Retrospective: Why Pippin Became a Travelling Kitty

Pippin was rather an unusual kitty. I recently found a blog called The Way of Cats which perfectly sums up my ideas about cats and dealing with cats. Only her ideas not only match mine, but it's like my ideas are still in elementary school and her ideas grew up and went to college and got an advanced degree in cats.

At home he's not afraid of anything!
Except strange noises and people knocking on the door.

Pippin was what she calls a gamma kitty. You can read more about it there, but basically if you put a kitten in a box that's possible to get out of but challenging, an alpha kitty will knock over the box leaping out of it because there are more interesting things to do outside the box; a beta kitty will investigate the inside of the box thoroughly before leaving, and a gamma kitty will sit in the middle of the box and implore you to pick him up and put him elsewhere, please, as this was not his idea.

So all I knew back then when Pippin was a kitten was that Pippin was very scared and wary of any new situation. If only I could never have him leave the house, we'd be fine. But unfortunately he would have to go to the vet, and I didn't want the only place he'd go besides the house to be a scary one (because vets are scary in and of themselves). I knew from my own experiences with myself that the only way to make new places not be scary was to visit as many new places as possible.

And so I started taking Pippin to as many different kinds of places as I could think of. My brother's house with his cats. My friend's house with a single cat. Petsmart. Hiking.Then the poor guy gets diagnosed with cardiomyopathy (a common Maine Coon ailment) and while the one pill a day kept the disease in check, it didn't exactly lend itself to leaving him behind when I went on vacations. So he went to Pennsylvania by car and by plane on multiple trips, stayed in hotels and relative's houses, and even flew to Seattle.

By the time Pippin went on a canoe, he was quite the seasoned traveler. And by the way, it worked. He was very calm and accepting of anything new, observing quietly from my arms or the front pack he stayed in when he got too heavy to be held over my shoulder. (I could only do the shoulder thing for short periods of time).

Although the normal shoulder was the other one.
He's not scared. If he was scared the paws would be
around my shoulder and his face would be buried
in my neck.

I knew him and his reactions, as well, by this time. I knew that if something scared him, he'd bury his face in my neck and hug my shoulder/neck with his paws. He didn't use his claws, but sometimes he'd grip so hard he left bruises. And as long as I was with him, and in contact with him, he was fine, even if he was scared

I realize now that part of what made him so wary of new situations was the fact that he had cataracts from the time he was a kitten. He was partially blind his whole life, and thus he couldn't see new things or new places in order to assess them. He learned to trust me and my reactions to tell him whether something was safe or not. (Do you have any idea the burden this put on me at the vet? I don't like doctor's offices: they make me nervous. But if I was nervous, he'd think there was something to be nervous about. So I had to be all calm and stuff. It was decidedly difficult, I'll tell you that!)