Retrospective: Pippin Gives Me a Present (and not the wiggly kind)

I wrote this for the website What's Your Grief, but I thought I'd put it here, too. Since I don't remember sharing this particular part of Pippin's life with you.

Cats don't usually give you things. Aside from rodents and birds, of course. But Pippin was unusual in a lot of ways, from being mostly blind (and never letting on how bad his sight really was), to understanding way more than you'd ever imagine, to being autistic, like me.

He was always a very precise eater. He didn't leave pieces of food strewn around his bowl like some. At the time he was eating food that came in several different shapes. And one day, randomly, I came to fill his food bowl and found one piece of food set aside on the floor next to it, very carefully, as if in gift to me. It was the heart-shape.

Did he know? How _could _ he know what that shape meant to humans? Yet, I felt it was a gift, from him to me. It was the _only_ time he ever let a food piece stay outside his bowl.

I mourn his loss still. Because he needed me to be strong, I could be strong for him. Because he needed me to be steadfast, I could be the foundation of his world. I wonder how much of my ability to cope was wrapped up in being the person he needed me to be.

I kept the heart. I kept it with some of his fur I took off the cat trees in a box with an angel holding a kitty on it, and a locket with his picture even though I can't wear necklaces. I have that box sitting on the head of my bed, where he liked to sleep. And oddly, the new crew (CAT) have always left it alone.

Retrospective: The Glass Breakage Story

When I first moved to my house, I'd never really done a lot of picture hanging before. I learned that with drywall, it's a pain in the neck. You have to have a drill, and a special drywall screw, and you can still mess it up so the thing won't hold.

And then I discovered Command Adhesive hooks. These are wonderful for lightweight picture frames. I knew better than to use them for large (more than 11x14) pictures, but smaller ones are great.

I thought.

I had a pencil drawing of a horse that a lady drew for me when I was a kid and in love with horses. It's an awesome pencil sketch and one of my treasures. I had it in a frame, behind glass, hanging up on the wall right outside the master bedroom's bathroom curtain. (I changed the door to a curtain since you can close the bedroom's door for privacy if there's more than just you in the house, and that way the door arc doesn't make the bedroom even smaller). There's a blanket chest against the wall on the other side, leaving a narrow pathway to walk through between the blanket chest and the (other) wall, the one the picture was hanging from.

One night I woke up from a dream of hearing glass shatter. It was one of those things where you're not quite sure if you dreamed it or if it actually happened and you incorporated it into the dream right as the sound woke you up. But I was quite convinced it came from the right side of the bed, the side opposite to the bathroom. I shrugged and made a mental note to check in the morning. Pippin didn't usually go on that side of the bedroom so I wasn't too worried about him (besides, he mostly slept through the night with me on the bed).

When I got up in the morning, I checked all the pictures on that wall. Nothing was broken and there was no glass on the carpet. I shrugged and figured that it was a dream, after all.

This was before I started walking an hour every morning. The bedroom isn't well lit (what's the point?) and once I'd decided the glass break sound was a dream, I stopped paying attention to the floor and walls.

Normal morning procedure involved me going into the little bathroom off the master bedroom through that narrow corridor and cleaning the litterbox in the shower. (I use the bigger bathroom to take showers in, so this shower is where the litterbox lives.) I do the other stuff one does in the morning in a bathroom, come back out, put clothes on for work, eat breakfast and leave for work.

Pippin's morning routine involved getting up, eating his own breakfast, using the litterbox before I left, and settling into the pink room for his morning nap. I discovered quite late in his life that the reason he didn't mind going on long trips with me without a litterbox in the car was that he was used to spending the entire day not using the bathroom. He wouldn't use the litterbox unless I was in the building.

(The last surgery he had, to remove a skin cancer tumor, is one that they like to keep him overnight. I was worried about that whole bathroom issue and talked the surgeon into considering letting me take him home. The surgeon did the surgery an hour and a half before he normally started surgeries, and by the time they were almost ready to close that evening, he was willing to let me take Pippin home. When I came to pick him up, the surgeon said to me in that voice that always makes me laugh, the one where the person sounds amazed that I actually knew what I was talking about, he said "you were right, he didn't use the litterbox all day." And when I got Pippin home, I had enough experience to know to put him down in the litterbox, where he promptly relaxed his muscles and pee'd enough to make a monster litter ball.)

So anyway, back to the glass story. You've already guessed what happened. That glass breakage sound was real; it just came from the left side of the bed instead of the right side. The picture of the horse had fallen straight down and hit the floor. It was carpet, but apparently that didn't matter.

The impact shattered the glass lengthwise. It was an 8.5 x 11 picture frame, so that meant the glass was in 11" long shards. The glass had fallen out of the frame and scattered across that narrow space we both had to walk through. Twice.

I came home that afternoon from work and found the glass shards on the carpet.

To this day I have no idea how both Pippin and I managed to walk through that area, two times each, without cutting a foot to the bone, or even getting the slightest scratch. There was no room for a human foot between the shards. Pippin might have been able to, if he was paying attention ... although he was usually as sleepy and bumbling as I was in the mornings. But still. There is no way I should have been able to make it through that space twice without cutting myself.

My only explanation involves quantum physics. I didn't know it was there; I didn't observe it being there; so until it was observed, it both did and did not exist in the space.

I learned from this experience and now all my Command Adhesive-hung pictures have either no glass or glass that doesn't break / clear plastic!

Retrospective: A Lot of Pippin Posts Today

It is September 26, 2014.

If you notice, which you probably won't if you don't check my blog every day, (or get told to, Mom & sister Sophia), you'll realize that I've posted quite a few Retrospectives for Pippin today.

There's a reason for that. Today is one year since he passed away. I thought this would be a good way to celebrate his life, to write about all the silly, crazy, wonderful things he did and was.

Sister-in-law Dawn made this afghan for me.
I clipped a bit of Pippin's hair and she matched
the colors. The afghan, surprisingly, looks brown!
Only when Pippin was actually on it did it look
the same color as he.

