I'm no cat expert, but I can tell you what I've read so far. Moving the cat around does cause stress. Zelda was a gift for Laura for xmas, so I chose to leave her at the shelter until the day after xmas so that we didn't shuffle her around from place to place.
I also read that the cat should be introduced to the new environment in a small room. So we brought her into the house and closed her in a half bathroom with her litter box, food, water, and a scratching post.
She spent about 3-4 hours in there, and she quickly familiarized herself with all the objects in thew room. She immediately went into her litter box (just to explore) and then started eating some of her dry food. Both seemed lik good signs that she was adjusting. She is a very friendly cat, so she continuously wanted to be petted. After an hour she wanted to be let out of the bathroom, but we gave it a little more time.
After the 3-4 hours, we opened the door to let her out. She ran out with excitement only to return in a few seconds. I think the larger downstairs room and hallway was a bit much at first, so she went back into the bathroom.
We sat in the entry way for about 20 minutes and eventually she gathered up the nerve to adventure out. Once out, she started exploring and learning the house. After 20 more minutes we left her alone to explore and returned upstairs. Shortly after she came upstairs meowing and continued looking around. She wasn't scared of the 10 people we had over that day. I was very excited to see she isn't scared easily.
Move forward to today and the cat owns the place. This morning around 5:30 she decided to climb over me and onto my night stand while I was sleeping. She was driving me crazy (but I love her regardless) so I gave her the boot.
I pushed her out the door and closed it so I could get some sleep.
She loves to make different meows depending on who she's with or if we've gone to bed. They all mean something different, but I have no idea what she is trying to tell us.