Cats on Vacation

Last week, I spent several days at the beach. It was wonderful. Endless hours of laying in a chair on the beach reading a book, laying in a chair by the pool reading a book and at night, laying in the hot tub reading a book. All my chores and cares were left far behind me and I could relax.

Obviously, I enjoyed my trip but while I was lounging in my comfy beach chair with my book I couldn’t help but think something was missing. I shrugged it off and rolled over to tan my back. Later, after returning to the condo and showering the sand and salt off, I was relaxing with a drink before going to dinner at one of a number of seafood restaurants. While sitting on the couch, enjoying said drink, glancing at the ballgame on TV and watching the cars on the bridge over the marsh, I imagined that I saw a small shadow in the corner of my eye but when I turned to look it was nothing. When I awoke the next morning, I wondered why I slept so well. It must have been those dark curtains over the window.

Then again, perhaps I slept so well because three cats were back at home and not in the small of my back. Could that strange shadow have been my subconscious looking for one of my cats? Was the nagging feeling that something was missing the result of my reading a book unmolested by fluffy paws and head butts? Yes! I was guilty! I missed my cats.

To ease my cat sickness, I tried to imagine what it would be like to take one of them with me. Hemmy would be the obvious candidate, as riding in the car doesn’t upset him too much. It would be so nice to have a cat there to greet me when I came back in from the beach. He’d be napping in the warm sunshine by the large sliding glass doors and would rise and stretch and yawn. I could just picture him there, blinking happily up at me. I smiled to myself as I imagined the scene.

Then my smile faded. What kind of havoc would he wreck on the condo? Sure, it would be nice having him there but that expensive Berber carpet? Ha! That would be scarred the first day. I could almost see little tufts of it gutted and laying next to the new bald spot. Those lovely wooden chairs? Delightful, vacation scratching posts! And the screened-in porch?! The cat roller coaster of the whole trip! He could dangle for hours from those screens. The large, white marsh birds would look especially delicious. Visions of him dangling at eye level chattering at the birds quickly assured me that taking Hemmy on vacation wouldn’t be terribly relaxing.

So, I plan my next trip and resign myself to spending a few more days away from the cats. After all, packing the litter box, food, bowls, and arranging the car for a four hour trip with a cat makes being apart from them a bit easier to swallow. Still, that patch of warm sunshine was designed for a cat…

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