He was my soul-cat, the child of my heart. And although grief is not ripping me apart now the way it did most of the last year, I still miss him very much.

And there will be more Retrospectives to come in the future. After all, I still haven't scanned in the photos from the first five years of his life, and there are plenty of stories there!

Retrospective: Pippin and the Roomba

In 2008 I got a roomba in an effort to help my housekeeping. This was ultimately a failure, since the roomba doesn't replace weekly vacuuming, and mine had a defect where one of the gears would fall out of place and to make it work again you'd have to take it apart and put the gear back. And I couldn't glue the gear back to keep it where it belonged because it had to be able to rotate. So I eventually gave up and put it away, and years later I gave it to one of my nieces who programs computers for a living so she could play with its programming. I understand that's a thing, now.

But during the time I had the roomba, Pippin had to get used to it.

At first he had to follow it around and make sure it behaved itself.

Then he decided it could probably be watched from a short distance.

Really it would be more comfortable if he wasn't on the floor with it.

Because it was a very scary roomba sometimes.

Perhaps it was better watched from around a corner.

Nah, it's not scary at all. He'll just sprawl out and ignore it.

And actually, although he got used to it, it was noisy and still bothered both of us, so I set it to run late at night in the living room (the biggest room) while both of us were tucked away in bed behind a door that hid a lot more sounds than I ever thought, given that it's a simple hollow door interior.

So after the first few times of running it, Pippin never actually saw it moving again. I think he was relieved!

Retrospective: Christmas in the New House with Pippin

Pippin loved Christmas. It was his favorite time of the year. And this is very odd because you'd think a cat who disliked new things would not like the sudden rearrangement of the house with decorations and Christmas trees and so forth. Perhaps it is because Christmas was always my favorite time of the year, too, and he picked up on my enthusiasm for it.

This year we were in a new house, and I got to decorate the whole thing. I was very enthusiastic about it, too, getting decorations and making something christmas-y in every room.

Thanks to a monetary gift from my parents, I was able to get a tall tree.

The new tree, post-lights and pre-decorations

This was Pippin's favorite place to be during Christmas time. He absolutely loved being under the tree, especially when there were wrapped presents. I always made sure to give someone a calendar so there would be a nice flat present for him to lie on, as he wanted to guard the presents thoroughly and that meant lying on one of them.

In fact, he would get rather put out with us for opening the presents on Christmas day, and we'd always have to distract him by tossing the bows to him to play with. Otherwise he'd lie glowering on the flat present and refuse to move. 

I think he was really just playing along, though, because he would always let himself be adequately distracted by the glittering bows being tossed on the floor for him to play with.

The living room, decorated.
See Pippin with laser eyes under the tree?

One of Pippin's favorite parts of Christmas was the wrapping of the presents. On a Saturday before the 25th, some time when I had all the presents purchased, I would sit down and wrap them all. I'd start with a large pile beside me unwrapped, the wrapping paper in front of me, and proceed to move all the presents from one side to the other, wrapping as I went.

Pippin loved to help. And he was actually helpful in many ways. Sometimes he would lie on a corner of the wrapping paper as I was trying to unroll it to cut it, and since without his weight it would persist in rolling itself back up, it was helpful to have someone pin it down. If he wasn't in the mood I'd usually end up using a present to anchor the corner.

The unwrapped presents are beside him.
I'd gotten organization units for myself
and he is making sure they fit a cat correctly.

When I'd wrap presents, I would often toss him the scraps of wrapping paper that one always ends up with, and he would play with them like he was a tiny kitten again. Later I'd have to go over the floor and pick the discarded scraps up and throw them away, because they were (apparently) only fun once.

And he absolutely loved scissors. He always wanted to watch very closely when I was cutting something. Too close. Sometimes I'd have to turn my back to cut something when he was trying to get his whiskers trimmed inadvertently! But luckily for the harmony of the two of us, most wrapping paper can be cut with scissors without actually closing them; you just run the open blade along the paper, and as it reaches the join of the scissor blades, it slices apart quite nicely.

The baby tree from old times.

I already had a tree for my room back at my parents' house. Since I didn't have the space on the floor to put a big tree, what I had was a little four-footer than I'd put on a card table. (I could put stuff under the card table; I can't put the same stuff under a big tree. Thus why I had room for the table but a not a big tree.)

In the new house I decided the little tree would go on the desk in the pink room (which also gets referred to as the guest bedroom). Pippin had long ago that year discovered that the desk was right at window height and perfect to lie on and watch the world go by. In fact, that was his favorite place in the entire house to spend the mornings.

I'm lucky he liked Christmas trees and being underneath them, because far from "destroying" his favorite spot by putting a tree on it, complete with tree skirt, I had enhanced the entire situation.

Smug and happy on the tree skirt

Although I didn't quite put two and two together (as usual) when I bought that tree skirt. It's, well, a lovely velvet fuzzy deep blue. And he's a lovely orange and white. And the stars are sparklies sewn onto the tree skirt, so I can't wash it and I can't vacuum it. It looks much lighter in color now, after all those years of Pippin spending a month on it every year. (I get out "christmas" the day after Thanksgiving).

Makes him look like an angel cat,
don't you think?

And he never once, his entire life, played with any ornaments on the tree save those he was allowed to play with. I put the cat toy ornaments on the bottom of the tree, and it was a game all Christmas season. He'd take them off and leave them under the tree for me, and I'd put them back up each time he took them down. There were several, and he didn't always take them all down each day. Just one or two, randomly chosen. Or perhaps he had a pattern or reason for choosing the ones he did, but it always looked random to me!

2009 (two years later)
Pippin put up with so much from me ...

2011 Christmas Day:
Looks like someone is sleeping in!

Another Christmas task that delighted Pippin was making Christmas cards to send. I do so love sending and getting cards. I have the whole thing worked out like an assembly line; card, short Christmas letter (kind of like this blog only a whole year condensed into one "post"; stamps, envelopes, address labels, and return address labels.

