The Adventures of Chester and Jumbles

The weekend is coming to a close and I’ve not too much to report. We’ve had a nice week back in Derby. It was nice to come back to our regular activities; we missed gym class on Monday because we overslept due to jet lag, but we made it to Spanish, art, and gymnastics, and had a couple playdates with friends. Yesterday, we spent a bit of time decorating the house with paper snowflakes, stars, trees, and tinsel. It’s starting to look festive here. Today, we walked to the local garden shop and witnessed Santa coming down the chimney. For the most part, it has been quite calm and restful.

Molly has been quite busy with work recently. While the accompanying stress is not always ideal, it does seem preferable to her recent worries about not having enough to do. It sounds like the coming week will be crazy, too.

We’ve been thinking about Jumbles a lot recently. She’s booked on a flight to Brussels tomorrow morning and should arrive here mid-week. I’ve been meaning to post this story Tui sent about the cats’ adventures at his house and this seems like a good opportunity.

Here it is:

The Adventures of Chester and Jumbles
On Monday afternoon Karen brought Chester and Jumbles to stay with us. She had quite a time getting them both in the moving crate, and once in the car, Chester started to cry. He looked back at the house as they drove away and said to Karen, “But how are River and Sage going to find me if we leave??” Karen tried to reassure them, but he was still pretty sad.

Once they got to our house, she brought them into our bedroom. Thinking ahead, we thought that would be a nice cozy room to be introduced into. It’s got lots of nice soft places to sleep, is pretty big and has lots of places and things to explore, and has an air conditioner in it (it was a pretty hot afternoon). Karen let them out of the crate, and sat with them a while they explored a bit, then Karen left the room for a minute. When she came back, she couldn’t find them anywhere! They weren’t on the bed…. Or in the closet…. Or under her clothes rack… Or in the corner between the bookcase and nightstand. Did they somehow sneak out of the room? That’s when I came home. We looked all over for them, and finally spotted Chester under our bed curled up in a tight ball in a pile of stuff (the underside of our bed is pretty cluttered). All I could see was his back and tail. I couldn’t see Jumbles, but figured she was there somewhere too (Chester’s orange fur and bigger body makes him easier to spot). I tried coaxing him out, but no way was he budging. I reached under and could just barely reach his side, but when I touched him, he curled tighter into a ball moving just outside my reach! So we put out some food for them next to the bed and Karen sat in there reading a book for awhile just to give them some company, then we left them alone.

After a while, Jumbles emerged and tentatively came out into the hall. She began to timidly explore the house (we had the upstairs and basement doors closed still), then finally returned to the bedroom where she camped out on top of the bed:

An hour or so later, Chester still hadn’t emerged. Karen thought he must be really thirsty, so I crawled down on the floor and talked to him for a few minutes. I also used a flashlight to shine on my face so he knew it was me. He slowly started creeping out from his hideout under the bed. Finally he let me pick him up and put him on the bed. Then he started to explore the house. Not just a quick look around, mind you, he started patrolling the perimeter, looking in and smelling every nook and cranny. Starting in one room, circling around, then going to the next room, over and over again. I think he stopped after patrolling through all the rooms six times. Then he finally stopped and drank some water and he and Jumbles had their first meal together in our house. After they had eaten, Chester finally lay down on the hallway floor. That was about the first time he really looked relaxed.

Once they’d settled in a bit, had a bite to eat, taken a look around, and gotten some good scritches, we decided it was time for bed. Boy were they fascinated by the sound of our electric toothbrushes. And just try getting to the bathroom sink before one of the cats jumps into it! They like the sink wet or dry, alone or with company.

Once Karen and I turned in to bed, Chester disappeared under the bed again to sleep, but Jumbles wanted to cuddle and stayed with us on the bed until we went to sleep. She’s just like a person… when you stop scritching her, she reaches out with a paw and touches you, as if to say “Hey, why’d you stop?”

We were worried that Chester might cry during the night like he did after the fire, but they were both very quiet all the way through the night.

The next morning, Karen’s alarm went off, and she hit the snooze button. But then Jumbles jumped right up onto the bed and started walking all over us. “Ok, lets play!” she said, “I need scritches!”

Tuesday morning is also when Chester discovered the shower and how it works. It only took him twice to see how it gets turned on, before he figured that out. Now he knows you just have to push on the knob and water comes out… Fortunately it is too high off the floor for him to really push it on, but he still reaches up and puts his paw on it. At one point, I turned the water on a bit coming out of the bath spigot for a bit; he drank from it, and played with it for awhile, then I turned it off. It kept dripping for a bit, then finally stopped. But Chester kept licking it. Finally when he couldn’t get any more water out of it, he turned his head over, closed one eye, and held his other eye up to the hole in the spigot and looked into it! That was just about the funniest thing!

Today we left them alone again while we went to work. We’ve been leaving the folding door to get upstairs closed, partly because we wanted to gradually introduce them to the whole house, and partly because Karen had been sorting her yarn up there and hadn’t quite finished, so quite a bit of it was just sitting out. But when I came home, the door was open six inches or so. I was sure that it was closed when I left for work, and Karen hadn’t been home yet. Chester had greeted me at the door when I came home, so I asked him if he had opened it. He gave me an innocent look, but didn’t say anything. So I closed the upstairs door, and pretended to do something, while watching Chester. Sure enough, he rolled onto his back on the floor, hooked his claws under the bottom of the folding door, and started pulling on it. He started on one end, which didn’t open it, then moved down to the other end, which also didn’t work. So he tried in the middle, and voila! All told, it took him under a minute to get it open… It sure looked like he’d been practicing. I followed him and Jumbles upstairs, and they sure didn’t look all worked up and excited to explore, like they did every other time I saw them come upon a room for the first time, so it was pretty clear they’d been up there most of the day. But boy do they like it up there! Jumbles likes to race back and forth. But when Karen came home, she found that several of her balls of yarn had been batted all around the room, a couple of them unwound. When Karen asked them which of them had done it, Chester looked totally disinterested in it and walked away. Jumbles, on the other hand, didn’t say anything, but reached out and grabbed a new ball and started trying to eat it.

While I was making dinner tonight, I left the kitchen sink on just a bit so a thin stream of water flowed out. Jumbles noticed right away and jumped up to play in it. She drank some, but mostly seemed to enjoy playing in it.

So Chester and Jumbles are having a pretty good time, but they really miss you all and send their love.