors and she’d regally inspect the premises.

But Booger’s only been in a carrier once or twice, and never has been moved. He’s much more outgoing than Stinky was, so I thought he’d handle it fine, but cat-moving is never going to be high on my list of fun life experiences. He stunk up the carrier in only fifteen minutes, so when we got there, I put him in the back bathroom with all of his stuff.

I wanted to leave him there for a day or so to give him time to get a feel for where “home” was, and to keep him safe while doors were hanging open for furniture moving. He was feeling frisky and bored enough to detroy a roll of toilet paper by yesterday afternoon, so I scared up some shampoo and an old towel and proceeded to give him the second horrifying bath of his life.

He was pretty good about that too, only ripping one of my fingers open in his frantic attempts to escape the water. Once he figured out that I wasn’t letting him out of it, he stopped using claws and started trying the slippery eel move, but I’ve bathed enough cats in my life to be onto that one.

He eventually got bathed and sort of dried and his dignity majorly affronted, so I set him down to prowl. Until I did, he looked like a meerkat, stretching his head up as high as his neck would go to see where on earth I was taking him. But then he slunk around all of the edges and discovered that our good old furniture was there. It took him about as long as it did to dry off to completely relax, but now he owns the place again and is supervising the unpacking. Booger would like things to please be taken out of boxes now, so he can properly inhabit said boxes.

The dogs come home this afternoon, but they’ll be cool. New things to smell, new dogs to talk to, and a front gate they can actually see through. They’re travelling experts though, so this is old hat to them.

It’s starting to feel like home, with the cat on my bed at night.