This is the story of Odessa the cat and her terrifying and marvellous around-the-world journey, one that has taken our Crimean kitten from Ukraine to Russia to the Middle East before landing her this month in the fast-changing capital of the world's most populous country.
It should be made clear from the start that Odessa, six pounds of neurotic energy and bristling white fur, asked for none of this. She was likely as happy as a cat can be in Odessa, the Ukrainian port city that she was born in, and later named after, back in 2001.
Her first owner, a down-and-out-looking young man that my wife, Carolynne, and I met at a Moscow street market, told us that he would rather give the adorable little kitten he called Kama Sutra away for free than subject her to another train ride like the 25-hour journey that took her from the Black Sea coast to the Russian capital.
We took the newly named Odessa (we decided we couldn't call her Kama Sutra, given that she was about to be spayed) to her new home on the fifth floor of an apartment block in downtown Moscow, overlooking a vast square dominated by a giant concrete statue of Vladimir Lenin.
That was six years ago. Halfway through that time, Odessa moved again, this time boarding one of those notoriously unsafe Russian aircraft for the four-plus-hour flight from Moscow to Tel Aviv, following the route that hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews took after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Next up was the one-hour drive east into the hills of Jerusalem.
Like many others who fled Russia to Israel, Odessa found the initial transition jarring, but eventually came to appreciate the warm weather and better food found in her new home. But even a cat cannot escape the politics that come with living in Jerusalem.
Our house in the holy city straddled the old pre-1967 ceasefire line that still marks the unofficial border between Jerusalem's two halves, the predominantly Arab east and the Jewish west. In the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category, the western side of our house was well serviced but the heaters on the eastern side didn't work and the electricity frequently cut out only in that half of the building. Odessa preferred to sleep in the west, but hid in the east when she was grumpy with her peripatetic owners and their constant hosting of strangers.
Now Odessa suddenly finds herself in Beijing. A wide-eyed cat with no discernible taste for adventure at all now has more stamps in her passport than Sarah Palin.
Odessa's first stop after the nearly 10-hour flight aboard a chilly El Al airplane was a lonely stint in airport quarantine, a harsh reminder that this country remains an officially Communist state. Her next one was a testament to how quickly China is changing and embracing things (such as cats and capitalism) that were once considered unclean.
The Pet Palace, the north Beijing headquarters of Worldcare Pet, is a high-end kennel and pet-supplies store that sells designer doggie sweaters, cushy cat houses and studded leather leashes to nouveau riche Chinese who see pets as both the perfect companion and fashion accessory. It's a long way from Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, when pets were considered a symbol of bourgeois excess and tens of thousands of cats and dogs were slaughtered by his Red Guards.
To get in the spirit, and to mollify our guilt after Odessa's stint in the airport slammer, we bought a new scratch toy for her and an ingenious rubber device that can reseal any size of can, including the ones that contain kitty's beloved Fancy Feast.
What's changed most in Odessa's journeys has been the view. In Moscow she would perch on the heater in our bedroom and look out on vast Kaluga Square, with its Lenin statue, the imposing facade of the Interior Ministry building and the neon lights of the ever-changing array of fast-food restaurants. The clash represented there between Russia's newly won freedoms and the Kremlin's efforts to restore state authority over it all seemed lost on Odessa. She seemed more interested in the flock of shivering but tasty-looking pigeons that also called Kaluga Square home.
In Jerusalem, she would frolic on our vast balcony, glaring at birds twice her size and sniffing around the olive tree Carolynne grew in defiance of the harsh sun and winds. When Odessa dared peer over the side at the world beyond, her eyes fell on the Old City and the mound at the very centre of the Mideast conflict, Islam's golden Dome of the Rock, built on the very site where many Jews believe the Third Temple must be constructed for the Messiah to return.
But Odessa seemed to find the plaintive and occasionally lusty meows from the street cats below more enthralling than ancient and irresolvable squabbles between humans.
It's probably fair to say that Odessa is thus far less taken with China than she was with Jerusalem. The view out the window of our temporary apartment in eastern Beijing is dominated by a vast pit where a forest of construction cranes and an army of yellow-helmeted workers toil day and night to build a posh residential complex that the signs ringing the site promise will be "a tribute for celebrities."
It's another symptom of how fast this country is growing and changing that a "private castle" (as another advertisement promises the residence will be) can be built in the shadows of the offices of the Communist Party's Beijing Youth Daily newspaper, but Odessa only utters a sad meow when she looks outside. The birds of Jerusalem are gone, and those little humans in yellow hats just don't look that edible to her. Briefly, we worry that we've traumatized her beyond repair this time.
Eventually, however, she turns and sees we're still there, along with the dinner bowl that her devoted humans carefully wrapped and packed into in the carry-on luggage we brought on the plane from Tel Aviv. So are the little blue Nerf balls that she loves to chase around the apartment.
Forgetting for the moment her many far-flung concerns, Odessa the travel-weary cat sniffs at us and starts to purr. Despite everything, her striped tail rises in contentment.
Wherever we are now, it's clearly home. For the moment.
Mark MacKinnon