Our little angels have been in quarantine for the last seven months, but finally they are out, and are settling (read, have settled) into our new house nicely.
Approximately a year ago we decided to relocate from South Africa to Australia. We had always been nervous about doing this because we didn’t know how the cats would react. Happily they handled it very well. In fact we were told by the quarantine station in South Africa that often it is the humans who don’t tolerate their pets in quarantine, and that in most cases the animals are absolutely fine. I can attest to this. Once we realised that the cats were happy and were not going to have any problems in quarantine, we were relieved.
Australia has one of, if not the longest quarantine requirements of all countries when coming from South Africa at 210 days, or seven months. Animals need to do at least 90 days in South Africa, and at least 30 days in Australia. The rest can be done in either country. We had been told that we should do the maximum in South Africa as the quarantine facilities were better there than in Australia – this is indeed the case. This is not to say that the quarantine facilities in Australia are bad, they certainly aren’t, and the animal handlers are professional and love to spend time with the animals. But the Australian facilities are governmental, are strictly controlled, and the enclosures are not as comfortable as the ones in South Africa. Visiting times are also more limited by standard, although you can make arrangements to see your animals outside of official visiting hours within normal business hours. By contast, Keringa, who manage the Australian quarantine station in South Africa is a private company, have much more flexible visiting hours, animals are visited more often, and the cat enclosures are more more “homely”.
In South Africa we specifically moved from Durban to Johannesburg so that we could visit the cats daily (excluding Sundays), and for the most part we did. We believe that this did help our cats relax and ease in to their new home. In Sydney, while we were allowed to visit five days a week, three of those days outside of official visiting hours, the distance to the station from our home is approximately 40km, and so visiting every day was not optimal. It was only a month that they were staying there so we opted to visit only twice a week.
Well all that is over now, and they are home. They seem to be enjoying their new home and have settled in to their usual life of sleeping!
I’ll start with the regular cat updates again from the next post. In the mean time, here are a few pics of the cats in their new home.
It’s currently winter here, and while not excessively cold, it is certainly colder than Durban, and sometimes even than Johannesburg. It did not take TimTam very long to find the heater.
Misu found his favourite spot on the Poäng chair. Look how dark he has become!
And Mumble has become a lap cat. Is that what seven months in quarantine did to her? 
Here she is sitting on the TV cabinet looking out the window. Or perhaps she is planning to read the MasterChef magazines!
Until next time, miow from TimTam, Mumble & Misu!
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