2012: Pippin helping with the assembly process

Pippin loved to help. Although he usually wasn't helpful except by being good company. Often I had to lift a leg or a tail and yank a card or paper out from underneath. A bit like the trick of pulling a tablecloth out from under a tea set and leaving the plates and cups unharmed! He would eventually get tired of this and move ... generally not far and onto the set of paper/cards/etc that I needed next!

Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling in 2007

Just some pictures of us driving the ten hours to the family reunion again.

Are we there yet?

Dozing in the sunshine

Mr. Sleep Head would prefer to sleep
the whole trip but then he wants
to play the whole night after.

He's going to need poked
soon so he wakes up.

Retrospective: Pippin and I Move Out

 In 2007, in April, I bought a house and moved out of my parents' house. At this point I was quite a bit older than people usually are when they first move out of their parents' house, but I simply wasn't ready before. I have read that autistic and aspergers people usually grow up more slowly, emotionally speaking, than people who aren't autistic, and that certainly seems to be true for me.

I was worried how Pippin would take this. He'd spent his whole life in my parents' house, with the three of us. What would he think of a whole new place when new things were always scary for him?

Luckily, I had no deadline to move out or in; I could move in any time after I signed the paperwork, and my parents weren't shoving us out the door. I spent the month before the paperwork would be signed packing up my stuff.

I had collected quite a bit of stuff over the years, to the point where my one basement bedroom (albeit bigger than a normal bedroom) contained enough furniture that when I moved it all into my new house (albeit smaller than a normal house) it all fit quite nicely and I didn't actually buy any new furniture for the house for years. Well, except I did buy matching bookshelves to put my library in. But I gave away many of my bookshelves that held my books in my old bedroom, so it was almost a one-for-one swap as far as the furniture was concerned.

Often I'd look around my house and go, "how in the world did I have all this in that one bedroom?"

Anyway, I brought home cardboard boxes from work, and filled them up with books and stuffed animals and other things, and labeled them and taped them shut and put them against the far wall, slowly building a wall of boxes.

Pippin observed this behavior with growing apprehension. Now he loved cardboard boxes, so once when I was packing, he came up to me and I thought he wanted to play. So I picked him up and put him in an empty but open box I wasn't yet using. It was next in line to be used, and was right next to me. I thought he'd have fun, the way he always did with cardboard boxes.

He gave me this horrified, pitiable look from inside the box. It quite smote my heart and I scooped him out hastily, explaining that I'd thought he wanted to play in there and no, I wasn't going to put him in a box and tape the top shut and put him in the wall of boxes!

Well, paperwork got signed on a Monday. I've never actually felt two such conflicting emotions at the same time. I was thrilled and scared to death! It's a big commitment, buying a house. And I had to sign my name or initials over and over and over again.

And what's with putting it on legal sized paper? Why can't you put the contract on normal sized paper so it fits in my normal sized filing system, instead of having to be filed sideways? Gr.

Anyway ... then Tuesday through Friday I had lots of help. We were painting the house (all except the pastel yellow kitchen since I like a pastel yellow kitchen) while there wasn't furniture against the walls. So each day my mom, one of my sisters who had come to help, and my sister-in-law, and me, all packed our cars to the brim with boxes, and drove separately over to the house (which is less than a mile from my parents' house. Brave I am not).

Then we unpacked the boxes into the middle of each room depending on what they were labeled with, and proceeded to paint for the rest of the day. By Friday, using this method of moving, we had moved all the boxes and all the furniture that would fit in the cars, and had the whole house painted. Saturday my brother brought over his truck and we moved the three pieces of furniture that hadn't fit in the cars (my bed, a desk, and I think the biggest bookshelf).

And then Saturday evening I moved Pippin and myself and we spent our first night in the new house. I unpacked all the bedroom so it looked normal. My big bedroom at my parents' house had been divided (using furniture) so that if you "cut out" the sleeping part of it and transplanted it to the new bedroom, that's the normal I was going for. Pippin always slept with me all night, so I wanted that part at least to be reassuring for him.

I put him down in the litter box in the bedroom's bathroom's shower. It's one of those tiny showers and I'm too claustrophobic to use it as a shower, so that's where the litter box lives. And it's always a good idea to start the cat out in the litter box when you're introducing him to a new space. That way he's exploring "out" from there, and always knows where to return to for necessities.

Pippin slowly explored almost the entire house that first night. It quite amazed me, because I thought it would take him longer. Oddly, the kitchen (at the opposite end of the house from the bedroom) remained a "scary" place for years, even when he'd roam freely through the rest of the house.

He even seemed to love having all this space for just us. He happily found his stuff (cat furniture and toys) and was reassured that his food and water were readily obvious in location.

Like any cat he finds the exact center
of the house and that becomes a favored spot.

His beloved cat furniture
is here, too!

So far from being the traumatic experience I thought it could be for him, Pippin quite enjoyed moving out into a larger space. He checked out the boxes and the unpacked stuff too. It really looked like he knew that these boxes were the same as the ones in my old bedroom, and he was quite satisfied that we had brought all the stuff too.

Like me, he always appreciated having the things he was used to around him, and I think it really helped that I'd unpacked the bedroom completely, making it look the same and, although the walls and carpet wouldn't smell "right" yet, all the stuff (bed, comforter, furniture and clothes) smelled right.

The first exploration run

Although it took me a month to pack all my stuff using the time after work, it only took me a week to unpack it using that same time. It wasn't that my stuff got less somehow during the move. It was that for some reason it bothered me so much to have it all boxed up in this strange place that I just had to get it all unpacked.

And having it all unpacked and the boxes all gone made Pippin happy. He could even enjoy playing in a cardboard box again!

Retrospective: Pippin Explores the Old Cloister

In the same 2006 trip where lots of family came, my sister and I went exploring to an old cloister (still operational) that was within walking distance of the bed and breakfast we were staying in.

