Six Cats Taught Me How to Do This Job

People assume I own this company. Technically, I run it. In every way that matters, it belongs to six cats.

I don't mean that as a cute line. Don Michi is named after them, exists because of them, and works the way it does because they spent years teaching me how — one demanding meow at a time.

A promise made to six cats

They were rescued off the street. When I took them in, I made them a promise, the way you do: never again. No more cold, no more hunger, no more being left behind.

So when the time came to leave the country — and it came twice, first from Argentina, later from Brazil — there was never a conversation to be had about what happened to the cats. They were coming. All six. That part was simply never up for discussion.

What I didn't know yet was how much keeping that promise would ask of me.

The first move, and everything I got wrong

The first time, I got almost all of it wrong.

I bought six brand-new carriers and brought them out on the morning of the move. From the cats' point of view, six strange boxes appeared out of nowhere and someone they trusted started trying to put them inside. What followed was scratches, cats wedged under the sofa, and the very particular awfulness of watching animals you love be frightened of you.

Then eight hundred kilometres by road to the airport, a few days to recover, a long layover. I rented a room, opened the carriers, and braced myself for the worst. Within minutes, five of them were tearing around the room as though nothing had happened. One little one stayed inside, just watching. That was the first thing they taught me: they recover far faster than we do. It's almost always the human who takes longer.

What a cat quietly teaches you about planning

Here's the part that changed me more than I realised at the time.

Getting six animals across a border, legally and safely, forced me to plan like I never had in my life. The right visa, not the almost-right one. The rental sorted from a distance. The savings actually there. Every document in order, every vaccine done — theirs and mine. Nothing left to "we'll figure it out when we arrive," because with six cats depending on you, there is no arriving-and-figuring-it-out. There is only what you prepared.

I learned to run the whole thing in my head before I lived it — to rehearse the scenarios, to ask what could go wrong at each step and answer it in advance. With a cat, you don't improvise. Do it enough times and it stops being effort and becomes the way you're built. To this day, very little catches me off guard on a move, because I've usually already imagined it happening. That habit isn't a business skill I went out and learned. It's a cat skill. They just don't know they gave it to me.

The second move — and the company that isn't really mine

By the second move, from Brazil to Portugal, I was smarter. Sort of.

This time the carriers came out months ahead. The cats slept in them, ate in them, ignored them, wandered back to them. By the time we travelled, they weren't an ambush any more — they were a den. I also put two cats to a carrier instead of one each, terrified they'd fight. They didn't; together, they travelled calmer. And then life did what life does. The airport went on strike, we were delayed three days, and that is how I learned the Portuguese word I will never forget: greve. By the third day I'd run out of cat food with nothing open for kilometres, and so six cats had hotel breakfast ham in a rented room. I was devastated on their behalf. They, for the record, had the time of their lives.

Portugal didn't lower the bar once we arrived, either. Six cats do not fit in a tiny flat — they need light, and air, and plants, and a window worth staring out of for hours. So I rented bigger than was strictly comfortable, which meant I had to earn more to keep it, which, one decision at a time, is how the first van appeared, and then the work, and then the company. I didn't start Don Michi and happen to own cats. I started it because six cats had quietly decided I was going to live an extraordinary life whether it suited me or not — extraordinary effort, extraordinary responsibility, and, on the good days, extraordinary results. The company is theirs. I mostly answer the phone.

The one thing I didn't have when I arrived

My last moves with them were calm ones. Not because the cats had finally learned something — because I finally had.

I wasn't dreading it any more, and I wasn't rushing. I had a system, and it was mostly about me: keep the carrier in plain sight for weeks, never hidden on top of a wardrobe where it turns into an alarm. Put the cats in one closed, quiet room the moment the house becomes chaos. One big carrier, not six small ones. Order first — then let them out. They settled because I had settled. That, it turned out, was the whole secret.

But there is something I didn't have when I first arrived in a new country — frightened and out of my depth despite all the experience I'd gathered. I didn't have anyone to look me in the eye and say: breathe. I've got this. The little ones are going to be fine, and I know that because I've done it many times. No one said that to me. So I had to become that person myself — steady, prepared, certain. And somewhere in the middle of becoming her, I understood, from the inside, exactly what it feels like to be the one falling apart, convinced your animal will never forgive you. That understanding is the real thing the cats gave me. Everything else is just technique.

Which is why it's the first thing we do

Because now I see it on every move. The animals are nearly always fine. It's the people who come undone — apologising, worrying, certain their cat hates them for this.

So the first thing we actually do on a move with pets has almost nothing to do with the pet. It's looking after the person. A calm owner is the single best thing that can happen to a frightened animal, and no amount of skill replaces it. The rest is just doing it properly: food out, litter within reach, water they won't drink but must be offered anyway, and never, ever hurrying an animal who is already having a very strange day. I know what a cat can bear to see, to be carried past, and to smell — because six of them taught me, patiently, over years.

Six rescued cats taught me how to do this job. Which is exactly why the company carries their name. They never asked for the honour, of course. They simply assumed it was theirs — the way cats assume everything is theirs. Including, as it turns out, the company.

— Valeria

What our clients say

"Excellent moving service. Punctual, careful and professional. I was surprised by how well they treated my belongings — everything arrived in perfect condition. And they gave my pets special attention, which put my mind completely at ease the whole way through."

— Diego Bordón · moved with his pets

"From the coordination to putting up the safety net for our kitty, everything was perfect. Vale is always lovely and happy to answer any question — or any 'michi-query.' Highly recommend."

— Mariana Estayno · moved with her cat