I received the directive from my cat’s vet to give her a daily omega-3 supplement.
That’s fish oil. The essential nutrients it contains offer a range of benefits—from promoting a shiny coat and supple joints to supporting heart and kidney function.

And cats love fish oil.

Except when they don’t.

And I am somewhat of an emotional wreck about it.

The human-feline dosing struggle is tough enough with medications of nearly any type. I have tried all the tricks in the proverbial Fool the Feline book. I have buried even the teeny, tiniest of pills within all variations of counterfeit, chicken-esque, malleable balls of disguised delivery devices. I have mixed small, often negligible, amounts of helpful, recommended, or prescribed things into large amounts of cat food, only for the crucial crumb to be found by an otherwise not very smart or logical feline—but one apparently graced with a forensic-quality palate.

I have failed at middle-of-the-night subterfuge, attempting to sneak something into my cat’s mouth while she slept. I have used nearly an entire bag of Pill Pockets to dose her a quarter piece of a pill, only to have her expertly nibble around it, look up at me with contempt, and triumphantly flick the unscathed bit onto the floor.

But the omega-3 oil effort has reached Crusade level.

When I mixed it into food my cat reliably liked, not only did she turn her nose up at that meal, but she then swore off any future meal with that brand of food. I have stacked and stored cans of food that she used to enjoy, but which I will likely have to wait until the next partial eclipses of the sun and the moon come around to try to use again.

After most of my various approaches fail, my fish oil dosing strategy always brings me back to the tried-and-true (for others) method of wrapping my cat in a towel—the classic “kitty burrito”—to attempt to squirt a bit of oil into her mouth.

It can be difficult for one person to tightly wrap a cat in a towel, and when I finally accomplish this with my feline, her angry little head—and it is a VERY little head—sticks out, her dilated-pupiled eyes declaring her whisker line-in-the-sand opposition, her mouth exquisitely welded shut.

I know this look all too well from a guy I once dated. I’d be on the receiving end of it whenever I cooked for him.

After the alligator wrestling kitty burrito maneuver, I inevitably end up wearing the fish oil intended for my cat, and my entire home smells like I’ve invited the neighborhood over for an active adult community sardine party.

The upshot is, this bad reaction by my cat is really my fault. So, yes, this failure on the fish oil front is tough to, ugh, swallow.

I have thought this through—usually in the middle of the night, when I should be sleeping. From now on, I will be training my kittens, shortly after they are born, to proactively prepare for their old age and the likelihood of having some sort of medical condition needing treatment.

I will condition them to actually like the taste of fish oil, since I have failed miserably at that, having raised cats that believe chicken, in all of its fresh, freeze-dried, diced, shredded, or saucy forms, is their Valhalla, their Zion, their nirvana.

I will also get my kittens used to having various liquids of questionable—perhaps vile—tastes randomly shot into their mouths by suddenly appearing small plastic syringes or droppers.

By the time they reach adulthood, my cats will expect that no meal happens unless a packet or spoonful of some expensive substance first accessorizes their food. This is my new and modest goal as a cat owner and cat breeder.

Otherwise, I’d better get really good at convincing my neighborhood of retirees that sardine parties are a thing.

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I suppose it was when I noticed the blue and red flashing lights in my rearview mirror that I figured my journey on the Pennsylvania Turnpike was going to be interrupted for an unplanned stop. The morning was cold and drizzly, and while I waited for the state trooper to make his way over, I recognized the lights as the older rotating circular style—similar to those used by police of the U.S. Park Service, Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Virginia’s Loudoun County, and various small hamlets in New York State—all forces with which I was familiar as an “end user,” so to speak.

I had pulled over on the shoulder of the Turnpike, an old, narrow Interstate that snakes through the small towns, farmland, and undulating countryside of the Keystone State, largely unchanged by time. The officer was in no hurry to emerge from his squad car, instead doing the things that cops do, allowing a violator to linger and speculate about their level of guilt. I idly glanced out my window and noticed that a few yards ahead stood one of the odder billboards I had seen in some time. The long horizontal span featured a color photograph of a large piece of lasagna on a plate, with the word “CHEESE” above it and, below the lasagna, the phrase “BRINGING FAMILIES TOGETHER.”

I pondered that image and slogan.

Finally, the trooper tapped on the passenger side window, and I lowered it just enough to hear him and keep the cold drizzle out. His scrutinizing look into the car was met by the wide-eyed, surprised stares of the two blue Abyssinian cats sitting bolt upright in a cuddle bed in the passenger seat.