We accidentally came in the wrong way, through a charming old graveyard, the kind with the overarching trees and the lush grass and the worn gravestones with all kinds of barely readable long epitaphs on them. It certainly looked like an official entrance.

It was nice, though, because we got to explore the old no-longer-used buildings on our own rather than being shuffled around with a whole bunch of other people and tour guide squawking at us. I had Pippin with me, in his carry sack.

The amphitheater

This little amphitheater was my sister's favorite spot. She wanted to sit and meditate for a while, so while she did that, I got bored and let Pippin out to explore. He had a harness and leash on, so if he got scared I wouldn't lose him.

Pippin, intrepid explorer

Pippin was slow to get started, as usual. Since everything was scary when it was new, even after I'd mostly gotten him over his scaredy cat reactions, it would take him a little while to start exploring things.

Trying out a bench for size

But once he started exploring, he usually had a lot of fun.

Pretending he's a prowling kitty

 The benches, unbeknownst to me, were hollow underneath. I suppose if I knew about construction techniques I would have known at once that they had to be; no one would waste that much wood making them solid. But I didn't realize it, and Pippin found this out before I did. Because you see, the ends of the benches are open, so he could go inside them!

Just a little bit left outside the bench

He crawled underneath the bench since it was an excellent hiding spot, and did so before I realized what he was about. Now you'll notice in the pictures that show the whole bench ... it's not particularly wide. Or tall. So a large cat can't turn around.

He's stuck. I had to drag him out slowly by the harness. This resulted in a cat with a tummy full of dead leaves, sticks, and other natural detritus. And of course I hadn't thought far enough ahead to bring his comb. This is a normal problem of mine ... even though I try to think ahead, I always miss the most obvious stuff.

My sister, being slightly more careful of her own appearance than I, had a comb in her purse. It was her comb for her own hair, but she very graciously allowed me to use it on Pippin. And although I did my best, sitting on the bench with Pippin undignified and upside down in my lap, to pull all the debris out by hand, I really needed the comb for the small stuff.

And Pippin, his usual calm self, put up with all of this without a wiggle or wince.

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!

Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling to Luray Caverns

Luray Caverns has giant permanent billboards that line the interstate I spend the most time on when I drive to my family reunions.

So, not thinking much about the fact that I had Pippin with me, I stopped in to see them, one trip. This was when I still split the trip into two days, five hours of driving a day, so stopping for a tourist trap wasn't a problem with regards to time.

I got lucky, because unlike most caverns, Luray actually does allow pets. You have to carry them the whole time, however. Well, this wasn't a problem for me. I didn't plan to let Pippin out of his carry-sack anyway.

His carry-sack was a large pouch that strapped onto me with the pouch in front. Kind of like those human baby carriers I'm sure you've seen. I said to the lady who told me the pet rules that I guess you don't get many large dogs then, and she said I'd be surprised. They had a guy bring his large dog in a baby carriage, and since Luray is handicapped accessible, the baby carriage was able to go into the caverns too. (The stairs have a platform than can go up and down that you can put a wheelchair on ... or in this case, a baby carriage.) She said the dog was extremely well behaved and just lay in the carriage the whole time, looking around.

Deep caves

The caverns are very beautiful and serene. They are nice and cool, too, for the middle of summer (they are that same temperature in winter, but then it's not so nice because you're already cold). I really love the various formations and patterns that the rock and the water have made over many centuries.

One cool (ha ha, sorry, didn't mean the pun) feature of Luray Caverns is that although the tourist route is the same every time, the caves themselves do not, apparently, have any end. Nobody's found an end to them so far, anyway!

Rock alien

Pippin and me

What surprised me was how much Pippin liked the caverns. Usually when he was in the carry sack, you couldn't see him. He'd hide from the scary world and wouldn't stick his head out at all. But when we climbed the stairs down into the caverns, he perked up and stuck his head up, gazing around in pleasure.

Pippin in his carry sack

I don't know if it was the intense quiet of the caves, or the dark that despite the artificial lighting seems to permeate the place, or something else, but he really liked the caverns. He stayed "out" and watching his surroundings the whole time we were down in the caves. 

We went back to Luray several times in his lifetime, and he enjoyed them each time just as much. Who knew a cat would like caverns?

Retrospective: Pippin Goes Travelling and It's Dry Work

Our family reunions, which necessitated the ten hour drives, were always in June, July, or August, the hottest months of the year. With a long-haired Maine Coon in the car, I had to bundle up and put the air conditioning on full-force to keep him comfortable.

I felt like a right idiot wearing two jackets and pants when it was 90 to 100 degrees outside the car, and then having to take the jackets off and put them on again whenever I got out of the car or got back into it, but since Pippin couldn't very well take his fur off, that's the way it had to be.

If you've ever driven a long way in the car with the air conditioning on all the time, you know that it strips water out of the air like a desert. I could drink an entire 8 cups of water without needing to stop and use a restroom because the air was pulling water out of me so badly. And if I was having thirsty problems, how about my much smaller cat?

The issue was, Pippin wasn't about to eat, drink, or use the bathroom in a moving vehicle. He was fine with riding in a car. He didn't get carsick or meow the whole way (he only said things when he wanted to get my attention, which was rare, since somehow he understood I need to focus on the road). He just didn't want to do the "dangerous" stuff in the car.

Even though he'd never had to deal with predators in his life, he knew bone deep that eating, drinking, or using the litter box made you vulnerable to attack, and he wasn't about to do that in a moving car.

I had a brilliant idea. He would wash himself in the car. And since I'd never used a spray bottle of water for discipline, he wasn't afraid of it (or wouldn't be; he'd never been sprayed before). So what I could do to get more water in him was use a spray bottle to mist his hindquarters and then he'd lick it off.

So the trip I had this idea on, I took the spray bottle with me. Once we were on a stretch of highway where I could spare the attention, I got the bottle out and planned to spray him on his hips, as far away from his face as I could get and still be convenient for him to wash.

