In the new house, week one

We made the move last night. All we took was the stuff we need to live
until the weekend - clothes, futon mattress, towels, toothbrushes, litter
boxes, cat food dishes, water dishes, cat food, cat litter, cat toys, etc.
Harri road in the car with me, all the other kitties went in the van with
Nancy.

Harri talked to me all the way from Grinnell to Newton. I'm not sure
exactly what she was saying, but it didn't sound very happy :) Once we got
there I parked in the garage so we had to walk through the back yard to
get to the house. Harri did NOT want to go inside! I put her down on the
back (enclosed) porch, and she stood in the window chattering at the while
I fumbled with the keys. She was telling me "Look, a yard! With a tree!
And birdies! And squirrels!" (yes, she was speaking with the
exclamations). She wasn't overly disappointed when I carried her inside,
but I'm positive that we're going to have spend a LOT of time in the yard
this weekend.

We released all the other kitties from their carriers in the kitchen.
Ranger and Amelia immediately started exploring. Tabitha took off into the
dining room and disappeared. Cleo found the one cupboard with a door that
doesn't close securely (the one we had already decided would be a kitty
hidey-hole), and set to the task of defending against kitchen cupboard
greeblings. Sammy found a small (maybe 6 inch) gap between the ground
floor bathroom sink enclosure and the bathroom wall, and stationed himself
there (to guard against sneaky bathroom greeblings, he assured me).

We then got our meager supplies sorted out and positioned properly. It's
amazing how wonderful it is to be able to brush your teeth in the
bathroom instead of in the kitchen. And to be able to stand up from the
toilet without worrying about bashing your head on the ceiling. And to be
able to take a shower in an enclosure that allows me to stand normally and
turn around freely. And to be able to walk into the kitchen without
feeling the floor slope away precipitously. And to be able to climb the
stairs to the second floor without having to turn sideways.

Since we have just the bare minimum supplies in place, we laid out the
futon mattress on the dining room floor and slept there. Amelia
immediately came over for bed pets, and Harri and Ranger wandered past
periodically for pets as well. Around midnight little Tabitha showed up,
followed by Cleo. They both cautiously explored the ground floor before
venturing up the stairs. Sammy showed up around 1:00 in the morning. He
too had to explore cautiously, but he is something of a vocal explorer.
Every time he would enter a new room, he would squeak something that
sounded like "Hey, here's another space to explore! Is any one here? I'm
coming in. Hey, guys, come look. More play room. Oh, look, a window." For
the better part of 2 hours - "squeak, squeak, squeak (pause) squeak,
squeak, squeak (pause).

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the young ones decided it was time
to explore upstairs. Sounds of kitties jumping on to things, jumping off
things, knocking stuff off high surfaces - they explored every little
space they could find.

When I finally got up at 6:00 and stumbled into the upstairs bathroom, I
had plenty of company. I found 5 furry masters in the bathroom keeping me
company (only Tabitha was elsewhere, doing her catly duties). I got
serenaded all through my shower (Harri, Sammy, Amelia, and Ranger were all
singing to me).

When it was finally time to leave the house, it took e 5 minutes to get
out the back door. As soon as I opened the kitchen door to the back porch,
Harri, Ranger, and Amelia zipped onto the porch and asked - no, demanded -
to go outside. Fortunately it was raining fairly heavily so I was able to
convince them to go back in the house. But I am most definitely going to
have to seal up the two or three largish gaps under the fence tonight or
tomorrow, because I'm certainly not going to be able to keep the kitties
from playing outside for long.

I grabbed a few photos of the kitties in the house in Grinnell, and just
got the film developed yesterday. I also got a lot of photos of the house
in Newton.

I put them online at http://smurgle.net/photos. The "OldPhotos" directory
contains a wide variety of kitty photos, some rather old.

Some of the Newton photos still need to be rotated. I'll try to get that
done this afternoon.