“License and regis . . . are those CATS?” asked the officer. “REAL cats?”

I figured that a certain level of contriteness was accorded the law on those occasions when I am caught violating it.

“Yes sir, real cats. Abyssinians. We are going to a cat show in Ohio.” I smiled, trying to soften the shock the officer must have felt while being stared at relentlessly by my two perky felines.

“Your license and registration, please. You were speeding considerably.”

I handed him my documents; he returned to his cruiser, and I waited again in a prolonged period of personal consideration.

I considered that I would have liked to have been somewhere other than sitting on the side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in bad weather, readying myself for an expensive speeding ticket. I would have preferred to perhaps have been sitting around a table, sharing some unifying cheese with a family. It wouldn’t even need to be my own family—but at least we’d be together.

During the wait, my cats turned their attention to stare at me. They expected me to do something. Felines are creatures of habit, and they require an agenda when we travel to a show. The first hour of a drive is usually devoted to dramatic guttural noises, a prelude to heaving post-show bath hairballs in the rear seat—followed by me stopping at the next gas station to clean up the mess. Then there are scheduled turns to poop and pee in the onboard litterbox, with me stopping the car and cleaning the litterbox after each use.

During the first hour of a trip, we are usually able to travel maybe 20 miles.

Once the actual journey begins, I don’t do a lot of stopping. There will be one or two refueling stops, a bathroom break . . . and every so often a little stop to pick up a speeding ticket. I’m sort of a creature of habit as well.

Finally, the state trooper returned to rap on my passenger side door, and the cats returned their undivided attention to him. I lowered the window and was handed back my license and registration, along with a clipboard bearing a citation formalizing my violation and informing me that $109 was due by mail in ten days.

“I cut you a bit of a break,” said the trooper. “Rather than citing you for speeding—which would mean points and a bigger fine—I wrote you up for ‘Failing to Obey a Posted Turnpike Sign Regulating Traffic Flow.’ No points and a bit less money.”

Ah, the semantics of motor vehicle law. I thanked him for his benevolence and apologized for attempting to speed up the traffic flow all by myself.

“Cute cats,” he added. “Big ears and eyes. They look different than regular cats.”

“They were raised on high-quality, family-oriented cheese,” is what I wanted to say.

But no, I didn’t.

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Onward with the discovery of things not well understood in Tucson, Arizona.

I went to a local steakhouse for a late lunch and ordered a steak and lobster tail. Because I was in the mood for a bit of indulgence.

The minute I said, “Yes, I will have the lobster tail . . . fried,” to the waitress, I could tell something was amiss.

She came back a few minutes later. “The cooks here have never done fried lobster tails. The tails come to us frozen.”

I paused, but persevered. “That’s totally okay, you can still fry those suckers.”

There was a moment. “They usually just steam them.”

Oh my. “Frying a lobster tail is life changing.”

The waitress went back to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later.

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“Enough to fry a lobster tail.” Which means that, as a non-native speaker, as long as I can say everything in the present tense, we’re okay. Because when I try to speak in any past tense, I always end up using one that declares everyone is irrevocably and permanently dead. My father was Mexican, my mother was German. They compromised on speaking what the cats would most easily understand. I came along later. It was up to me to adapt.

The waitress went into the kitchen and a moment later popped her head out and motioned me to follow her.

I went in and met the cooks and offered, with a tentative smile and thumbs up, “Nosotros podemos hacer esto.” (We can do this!)

I asked the cooks if they were familiar with an “egg wash.” I defaulted to English because I feared saying “lavado de huevo” would translate into me directing someone to scrub the shit out of an egg.

The cooks nodded enthusiastically and in an instant an egg was beaten.

“Panko?” I asked hopefully, thinking that perhaps I’d stumbled onto the universal word for a crispy breaded coating. I was delighted to see one of the cooks grab a big container of their go-to breadcrumbs.

Ah, now spices. I saw no Old Bay seasoning, which was not a bad thing, since a little of that goes a long, long way. Ever wondered what your lips would look like after Botox? Just add a bit too much Old Bay to some fried fish or steamed crabs and then say your own name aloud. It’s not pretty.

I spied some garlic pepper and strongly suggested “un poquito” go into the egg wash. The two cooks exchanged an unmistakable aaaaha! look. I spied a shaker of lemon pepper and gave that to one of the guys as well. Let’s live a little!

