I love it when mummy is at home during the week as we get to chill out and have some fun and I normally get extra walkies too. This week though mummy was at home for a couple of mornings but instead of taking me on extra walkies she was busy moving things around in the living room. The first day some people came in and made loads of noise, I waited safely in the other room where I know they can’t get me (not that mummy would let them) and when I came out there was something different. I went to into the living room and was wandering round just to check that everything was as it should be after the noise and what’s this? I went to climb up onto the sofa to get into my bed and it wasn’t there! The men had stolen the sofa! I shouted for mummy as I needed to tell her that we’ve been robbed. Where are mummy and daddy going to sit? Well it’s ok daddy has a new chair and mummy can sit in the big comfy chair by the window, the one I bird watch from and use to climb up onto the sideboard. Oh no the chair’s gone too – what’s happening, what are we going to do? How am I going to get into my bed behind the sofa and if there’s no chair and how can I bird watch from the window now? I can’t even sit on mummy’s lap as she’s got nowhere to sit either!
That night daddy sat in the chair and mummy sat in a big crinkly bag which she said was full of beans which sounds very odd and uncomfortable to me but she was ok and didn’t seem to mind much. Mummy doesn’t sit down much anyway as we all keep her busy wanting to play or be let outside or play again and then some more play followed by dinner.
The next day mummy was home again, she was again moving things round in the living room and she got out the nasty hoover monster machine and if that wasn’t bad enough on its own she then got out the noisy hot puffing dragon machine, which she uses to make the floor wet and then squeaky clean after we’ve all been running around and spilling our food everywhere. I don’t like the puffing machine so I just watch from a distance and keep away plus if I walk over the floor and my paws get wet mummy tells me off as she says she has to go back and do it again. She tells me I’m a naughty kitty and to keep my mucky paws off her clean floor.
Then after a while some men turned up again and this time they brought something with them. Mummy showed them into the living room and they made some noise and then left after a while. As usual I had been watching from a distance but when they left I went into the living room to see what had been going on. I could smell that there was something different in the living room, something had changed, there was something new in there. I cautiously wandered into the living room, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing as much as I could to see if I could figure out what this new thing was. It smelt unusual to me, nothing like I have ever smelt before, I couldn’t even guess at what it was because the smell wasn’t even similar to anything I remembered. Quite often if I smell something new I can link it to something familiar. Nature smells fresh, natural, delicate; home smells of many things but cooking food, washing, people, cleaning but this didn’t smell like any of those, it smelt strongly of chemical, I couldn’t smell any animals, humans, nature or anything I could recognise. It was a completely new scent.
I put my whiskers out as far as they could go so I would be able to feel if I came up close to it, my whiskers can feel the slightest little touch. I walked around and followed the new smell, the smell seemed to be coming from the same place as he old sofa used to be, as I got closer, the smell got stronger and stronger. Mummy said it’s ok Jenny it’s just a new sofa, she patted it and tried to encourage me onto it but I wasn’t quite sure just yet. I needed to explore it a bit more just to make sure it was ok. It’s taken me a few days to get there but now I’m just about used to it, it’s nearly the same, but climbing up onto it is a bit higher and then climbing up onto the back is a bit of a bigger step too. Going up is ok but coming down is a bit harder as it’s a bit of a longer step down but I’ll get used to it soon enough, in the meantime I’ll take things carefully.
The thing is, lots of people say that with a blind cat you shouldn’t move furniture around as it will confuse us but that isn’t the most difficult thing. You see when you move furniture around it still smells the same so I still know what it is even if it’s in a different place. I still know my route over the furniture as I can still smell where I’ve been before, I can smell where Peppar normally sits and I know I need to go a little to the left to avoid him. With new furniture there is no familiar smell, it just smells different, nothing familiar at all. I don’t know how big it is, how high it is, if I can jump onto or off it. After a little bit it started to smell like mummy and daddy and then gradually Peppar, Millie and Angelin.
It’s not just the smell though, it feels different on my paws, not just the material but also my paws don’t sink in quite as far, it seems firmer and not as squishy. It makes different noises too, the movements mummy and daddy make sound different, and then the noise that makes their feet go up and down is different as well. This is harder to get used to that everything else as when I’m dropping off to sleep and the gentle whine makes me wonder what it is. As you know my hearing is excellent and acts as an early warning system so when I hear anything unusual or unfamiliar then I go into alert mode. Then mummy says it’s ok Jenny it’s just the sofa, it’s nothing to worry about. She gives me a little reassuring stroke and then I can go back to sleep. For the first couple of nights though I spent most of the nights in the spare room on Peppars snuggle bed, just until I was completely sure about everything.
When mummy and daddy were out at work or asleep in bed I’d go into the living room and practice getting up onto the sofa, climbing onto the back to get into my favourite bed behind mummy’s head and making sure my route was mapped out. Jumping up and climbing down from my bed, making sure I knew where to put my paws and the best places to tread. I might be a cat but I really don’t want to embarrass myself, even if it is only mummy and daddy, being embarrassed doesn’t sit well with us cats. We like our humans to think that we’ve got everything under control and that everything we do we mean to do even if it isn’t completely true! If I fall off the sofa then of course that’s what I meant to do, nothing more, nothing less it was all on purpose.
I really hope that mummy and daddy don’t get new furniture too often as I have just got everything just the way I wanted after Millie and Angelin arrived, It’s far too much effort to have to redo it every time mummy and daddy change something. At least with daddy’s new chair he covered it with a blanket that already smelt of us (something to do with our claws scratching everything) so that was ok. Now that I’ve smelt this new scent I’ll remember it next time something similar comes along or the next time mummy and daddy get another new sofa. It means that as with everything in my life so far I’ll have learnt from this new experience to be able to use it again in the future. Learning is very important, it’s how us street cats manage to survive from one day to the next and it never leaves you no matter how comfortable you feel.
Jenny’s Story 