Well, the best laid plans and all that. I'm driving, remember, so I can only spare him brief glances. He was looking away when I glanced, so I sprayed ... just as he turned his face full on into the spray.

Sigh. I guess that's the last time I can do that particular trick. I'll have to find a new way to get water into him. And I haven't the slightest idea how ... what is he doing?

He'd squinched his eyes tight shut when the spray hit him, and made all kinds of faces, and licked the water off of his face from around what he could reach with just his tongue, and shook his head multiple times.

But now he had shut his eyes again and shoved his face toward me. For all the world like, "do it again, do it again!"

Sometimes I really doubted my interpretation of his body language, but this, even though it contradicted everything I knew about cats and water, seemed pretty clear.

So I sprayed him again, directly in the face, on purpose. He went through the whole rigmarole again: eyes tight shut, faces made, head shook, water licked off.

And then he shoves his face at me, eyes tight shut, again.

I think all total I sprayed him four or five times before he stopped asking. And he wasn't in the least bit upset when he stopped asking; it was just that he was done now. I felt bemused and amused in equal measures.

After that, I would periodically spray him with the water bottle throughout the trip, perhaps once every two hours. Sometimes he would try to intercept it to get his head sprayed, and sometimes he'd just let whatever get sprayed and lick the water off (the original intent of the spray bottle concept).

2006: One of my all-time favorite pictures

Retrospective: Pippin is Reluctant to Go Travelling

Most of the times I drove to the family reunion ten hours away, Pippin was perfectly content to be in his carseat, looking out the window or trying to sleep. I say "trying" because while he was perfectly able to sleep the entire ten hours, I rapidly discovered that if I let him sleep the whole trip, when we got there and I wanted to sleep, all he wanted to do was play. Since we'd be in a single room either in a relative's house or a hotel room, having him playing even by himself was disruptive to my sleep, and he never wanted to play by himself if I was available to help.

2006: Hotel room halfway there.
Pippin just hanging out on the hotel's
air conditioning unit.

I actually found this out thusly: We were coming home. This was when I was still using two days and a hotel stay halfway through to drive the ten hours. When I came off the tollbooth, I had to roll down the window and hand money to a (gasp!) stranger! Pippin dived off his carseat and under the actual car seat, wedging himself underneath.

Since getting him out from under was going to require stopping the car and getting a better angle on dragging him out, I just let him stay there. He fell asleep to the hum of the wheels and stayed there all five hours to the hotel. And then he wanted to play all night long.

2006: This is what he looked like in his carseat

I learned after that one incident to reach over and poke him periodically to wake him up. I also learned to put his harness on him and strap him into the carseat (stop envisioning a human toddler in a carseat--he could move around, just not leave the seat) before paying tolls!

Well, after a few years of splitting up the trip, I started doing the whole thing in one long drive. Coming to that same toll road on the way there one year, I sort of, er, headed the wrong direction. I didn't realize it until a half an hour had passed and I drove through a tunnel.

I didn't remember tunnels on the way to my relatives. Oops. I've gone the wrong direction. Well, looky there, they've very nicely put places to turn around and go the other direction without getting off the toll road. Paved and straight even, not the kind of paved but angled down and up ones that they have on interstates for just police cars and stuff, and they're angled that way so they flip cars trying to cross it fast.

So I really thought these flat paved cross-overs were really for people like me who'd headed the wrong way. I used one to turn around and go back the way I'd come. Only later, after the trip was over, I found out from my dad that no, you're supposed to get off the toll road, pay, turn around, get back on, and pay at the other end. For many years I felt very guilty about the dollar fifty I owed the toll road but as I could never figure out how to pay them, I finally gave up feeling guilty about it.

Anyway, this meant that my trip was now an hour longer since I'd gone half an hour out of the way and half an hour back. Pippin by now knew how long the trip was going to take, so when we reached the ten hour mark he started getting mildly restless. Not a lot, just enough to tell that he thought we should be there by now.

After I got off the toll road (in the correct location, I'll have you know) I got lost again. Two roads diverged in a (town) and I, I took the one less traveled by, as I discovered when I ended up in the middle of farmland, the kind where there's a farmhouse every five miles or so.

Sigh. At this point I knew that retracing my steps was going to be longer than finding where I was and designing a new route from here, so I stopped the car in a corner lot (I believe it was an abandoned gas station or something like that) and got the GPS and the laptop out of the trunk (yes, so long ago that the GPS was a separate unit) and started figuring stuff out.

Pippin watched all this, and after a while, said, "me-ow?" in an inquisitive tone of voice.

"Yes, we're lost," I said absentmindedly, my eyes focused on the screen.

A pause, and then a rather more impatient, "me-ow!"

"No, I don't know where we are," I said in exasperation. "I'm trying to get us there!"

A rather sulky "maow" greeted this, as if to say, "I was only asking."

So I looked up to find myself greeted with stiff cat back as he was pointedly looking out the window. I apologized for being cranky (after eleven hours of driving and getting lost twice it was rather frustrating) and for snapping at him.

As always, he forgave me quite quickly. He wasn't really even mad at me. Just wanted to get my attention and be reassured that I knew where we were and what was going on.

---

But the time he was really reluctant to go traveling was the time all three of us groups was going to the family reunion. My parents were driving in their car, my brother and his wife in their car, and me and Pippin in my car. We weren't precisely caravanning, as we'd all left at different times that morning, depending on our routines, but we were all traveling on the same roads on the same day. My mom had lent me her cell phone since I didn't have one back then, so we were all able to be connected.

Pippin, for whatever reason, just did not feel like going on a long car trip that day. He was a pain, moving restlessly around in his seat, threatening to come down out of it just short of the point at which he'd get the harness put back on.

