Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling and Gets Away

In 2006 we had a big family deal where lots more people came than usual.

One of my sisters and my brother and his wife and I all stayed in the same bed&breakfast. We kind of occupied the whole place!

The lady at the bed & breakfast usually did not allow pets, but she made an exception for me because Pippin reminded her of a cat she'd had. And also because I was able to reassure her of his excellent behavior, as he wouldn't scratch her stuff or destroy anything or meow all night.

But I was ordered that I must keep him strictly in my room, nowhere else unless I was taking him in or out of the house.

The front of the bed & breakfast

We got there late at night ... okay, what I consider late at night. Probably around 9 or 10. I was exhausted from the drive. I set up Pippin's food and water and litter box.

Food and water next to the bed.
Travelling with a cat necessitates bringing
water from home ... unless you want to
deal with a tummy upset!

Now the deal was I got this room because it was the only one that didn't have a connecting bathroom. It was the least desirable room so she was letting me have an animal in it because it wasn't exactly her best selling room anyway. This meant that I had to leave the room and walk down the hallway to the bathroom if I had to go in the middle of the night.

The middle of summer despite the
christmas lights on the stairway.

My door is visible to the right of this picture, at the top of the stairs. Walking along the not-stairs part that is in the picture, you reach the bathroom at the other end of it.

If you've read some other parts of my blog, you already know I have trouble sleeping at night and usually have to take something. In a strange place my trouble sleeping is even more exaggerated, so I took something that first night to help me sleep.

This meant that when I awoke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I was extremely fuzzy headed and not aware of my surroundings. 

I thought I'd made sure Pippin didn't follow me out of the room, so when I got back from the bathroom, I simply went in, shut the door, and went back to sleep.

I found out the next morning I hadn't succeeded in keeping him from following me into the hallway. Even though Pippin was in the room with me when I woke up.

The poor beleaguered lady of the house, who had only let me have Pippin with me there on my promises that he would stay in the room and not damage any thing, comes upon Pippin gingerly working his way down the stairs early that morning. Obviously he had spent most of the night investigating the hallway and closed doors of the upstairs and was just now venturing farther. Three cheers for my scaredy cat for mostly staying put and not running loose through the entire house!

Now she doesn't know Pippin. She doesn't know if she can pick him up or if he'll majorly object to that. Yelling for me to come out and get my cat would be very much against her hospitality style. So she tries to shoo him back up the stairs. 

Pippin very graciously allows himself to be shooed, without running in fright or trying to dodge past her. And this is a strange person that he's never seen before, so that part in and of itself is amazing.

She manages to get him up the stairs and to my door, which she then opens and Pippin goes back in. It's probably all he wanted in the first place, to be back with me. He depended on me a lot for his emotional support and he was probably quite scared to find himself locked out.

So when I woke up, he was "still" in the room, and I had no idea what had happened. The lady of the house didn't tell me about it in an angry or accusing way. In fact, if I remember correctly, my siblings had already been up before me that morning, and she'd told them in more of a "this funny thing happened" way. When I showed up, I basically got told by all of them what had happened. 

Of course I apologized profusely but she said it was no big deal; he was a very well behaved cat and hadn't been a problem. 

But after I got home I talked to my doctor and changed up my sleep meds for something a little less severe so I'd least I'd notice the next time I locked my poor Pippin out of the room!

Pippin finds a nice spot.
No, the stove isn't on. It's
the middle of summer!