Where Are You From?

The answer to "Where are you from?" is presumed to imply that one connects with a certain place and shares values with others from that place.  We all answer differently depending on the context, and how much the other person might know about our places.  One of my humans answers country, region, province, then city, because unless she is talking to someone who has spent time in her part of the country, her city name and even her province are meaningless to most interlocateurs.  My other human answers country then city, because he is from the national capital, but you might be surprised how many people do not know the capital city of Canada.

My humans are Canadian.  That is an easy first answer for them.  Not for me.  We have moved almost every year of my life, and I am five years old.  I hate moving, and this time it really shows.
 

Washington and Mera in Quarantine
Australia 2009

So perhaps a better question for me is "Where have you lived?"  I was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., and when I was first adopted, we lived in Arlington, Virginia, which is across the river from the U.S. capital of Washington D.C.  Four months later, my human's work assignment ended, and we moved to Ottawa, Canada.  Eight months later, we moved to Sydney, Australia.  Actually, eleven months later we moved to Sydney, because we spent two months in a kennel and one month at the quarantine station.  Two year later, we moved to Melbourne, Australia.  The next year, we moved back to Sydney.  In less than two months, we will move to Saskatoon, Canada.

I am a cat.  I care about sunbeams and warm places to nap, how much time I can have outside, where I can explore, and what I can hunt, or bring home as a toy.  I am a kept cat, so food has never been an issue. 

I have decided that I am a Sydneysider.  In both Sydney houses, there has been plenty of sunbeams inside and out no matter the season, grass to chew, yards to explore, skinks (little lizards) to catch and bring inside, and rarely a leash to restrict my movements.  I once spent three days fending for myself in Sydney when my humans were away and the neighbour looking after us did not see my exit.  Sydney is warmer than Melbourne, and definitely has more skinks.  Unlike North America, I have never had to spend more than a week inside in Australia due to cold or wet weather, so there is no winter cabin fever here.  There is grass to chew year round.  There are more birds to watch and stalk, and rainbow lorikeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos have flocked to our yards by the dozens.

Soon we will leave Sydney permanently.  I will still have a house with sunbeams (I hope), warm places to nap, enough to eat, and humans who care.  There will be time outside, but it will be back on my leash, with my leash actively held by a human.  There will not be any birds to stalk, there will not be any skinks to capture and bring home, and the best I can hope for is a few bugs to hunt.  I might have to resume my hobby of digging holes instead, but even that will be seasonal and constrained by space.

I have spent sixty percent of my life in Sydney, and it is where I have been happiest.  So despite my record of birth and travel documents saying something else, I am really from the north shore of Sydney, where the houses meet the nature reserves so that the birds come to visit, and summer reigns year round.  It is an awesome place to be a cat.