City Cat Transformation

Much as they are a ton of fun to watch, and they give us tons of eggs (one each and every day!), it’s not all about the chickens here! I thought that maybe some of you might be curious as to how the big city cat is getting along in the country! Particularly since his near miss with the truck fire on the way here!

Our cat’s name is Kohana.  It means “little flower” in Japanese. I won’t go into the details about how we happen to have a lovely little boy cat with such a pretty girl kitty name….. it is too shameful to detail here.  Suffice to say it was too late to change the name once the error was “revealed”.

So Kohana started life as a big city cat with the world by the tail so to speak.  Kohana settled into our household, enjoyed his three squares a day, came and went as he pleased out his very own cat door, and had a whole townhouse development full of other rambunctious cats with whom he would spend the night prowling around.  He was a very happy cat.  And handsome enough to have many of our neighbours feeding him little extras on the side…. little bugger!

Fast forward several years and life changes dramatically!  Chuck and I decide to sell our nice little townhouse and downsize to a condo while we consider our potential future move to the country.  We pack up everything and rent ourselves a wonderful condo on the 12 floor of a high rise building.  Overnight our little man finds himself nowhere near the outside world of grass, and homeboys, and handouts from the neighbours!  No cat door here – and you can see his confusion when he looks out all of the wonderful floor to ceiling windows and sees the ground…. but can’t get there.  Worse yet…. he is reduced to doing his business in a box full of sandy stuff… he is not impressed!

He is a trooper though and he weathers this change fairly well!  It is clear that it is not as much fun as the last place, but it does get much better once he gets over his mistrust of the patio……!  We are only in this place for a year when “the big move” comes.  He gets through the hellish drive to the new house in Salmo, survives the truck fire ( see post #1) and the incredible heat in Osoyoos and arrives at the acreage pretty much unscathed!   Yay us!

Holey moley! This is a huge change!!!  He finds himself back in a house with room to roam…. He can see that the ground and the grass is close by again….but hhhmmmm….. no cat door to be found.  Finally the day arrives when we decided that he can now head outdoors to check the place out.  I am almost certain he couldn’t believe his eyes!  There was grass everywhere! No cars! No noise! No other cats!  What is this strange new place? This ain’t my hood!

Watching Kohana adjust to the farm is pretty funny.  Kohana tries to keep his Surrey bad cat persona while he explores but it is clear that at first he is freaked by the large open spaces – no where to hide!! He creeps out into the field but once he realizes out how out in the open he is – he high tails it back to the house but has a ton of fun with all the new things he is finding.

For an 11 year old cat, he is pretty fiesty!   He stalks the birds – has managed to catch one (much to Fallon’s dismay!) and loves to dig down into the mole holes.  He even managed to snag a few…. and brings them home to show us his feat!  You will be happy to know he really hasn’t lost his Surrey swagger!  When he doesn’t manage to catch them…  you can almost see his frustration and when his is really mad he pee’s in their holes!  Isn’t he a clever boy!

He loves to be with us when we are outside…. he follows Chuck around while he is doing his chores, but completely ignores the chickens. Not sure if he has decided yet whether he cares for the snow… or the dog…. but I do know he loves to sit near the woodstove on cold days and doesn’t yet completely understand why he cannot go out at night!  Clearly he has no clue what could be lurking out there!