That's how I trained him to stay put. He didn't like wearing his harness. So if he stayed in his carseat (with one exception I'll tell you about in a second) he didn't have to wear it. If he didn't stay put, I put the harness on and wrapped the leash around the car's seat's headrest so he'd have to stay put.

He was allowed to come be on my lap on long road trips under the following conditions: he had to ask, and I had to say yes. I only said yes when I had long stretches of interstate with very little traffic and no exits I had to take for a long time.

The difficulty I've had getting the harness on Max makes me realize just how special Pippin was. I could put his harness on him one-handed, while I was driving so barely looking at him.

Anyway, Pippin was pushing the limits of "staying put" and just generally being obnoxious. This of course was a far cry from how obnoxious a cat can be in a car, but for him, it was unusual.

Then my sister-in-law called to check in. Pippin heard her voice on the phone and came diving down out of his car seat, across my lap, to where I held the phone in my left hand to my (left, obviously) ear, and started meowing most insistently.

We could only conclude that he was saying, "Help me, help me, get me out of here, she's gone crazy and plans to drive all day again!"

2006 on a far more contented trip

Pippin had long since proved he would not use a litterbox in a moving car. He would simply hold it until we got to our destination (thus adding a little more emphasis to his wanting to know if we were there yet in the story above. He'd held it for eleven hours, one more hour than usual, and really needed to know how much longer).

I thought maybe he was so restless because I'd dragged him out to the car and started the trip before he'd had a chance to empty his bladder that morning. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom?

So when we got to the gas station to put gas in the car, after I'd done that I parked the car in the far corner of the lot away from all the noise (or as "away" as I could get) where there were trees and sandy soil. I thought perhaps the sandy soil might be enough like his litter that he would go. I put his harness on him and took him to the sandy spot, putting him down where my body blocked the way back to all the cars and people and noise.

He didn't go. I wasn't entirely surprised. He was never an outdoor cat, and he was very good about using a litter box and nothing else, so I didn't really think he'd go outdoors. But I had to at least give him a chance. Just because I thought he'd be one way doesn't mean a pressing bladder couldn't change his mind.

But after this, he was good as gold. Sat in his carseat like a model citizen, didn't say a word, acted like a completely different cat (the travelling version I was used to).

I think, although I'm not sure, that he thought when I put him on the ground, that I was doing the human to cat equivalent of the human to small human "if you don't behave yourself you can just walk home!"

Although I felt slightly guilty about making him think that I might make him walk home, because I would never ever do that any more than the parent would do that to their human child, I was guiltily grateful that it made him behave! Even if I hadn't meant it that way.

Retrospective: Puzzled Pippin

When I lived with my parents I used to put jigsaw puzzles together with my Dad. Pippin was always very polite and we never found any pieces on the floor or found pieces swept aside on the puzzle table to indicate he was playing with them.

Now, after I got Pippin, it did seem to me after a while that my puzzles were taking me longer than usual. Sometimes I would swear that I put those pieces in just yesterday. But since puzzles are like that, and I didn't bother memorizing pieces or taking photos of them (back then I had a film camera so, really no point), I didn't think much of it.

There came a puzzle where I just knew I'd been putting these same pieces in for days now. Really.

It never occurred to me to blame Pippin. Just what would a cat be doing to make me put pieces in repeatedly? I mean, cats just play soccer with puzzle pieces, right?

Yeah, um, no. I saw this with my own two eyes, or I wouldn't have believed it. I came in the room one day unexpectedly and found Pippin on the puzzle table. He was very carefully and cautiously picking out pieces from the edge of the hole (I put the outside together first and work my way inward on puzzles) and then very gently scooting the newly liberated piece to one side, just a little. Once that was done, he'd go to work on a second piece, again lifting it carefully out of its place by perseverance with a paw, and scooting that one aside to join the first.

Apparently, he had decided that since I had such fun putting the puzzle together (as evidenced by the amount of time I spent on it) that he would extend my fun by helping me take longer to put the puzzle together!

I don't remember my reaction, aside from astonishment, but I think I must have said something, probably mildly annoyed combined with laughter, because after that my puzzle pieces stayed where I put them and didn't "undo themselves".

Silly Pippin!

Cats and Humans: A Tale of Three Kitties

I've had three cats in my life for the long-term (Max doesn't count, in this at least) and I find it very fascinating how different the relationships were with each of them.

Pizza, my first cat, thought he was a cat and I was a human and we were friends, although confidentially I did need a good deal of looking after but that's okay, that's what he was here for. I think Pizza viewed himself more as an adult cat with a baby human, since when he came to live with me I was still a child, and of course he grew up so much faster than I did. So he always had a very mothering attitude with me, as well. But he knew that we were different species and he was fine with that.

Pippin, on the other hand, thought he was a human, albeit oddly shaped. He spent his first four months in a cage (a large one) with his siblings disappearing after three months, and then when he came to live with me he was the only cat after Tiger passed away about six months later. The only cat with three humans. He concluded that he was a human too, just funny shaped.

He insisted on drinking from a cup once he noticed that humans didn't drink from a bowl. When I would take him places with me, he didn't know how to associate with other cats, and ended up making them conclude that he was strange and thus they mostly left him alone. He sat in the front seat of the car like I did, without my having to do much training at all. 

Most of his behavior was modeled after humans, and so training him was easy. I've always had the attitude that the cats can do anything I can. Thus they can be on couches and chairs and other furniture, but they can't walk on the counter. Because after all, I don't walk on the counter. Pippin would sit in a dining room chair next to me and wait until supper was over. On the rare occasion I had something he actually wanted, he would wait patiently until I gave him my bowl to lick out. (Since he had seen that I lick bowls (yes, I know, manners, manners) he was fine doing the same.) But mostly he just sat with me.

I have no idea how he reconciled the food differences. I know he always thought I had something he'd like because obviously I liked it, but when I'd offer him a smidge on my finger, he would sniff it and go, ew, that can't possibly be what you're really eating. Where's the good stuff? And he never did figure out why I used the toilet instead of a litter box like a decent human. He kind of gave up figuring it out after a while. Possibly he attributed that difference to our relative sizes. (Big humans use toilets and little humans, like himself, used litter boxes.)

