RENTAL KITTY

I suppose you could say our experience of culture shock began before we ever even set foot on Swiss soil. It all started one sunny spring South Carolina morning when the realtor arrived at the front door step. She was tidy and down to business and ready to help us “go on the market.”

As I quickly learned, putting one’s house “on the market” in the States is to be ushered into an entirely new culture whose rules and slang can only be understood by fellow initiates. I had had inklings that I was in for something special. For years I had been masochistically reading the “realtor’s tips” column in the local paper whose cheerful recommendations for countertop changes and bathroom “updates” left me quaking in my boots.

As I soon found out, however, it was not the realtor who would be directly responsible for my initiation but rather a so-called “stager” who arrived on an equally sunny morning and left dark storm clouds in her wake. She went through the house room by room instructing me to “de-clutter” my bookshelves, re-hang my pictures and, most ominous of all, re-arrange my furniture. All this busy work was designed to get the house ready for a photo shoot by a professional photographer who would make his appearance on our doorstep a few curse-word-ridden weeks later.

As if all that reshuffling were not bad enough, I also had my detailed list of instructions for what was to be done when the “showings” began. Apparently, the house was supposed to leave the impression that my husband, my two young sons, my terrier and I did not actually reside there but simply used the space upon occasion as a kind of gallery for our more impersonal decorative items. There was to be no evidence of tooth brushing, laundry folding, vegetable chopping, hair combing or any other activates of daily life. I am surprised we were allowed to leave the toilet paper rolls hanging on their non-updated fixtures.

Most puzzling of all, however, was the injunction that we were to remove all traces of our dog, Pumpkin. For, the stager assured me, while most Americans do indeed own a dog or a cat, almost none of them wants to move in to a house in which a dog or a cat has, in fact, lived. I must have stared at her rather blankly when she delivered this particular cultural tidbit, for she felt compelled to go on. Cats, apparently, are the more problematic of the two species. To quote her in all her eloquence, “people really freak out about cats.” But, she went on, I should go ahead and get rid of the dog traces all the same. No food bowls, no beds, no baskets of toys or containers of treats should be in evidence during a “showing,” and the animal in question, like the owners, must be mysteriously absent.  

Okay.

And so while Marc and I spent our days eradicating all evidence of daily life as we knew it, we spent our evenings hunched over the laptop combing through photos of houses currently “on the market” in Switzerland, one of which we were hoping to buy. It became quickly obvious to us that stagers with all their perky suggestions have failed yet to conquer the continent. These good folks had not even bothered to clear the coffee cups or the magazines off the kitchen table before taking their DIY pictures and posting them on-line for all the world to see.

Things got even more interesting when we actually went to look at the houses up for sale. Whereas I had been instructed in the States to vacate the premises leaving a pristine home and the smell of freshly brewed coffee in my wake, these friendly folks were at home when we showed up. They greeted us at the door in their slippers, gave us a personal tour of the house and did not even bother to apologize when even an occasional bed was occupied!

What is more, the Swiss obviously have not yet gotten the memo on animals, for their houses were full of them. Dogs, cats, mice, a donkey in the back yard, you name it, we saw it. The cats, especially, were out in droves. There were cats with bells on their collars stalking through the gardens, cats lounging nonchalantly on window sills, cats peering out from under cars, cats curled up fast asleep on beds. And if there were no cat immediately visible on the premises, chances were good that I would spy a cat flap tucked away quietly at the bottom of a door.

In the end, we found a lovely house to buy with two luscious Swiss kitties who will be moving shortly with their owners to the capital, Bern. And as luck would have it, the rental house we are staying in until we can “close” on the new house includes its own resident cat. My instructions from the landlady are to keep her food bowl full, her water bowl clean and to make sure she does not get used to coming indoors. Pumpkin is helping me out on the latter issue. I can assure you, no amount of coaxing would currently induce Rental Kitty to come inside.

Pumpkin is also the reason we will not be getting a cat of our own any time soon. I hope we will be able to integrate into Swiss culture all the same. Because one thing here is certain, a Swiss house is not a home without at least one cat. Obviously, if the dreaded day ever comes that we need to put the new house, “on the market,” I am going to skip the de-cluttering and head instead straight to the pet store.