Maggie Pill Mysteries

If you read this blog regularly, you might remember I was worried about our vacation and how Old Cat would react to living in a travel trailer for a few weeks. She's 21, though she wears her age very well, and she hadn't been on many car trips in her lifetime. Because she's so old, we weighed the possibilities carefully. Leave her home with a drop-in sitter? She'd be alone most of the time. Take her to relatives? She'd be just as upset in a strange place as she'd be in a camper. Boarding has never been something she enjoys. In the end we decided she'd come along. If it was traumatic, at least she'd be with Mom and Dad. There's no telling what she thought, of course, but Old Cat did okay. The going-down-the-road part wasn't her favorite, but she accepted it if she could crawl into the pillowcase on the camper bed and stay there until the movement stopped. Since she sleeps all day anyway, that worked well. Once we were set up, she did exactly w...

Right now there's a lamp nestled in the corner of a stair halfway down our staircase. It's there for the cat...and maybe to save our lives. In her dotage, Old Cat wants to nap on the stairs, possibly to keep track of where I am (usually upstairs) and where my husband is (usually downstairs) at a given time. She chose the darkest spot, where the upstairs light doesn't reach. (The downstairs light isn't left on because it's a chandelier and therefore terribly inefficient--though workable for avoiding cat traps. There are two possibilities for terror: First, one of us might trip over her and hurtle to our death. Second, one of us might kick her and injure her old, brittle bones. She doesn't seem to care, though I have explained the perils to her very patiently, several times. Hence the lamp. It lights that central area just enough that we can see her there, and she actually seems to enjoy its little glow. She doesn't have to sleep on the stairway. ...