He never did figure human children out, either. Whenever I took him somewhere public, like Petsmart or Luray Caverns (yes, I took him on a tour of the caverns with me, more than once. He loved it.) anyway, children would be instantly attracted to him with his gorgeous fur and long tail and large size. Most children would ask me if they could pet him, and I'd let them pet the tail that hung down into their reach (seeing as most of Pippin was over my shoulder). A few children actually got their parent to ask me, which I thought was funny, but more appropriate. Nobody ever tried to pet him without asking me first in some way, though. 

And Pippin would look at them and I could see he had his puzzled look on, as if trying to determine if these small versions of "big humans" were actually humans or if they were a different category. Of course he was never around small humans enough to make up his mind, as those events were the only times we'd encounter children.

So Pippin thought he was a human.

Apricot, now; Apricot knows he's a cat. He also thinks I'm a cat, just an oddly shaped one. He has no other humans to compare me with on a regular basis to be able to see that I have more similarities with them than with him. And the humans he does know of (the ones he saw in the shelter and the ones he sees outside and the very few visitors I've had since he came to live with me) those humans don't act like me.

And he's right; I don't behave like most humans. My friends and family probably won't believe this, but in my house I'm actually very silent most of the time. Adult cats don't verbally communicate with each other; they use body language and pheromones instead. So the fact that I don't talk a lot makes me, in Apricot's eyes, more like a cat than the talky humans he's encountered. He is just beginning to talk verbally to me, but mostly he still only does it when we can't see each other.

Then there's the fact that I deliberately learned some cat body language in order to make friends with him from the beginning, seeing as he was so anxious and shy. One thing that most humans don't do is what was called Cat Kisses by the website I learned it from. If two cats stare at each other unblinking (or blinking for only as long as necessary to lubricate the eyes), it's a challenge. They're actually fighting, because if they can reconcile the differences without having to expend energy on a physical fight, they'd rather do that. The first cat to look away loses. If neither cat does, then they escalate things.

But humans consider a stare to be "without blinking" and think that as long as they blink normally, they aren't staring. To cats, that's still a stare. But if two cats want to look at each other and communicate that they aren't a threat and furthermore, they are friendly, they will blink for much longer. Several seconds, even, with each blink.

This is how I first communicated with Apricot as I sat on the other side of the room from him and looked at him. I was telling him I was a friend without having to actually touch him to do it. I still do Cat Kisses and he does them back, which ends up in funny contests of "love you more" which he always wins because the ultimate Cat Kiss is the half-lidded content gaze, and I can't do that (my eyes don't like to stay half-lidded and either close or open completely).

I didn't realize at the time that I was teaching Apricot that I was a cat. I was just trying to help him understand I wasn't a threat.

But now he thinks I'm a cat, which has done nothing to alleviate his fear of humans, but makes our relationship very tight. He thinks petting is allogrooming (that is, "grooming by another") although since at this point he considers I'm a mama cat, he doesn't offer to groom me back (thank goodness. Cats have awfully rough tongues!)

He's actually a bit confused as to whether I count as a mama cat or a sibling cat. I groom him and don't let him groom me back (well, he's never offered, but I'd pull my hands out of the way if he did. That habit drove Pippin nuts because he was trying so hard to return the favor and I wouldn't let him). And I provide the food and clean his litterbox like a mama cat would provide food and clean his butt (thank goodness I don't have to do that ...) 

On the sibling cat side, however, I play with him. Granted, I play with him using toys, but I still play. A mama cat wouldn't play with him. So while he's mostly coming down on the side of "mama cat", he's still hopeful that perhaps I could be sibling cat instead. Or possibly at the same time. After all, I'm not shaped like he is, so perhaps I could be both? (he thinks, hopefully. Best of both worlds, right?)

This is, I think, the reason why it has taken him so long to stop trying to play-bite me. I mean, he still does try, but it's much less now and most of the time he'll remember to stop himself. But before he came to the conclusion that yes, I really don't like it, he was trying a gentler and gentler bite, to find what level would "not hurt" me. I put that in quotes because actually, he never bit me hard enough to hurt after that very first time when it wasn't a playbite but was because I'd messed with his back paws before earning his trust about that.

I just always pretended he hurt me dreadfully when he bit. And he'd get this puzzled look on his face, as if to say now I know I didn't break skin or hurt you this time. Why are you still hurt? 

It is very odd to be considered a cat. He's making the same allowances for me that Pippin did, only from the other end of the viewpoint spectrum. (Bathing in water, toilet instead of litter box, eating at the table instead of a food bowl, etc. Pippin didn't have an issue reconciling the water bath because I actually bathed him every so often. He probably figured that I needed the water bath more often than he did because I was bigger.)

This also means that Apricot thinks I can see him no matter how dark it is. I'm working on that but I've only just started to explain about it. It's still summer so the house isn't that dark when I go to bed. 

Oh, yes, and Apricot is starting to get very tired of me explaining stuff. I forget what it was, but something startled him, so I started to explain what it was, why it made that noise, and why he shouldn't worry about it, and he gave me the cat version of rolled eyes and was all, yeah, yeah, okay, so it won't hurt me. I don't need to know the rest of it, can you just shut up already? and he walked off, not startled anymore. If only he'd believe me about the tv ...

It will be interesting to see what the kittens add to this mix. Since the kittens are raised underfoot with two humans and lots of cats, they'll know they are cats and I am a human, and I'm wondering if they will persuade Apricot to their viewpoint, or if, since he's older (thus wiser in the ways of the world) and me being odd for a human, they'll come over to his viewpoint. 

Well, it is time now to play with the Bird, only Apricot is fast asleep in the crepe myrtle cat tree. I will go see if he's willing to wake up and play. 

