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...

Earlier this year, we became the proud owners of a new camper. The plan is to do some traveling in the months to come, but we struggled with the problem of what to do with Old Cat. As our only remaining pet, she's become a bit of an obsession with us, and we both act completely silly as we try to do whatever she wants us to do, even though she's quite senile and doesn't know herself what she wants. In the past we've tried boarding, which she hated, but at least she had Alice, her companion cat, then and they could reassure each other. We also tried taking them to relatives' homes, which worked pretty well. Right now, however, all the relatives who would take her have their own pets, and at her advanced age (she's 21) she doesn't adjust well to strangers. We've also left her in the house alone, having a relative stop in every day and check on her. (She seldom saw the cat and judged she was okay solely by the fact that the litter box needed attention.) ...