The pillow caper; or, learning to move a cat

It was a good plan. Really, it was. And you can't say that too often when a cat is involved.

As I've mentioned before, my wife and I are planning to move to a different house later this month. We've been trying to plan ahead as much as possible to make the transition bearable. It's not easy for a couple who moved 18 times in the first 32 years of marriage and then stayed put for 18 years in the same house. We have grown accustomed to this place.

One planning factor, of course, involves Missy Kitty, the cat who not only makes most of the laws in this household, but also enforces them in her feline way.

So here was the gist of our plan:

Cats are creatures of habit and routine. Change one little thing in a 24-hour day, and your cat will probably balk. That's because she's a cat. Period.

So-called experts say the best way to handle a move, from a cat's perspective, is to confine the animal to one room at the new location for at least a week.

Are you kidding?

So, my wife and I came up with an alternative. The cat's main base indoors, other than its milk dish, is the wicker chair in the family room. It has a pillow seat covered with a towel. This is where Missy Kitty sleeps when she's indoors. Her routine is very much centered on this arrangement.

So, here is what we were thinking:

The wicker chair, along with a few other wicker pieces, won't be moving to our new home. The wicker is part of the downsizing that will occur.

Instead, the cat's new sleeping perch will be an oak captain's chair, which we call a teacher's chair.

There's a bit of history that comes with the chair. It is from the country school where my mother went to school and where, years later, she taught school. It is also the school where my high school English teacher first taught and whose students included my mother. See how it's all connected?

When the school building was closed, my mother bought the property. I'm not sure she knew what to do with it, but she held on to it for several years. Later, she sold the granite building to a family who converted it into a home.

The one thing we kept from the old school was the teacher's chair. It has been a part of our living room for years. And this is the chair we picked for Missy Kitty's new lair.

Foolishly, we did not consult the cat about all this. You can see where I'm headed.

We thought we would buy a new cat-comfy cushion for the chair. We would put the new cushion in the wicker chair, so as to cause as little upset to Missy Kitty as possible. Once she had adapted to the new cushion, we would switch it to the teacher's chair -- again, in an effort to be as least disruptive as possible.

Off we went to the pet store that sells everything. I found a puffy cat bed. I bought it. I took it home. I put it in the wicker chair.

The cat went nuts.

I mean it. Nuts.

According to Missy Kitty, my wife and I were conspiring to do evil of the worst sort, and that soft cat bed was obviously a trap, a gateway device to a fate worse than death.

In a word, the new cat bed was too soft.

Back to the pet store. I exchanged the cat bed for something more resembling a cat pad. Back home, the cat responded by refusing to come in the house to drink milk.

Folks, that's a serious snub.

The new cat pad, it seems, was too hard.

My wife thoughtfully suggested that we should go to a store that sells old-fashioned chair pads, the kind you tie onto the chair to keep them from slipping and sliding. Off we went. We found a chair pad that's a cross between a cat bed and a cat pad. I put it in the wicker chair. The cat came into the family room, jumped into the wicker chair, made two full rotations, plopped down and went to sleep. Just like that.

Apparently, this pad was just right. My wife and I were giddy. We had done something that the cat approved of. O joyful day!

We are waiting for the next step. This will involve moving the teacher's chair into the family room and installing the new cushion. The hope is that the cat will be drawn to the pad and ignore the fact that her chair is now oak, not wicker.

If you were a gambler, what odds would you give us that this plan has a snowball's chance of succeeding?

Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.