“The CatsHope™ Original Eight”
As Tami and her kittens returned to CatsHope™, The routines settled with the cats that became known as the original eight permanent residents.
Collage © CatsHope™
The Journey — The story as told by Rockie Page 4
After the Journey (as told by Rockie)
Angel Mum had come back.
We knew her voice. We knew her smell. And we knew her.
The house at Mr P’s had once seemed enormous and full of places to explore. There had been side rooms filled with furniture, quiet places to hide and Granny’s room, where Cougar liked to keep the old lady company.
But now Angel Mum was here. We were leaving.
Going Home
The journey back was different from the journey that had brought us to Mr P’s home. Going there, Mother had been with us. Now leaving, she wasn’t with us. There were only three of us. Simba. Cougar. And me.
We couldn’t ask where Mother had gone. We couldn’t understand why she wasn’t coming home with us. We could only go where Angel Mum took us. And this time, the journey ended somewhere we knew.
CatsHope™
The smells were familiar. The sounds were familiar. The routine was familiar. The cats were familiar. Our food was familiar.
This was the place where we had been born, where Mother had raised us and where we had spent the first months of our lives. Before Mr P, this had been our whole world. Now we were back inside it.
We had left as three kittens following Mother into a strange new home. We came back without her.
Home Again
There was much that Angel Mum still didn’t know. She didn’t know everything that had happened during the weeks we had been away. Neither did we.
We couldn’t tell her where we had slept every night, how much each of us had eaten or what we had done when Mother stopped coming back.
We couldn’t tell her where Cougar had been hiding during those three days when Mr P couldn’t find her.
And none of us could tell her where Mother had gone.
But there were things Angel Mum could do something about. She could feed us. She could watch us eat. She could make sure we were safe. And she could give us time. There was no need for us to learn this place. We already knew it.
We didn’t have to discover which rooms were safe or where we could hide. We didn’t have to wonder about unfamiliar food or unfamiliar people. We were home.
Mother Was Still Missing
Being home didn’t make everything the way it had been before. Mother was still gone.
For us, there could be no explanation. One day we had followed her around Mr P’s house. Then she had begun pushing us away. She wandered farther from us, stayed away longer, and eventually she didn’t return.
Perhaps kittens don’t think about these things in the way humans do. But we knew when Mother was there. And we knew when she wasn’t. The family that returned to Cats Hope™ was not the same family that had left.
Kopi and Tigger had already gone to their new homes before our journey began. Now Mother was missing too.
There were three of us. Simba, Cougar and me. We were home, but we weren’t quite sure what that meant anymore.
And Then There Was Kimi
Something else had changed while we were away. There was a new cat at CatsHope™. Her name was Kimi. Kimi had arrived while we were living at Mr P’s home, so when we returned, she was already there waiting for us.
We had come back to familiar rooms, familiar smells, familiar cats and familiar food. But there was Kimi. A new sister we had never met. She was just a month younger and we welcomed her.
And although we were home, we didn’t immediately return to being the kittens we had been before we left. We hid.
Perhaps we didn’t understand why we had been sent away in the first place. Perhaps we didn’t know whether we would be sent away again. So, for a long time after we returned, we watched. We waited. We ate the food we knew. We heard the familiar sounds around us. We began finding the routines we remembered.
Mother Came Home
A few days after we came home, something happened. Mother returned. After all those weeks when nobody knew where she was, Tami came back.
The family that had left CatsHope™ together had been scattered. Kopi and Tigger had gone to their new families. Mother had disappeared. Simba, Cougar and I had returned without her.
Kimi had arrived while we were away. And now Mother was home again too.
Not everything was the way it had been. It couldn’t be. But slowly, CatsHope™ became home again. We stopped hiding. We ate. We rested. We played. We grew. There were familiar routines to follow and a new sister to know.
The strange house that had once surrounded us became somewhere behind us. Our journey to Mr P’s home was over. Life at CatsHope™ had begun again.
And I was still Rockie — watching, wondering, and very probably about to ask another question.
Article by Tiffany Argent, Cats hope Ambassador
