Well, we lived in the turkey for
quite some time. Mom says it was three
years. We never got to know any of the
cats who lived outside in the neighborhood.
I guess they were busy living and didn’t have time for us. They said that we were spoiled and just were
not their kind. So, as Mom would
say: “Their loss!”
You may think that this looks like
Miss Patchy’s voice, but it is me, Mina.
I will try to catch you up on the long time it has been since my last
post. Our life was pretty good while we
were in the turkey, but some say that “all good things must come to an
end.” I think they may be right.
One day, Mom and Dad began to put
things in boxes. Oh-oh! I’ve seen that before, and it never means
good things. They also packed a lot of
clothes in the two big suitcases. It
made me afraid. I was right to be
afraid, although that part of life is over and I now must go on. Dad had been gone for most of the time we
lived in the turkey. We missed him a
lot, but it didn’t seem to matter to him.
He was always good to us when he was home, but it just was not very
often. Mom cooked a lot of things,
including our food made with chicken. I
won’t eat it, but Miss Patchy loves it.
Mom found some really good litter there, and things were quite odorless.
To get back to my update: one day, Dad’s brother, Mehmet, came, and he
spent the night. The next morning, both
Miss Patchy and I were put into one box and we and the suitcases were taken out
to a car. Oh no, here we go again! Mehmet was driving and Dad sat in the front
seat and Mom was in the back with us. We
drove for a long time, and then we were in a big place with people running
around everywhere. It was noisy, and
neither I nor Miss Patchy liked it. Mom
said it was an airport in Ankara.
Finally, after sitting around for a long time, we walked down a long
hall, and went outside and got into some sort of big thing (Mom called it an
airplane). There were lots of seats in
the thing and Mom and Dad sat in two of them and we (in one box) and the
computer sat with them. There were a lot
of people and a lot of different smells.
Every now and then, a stranger would look at us and say something to Mom
and Dad. Usually, I think they were
admiring us and that made us proud. The
thing we were in seemed to begin to move and roar and then it got very
light-feeling, and it got a little quieter, except that there was a sort of whistling
sound along with the roar. We were in
the thing for a while and then it began to roar again and there were some
clunking noises from beneath our box. It
was a little scary, since we had no idea what was going on. Mom said we were flying. More of her delusions!
We got out of the thing then, and
went into a very big place where there were a lot of people. They were everywhere! Mom said it was in the airport in A Stand
Bull. It took a while, standing in lines,
but then we were running down a hall.
Dad dropped our box a couple of times, but he continued to run after
picking us up. We finally stopped
running and we all piled into another big thing with lots of seats. Again, we were there with Mom and Dad and
people admired us. More roaring and more
light-feelings and whistling. Once again
the roars and clunkings and we got out of the thing. Mom said we were in an airplane, both times,
and that we had one more to go. She said
that we were in Switzerland. Let me tell
you that airports are big and noisy and certainly would not be nice places to
live!
The third airplane was the biggest
of all, and we were looked at by lots of people and some of those people kept
asking if we needed anything. They were
very nice, but we were safe in our box, keeping each other company. Miss Patchy was not happy about any of
it. She had not been feeling very good
for some time, and these airplanes were very hard on her. More roaring and light-feeling. We stayed for a very long time on the third
airplane until there was more roaring and clunking and then we got out and into
another airport. We had to stand in line
for a while until some people asked Mom and Dad questions. Then we went to another place and answered
some questions. Finally, we went out
into the air. It was dark, and the place
smelled somehow familiar, as though we had been there before, maybe a long time
ago.
We got into another big thing that
Mom called a bus. Lots of seats and our
box was put up on a seat so everyone could see us. We didn’t cry at all, the whole time, but we
were really happy to get out of that bus, but then we were loaded into a
car! In the car was Linda, Mom’s
daughter. It was nice to see her again,
as it had been some time. We drove for a
while and then we got out of the car and went into a familiar-smelling house,
but some different feline smells, too.
Miss Patchy was happy to say that she did not detect the odor of the
nasty Mr. Purr. In fact, she did not
smell any of the felines who were there before, but there were plenty of new
smells.
We went up to two rooms and we were
let out of our box. It was familiar, but
still a little scary. The second room
was where we had a hiding place when we had been there before, and we looked
and looked for it, but it was gone. Miss
Patchy went downstairs a few times and told me that the new felines treated her
with great respect. One time, she went
up on a couch and sat next to Mom. She
told me that there were four felines downstairs – a gray one called Spencer,
two orange brothers called Felix and Sammy, and a black female named
Holly. Based on her word, I tried going
downstairs a few times, but gray Spence came up the stairs and began to hiss
and growl at me. I hissed and growled
back, but we never actually got into a fight.
He ran back downstairs and I ran back up and into our rooms. Almost every night, someone would try to come
upstairs, but I always chased them back down.
They never once treated me with respect!
I guess that is only for old people.
We have been in this house for some
time now, because Mom says she can’t afford to move. Recently, Dad moved out and we haven’t seen
him since. Maybe he is really dead
now. Another big change was when Mom and
Dad took Miss Patchy downstairs, but never brought her back. I fear that she is dead, too. As nasty as she was to me at first, we had
grown close. She was a little like a
mother to me, and I actually miss her.
It is very boring here with both Mom gone much of every day and Dad
gone, maybe forever. Mom keeps telling
me that I need to go downstairs and make friends, but I think she just doesn’t
understand how impossible that is. I
have spoken to Maya a few times. She
lives in Linda’s bedroom and never comes out.
She is very quiet and never says much.
Maybe someday we can be friends.
Well, enough for now. Mom played with me this morning and, after
all this typing, my paws are aching and I’m tired. I think it’s nap time.