All change

My sisters and I were learning a lot from our mother, like how to dodge out of the way of the smaller humans when they were making a lot of noise or running too fast. We discovered nice food, and learned to drink water from a bowl without getting inside it.

The humans told me I was Alexander the Great, and my multi-coloured sister was Joan of Arc. The grey one seemed to have lots of names, though.

Then one day, two of the regular visitors came by. There was the tall thin one that was known as 'Tim', who was very fond of my grey sister. He said he was going to take her away. The other visiting human, who seemed to be called 'Dad' (at least by Tim) said he was going to take me and my other sister Joan!

We wondered where they might take us, but it sounded exciting. They put us in a box, which wasn't very nice, and then we all got into a bigger box that made a noise and scared us, which the humans called a 'car'. Then they took us into a different house.

Before we had time to be worried, they gave us some food, just like we had at our first house:

It was all exciting, and new, and we didn't have time to miss our mother at first. Then we found the litter tray, and that smelled like home, so we got inside and felt miserable:

That didn't last for long, because we had to use it for the normal purpose. We had such fun scratching it afterwards, seeing how much we could get out of the box, and we forgot all about our first home for a while.

But I was glad of my sister to cuddle at night.

I woke up and couldn't remember where I was, but when I jumped onto the bed and landed on the human with my claws out, he shouted at me.

There was so much to learn, in our new house. At first we thought we would go home soon, but gradually we forgot about our first home and decided we liked the second one. It was quieter, as the smaller humans only came to visit once or twice each week, but there were two old cats who didn't like us at first. Our mother had taught us how to lie down instead of fighting, so we did that, and let the old cats - one black, one tortoiseshell - know that they were the bosses.

At least, while we settled in. We got more active, and ran around, and discovered which things we could knock over. It was a lot of fun.

Just as we thought we were feeling at home the box appeared again and we went back in the car. We thought maybe we were going back to our first family, but we were taken to a different place, that smelled of lots of animals.

The next bit is very fuzzy in my mind, but I sense that it was significant. I'm pretty sure that something rather undignified took place. Then we were taken home again.

I didn't feel at all comfortable for a couple of days, and my poor sister Joan was very miserable. So I licked her and we snuggled up together, even though it was really very warm.

And gradually, things got better.