Sort of Retrospective: My Staunch Defender

Do you know what a camel cricket is? Some people call them mole crickets. They are small insects roughly the size of a quarter with a humped form body (thus "camel") and they jump incredible distances, like singing crickets can. Camel crickets also have serrated edges on their legs, so even if they're dead they can hurt you.

I hate camel crickets. I'm scared of them, and I hate them. I especially hate the way they jump so fast. I can't see which way they jumped and honestly, I think they can jump any direction from a standing start.

Once I had a camel cricket jump and "reappear" on my leg, inside my pjs. I have never shucked out of clothing so fast in my life.

Suffice it to say that I feel about camel crickets the same way some people feel about snakes or spiders.

Pippin loved camel crickets. They were great fun to play with, and apparently, good to eat. Sometimes I would come home and find nothing but a set of camel cricket legs. Gross, but better than finding a live one! Since I lived in the basement room, and these evil insects like damp and dark, they proliferated down there.

I would call Pippin's name in a quavering tone of voice, "here's another one, come help me!" and he soon learned that meant I had a wonderful jumpy toy for him to play with. I remember one time distinctly when I wanted to go upstairs and there was a nasty adult camel cricket, big old thing, standing in the middle of the doorway as if daring me to go past it. As if! I'd stay there all night if that's what it took (well, okay, the basement room had a door to the outside, so I'd go out that way and around the house to the back door and ask to be let in, no matter how embarrassing that would have been).

Pippin came running in, "where, where?" and I pointed. (This was something odd about Pippin; most cats do not get pointing. They'll look at your finger. Pippin figured out pointing fairly quickly in his life.) Oh joy oh rapture, a jumpy toy! And he kept the camel cricket occupied and out of the doorway long enough for me to get out and up to supper.

This morning, I was in the mini-bathroom that's off the master bedroom, when a similar situation happened. A baby camel cricket (and no, they aren't cute when they're small) appeared in the middle of the doorway. And of course I was actually in the middle of using the toilet, so I was a little restricted in my movement. The toilet faces the doorway.

I heaved a sigh of resignation. I was going to have to see if I could kill it while not actually leaving the seat. Small camel crickets don't react as quickly or jump as far as the adults, so I had some chance, at least. A wad of toilet paper served to protect my fingers while I tried to squish it. It jumped aside, easily avoiding me.

I'd forgotten Apricot was in the bedroom, hanging about as he normally does when I get up in the morning. He heard or saw me doing different things, and instead of being scared, he was intrigued. He came over ...

And saw the jumpy toy. Oh joy oh rapture, a jumpy toy! He promptly took over trying to kill it, and did a very efficient job of it, too. He didn't actually mean to kill it that quickly, but he managed to smack it up against the doorframe with his paws and squashed it. Much to his puzzlement and disappointment, which he later took out on a stuffed toy mouse.

So apparently I have an applicant for Staunch Defender Against All Things Camel Cricket. We will see if he continues with this the next time one appears. He might not get the whole tone of voice I have when I call him to come rescue me, but then again, he might.

You better believe I praised him up and down for defending me. Good Apricot, wonderful Apricot! Now there's at least a chance I don't have to deal with the horrid things myself. I think the worst part about living with no other humans is that I have to take care of all insect invasions myself, no matter how much I hate them or are scared of them.

Retrospective: Pippin's Sofa Days

Apricot's hiding under the couch reminded me of Pippin's sofa days.

When Pippin was smaller than he eventually became, he liked to go under the sofa, especially after toys. He'd put one under the sofa and then chase it out from under.

This was in my parents' house while we still lived there, and this sofa was the one in the living room on the wooden floor. There was another sofa on the carpet in the den, but that was a sleeper sofa and didn't have the room underneath, although that didn't deter him from creeping underneath when the sleeper part was out. All the photos I have are of this sofa, actually, when I was playing with him with a fabric ribbon while he was underneath.

June 2000 playing under the sofa bed

But back to the one in the living room. This was really quite a favorite place to play, and as he grew by leaps and bounds, it became more and more difficult for him to get under it. If he could get under the edge, the inside part of the couch was higher, and he was fine.

He would squirm on his belly to get underneath. This worked for a few weeks and then he couldn't get the leverage because he couldn't even stand a little bit. He got out by turning on his back and pulling himself out with his paws on the edge of the sofa, but it never really worked the other way around due to the whole bottom of the sofa interrupting his grip.

The last time he ever went under the sofa I remember quite distinctly. He tried to get under, and couldn't, so he backed up to the other side of the room. Like a funny car revving up to start at full speed, he tensed every muscle in his body and then launched at high speed across the room, toward the couch. Which I was sitting on at the time.

I waited with baited breath for him to run into the sofa; I couldn't figure what else was going to happen besides the worst misjudgment in the world.

At the last possible second, when he was going full out, he suddenly dropped to his belly, all four feet splayed out around him, and slid neatly under the couch. It was a you-tube worthy moment, if only I'd had a video camera.

It was also a good thing I was there and saw him do this, because only by splaying out flat, and thus flattening his shoulderblades too, had he been able to get underneath. This meant that he actually couldn't get out by himself, even by his now-normal method of dragging himself out upsidedown with his paws on the sofa edge.

I asked him if he was stuck, and when he refused to answer me indignantly in the negative, I figured he was stuck. (A cat isn't going to admit they're stuck, after all.) He could still move around underneath, but he couldn't get out. He did try and then gave up, which was when I came down and asked if he was stuck.

So I grabbed both front paws with one hand, flattened his head to the floor with the other, and gently dragged him out from under the couch. He understood what I was doing and made himself as flat as possible, which was nice--it was possible he would have fought against that kind of treatment, since as a rule cats don't like you pushing their heads down.

He never went under the sofa again, although I did find him occasionally looking at it mournfully as if remembering the good old days when he could chase his toys under the sofa and not rely on a human to retrieve them.

And you know how I know he never went under again? Because I never had to extract him from happy sofa land again, either!