We ended up at the long kitchen prep area—six shared fried lobster tails later. The waitresses took a bite, the manager took a fork, a bite, and then betrayed a very sweet smile. Someone grabbed a couple of potato rolls and announced, “This can be a sandwich!” The entire staff had decided what they wanted for dinner break.

“How did we never know about this FRIED lobster?”

Something this L.A. girl asked herself about thirty years ago at a Virginia fish house, where I was persuaded to try my first fried lobster.

There are moments that quietly become memorable—even when you’re worried dreadfully about mixing your culinary tenses.

And I’m OK with that.

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The truth is the motorhome we had when I was a kid was not a Winnebago. It was a few notches below that. Actually, many notches below. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing another vehicle like ours. I can only assume that the model was in very low production—probably in no production at all—and we were the owners of the only one of its kind, a vehicle spawned from some unfortunate handyman hallucination.

There are four things I remember most about that motorhome in the early 1970s; one was that every time any part of my body touched the exterior, my hands and clothes would be covered in chalky oxidized white paint. My mother would always yell to remind me, “Do not touch the outside of the motorhome or you’ll get all chalky!” I ended up quite chalky during my childhood.

Then there was the fact that whenever we took it to the mountains for a few days and my mother turned on the stove to cook, a noisy fan would start up and, shortly thereafter, the inside of the motorhome would fill with smoke and large families of buzzing yellowjackets would be sucked into the cabin. My father was never much of a handyman, and it probably took him many weeks to triumphantly rig the stove so that once turned on, the ventilation fan automatically ran in reverse.

I also remember the unbelievably loud generator hooked up outside the back of the motorhome. My dad would have that thing running all night, powering a tiny, dim light so that he could continue deciphering his Reader’s Digest even while out in the “wilds.” Since the generator outside was placed next to the foldaway bunk inside, going to bed was sort of like inviting 50 of one’s favorite drill-happy dentists over for a sleepover and to practice for earthquake tremor survival.

By far, though, what I remember most about all the trips in that odd, oxidized RV was how my parents would always decide, at the last minute before embarking from home, to take the family cats along with us. We usually had three cats, and once all the gear was loaded up, our felines would be hoisted from whatever soft, quiet niches they had settled into throughout the house and placed—wearing dazed, sleepy expressions—onto the floor of the motorhome. Dad would get us on the road, and all three cats would climb up into the long open-door cupboard that hung from the ceiling above the dinette area in the back. The dinette area was the same as the foldaway bunk area where the dentists would be lying in wait for nighttime to come.

The cats eventually learned to recognize when we were getting things ready to go camping, and they would scatter and hide in dark places throughout the house, remaining perfectly still and hoping to avoid another turn as involuntary passengers. Determining their whereabouts then became a family project, with many delayed departures as my parents worked to free a cat’s last-ditch death grip on a kitchen chair leg, sofa cushion, or dangling dishtowel on the way out.

Once on the road, my mom, who tended to become car sick, would head for the back of the RV to ride out the trip. There she sat, in nauseous silence, as though riding in the last car of a roller coaster as my dad took the corners and bends of mountain roads with a certain amount of gusto and abandon.

Each hair-raising turn would be followed by three dull thuds as the cats above Mom’s silent posting slid from one side of the long cabinet to the other. The largest cat—a rather gelatinous Siamese—had the most ballast and would be the first to launch and hit with the loudest thud. Two other, more delicate, thuds would follow—along with associated hissing—as the cats slammed into each other and the wall.

Meanwhile, beneath the cat-containing cupboard, my queasy mother would also slide from side to side with each turn, further polishing the vinyl dinette bench.

Despite his wife of over 25 years being nauseous and making a thud of her own on each turn, Dad, without taking his eyes off the road, would always yell to the back, “Hey Pat, ARE THE CATS all right?”

He was extremely worried about the cats; bless his heart, my mom’s face might be turning blue.

Decades later, I miss my dad and remember fondly each of those brave feline travelers who gave at least one of their nine lives on every vacation.

I sure don’t miss going up to the mountains in that dreadful, loud, chalky-white motorhome programmed to suck in yellowjackets on command.

Though I do believe I’ve made my peace with dentists.

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I am not big into perfumes or strong scents. I like things, places, people, and yes, cats to be and smell clean. “Clean” is not an overpowering thing to my olfactory enterprise; it is inviting, pleasant, and welcoming.

Nowhere do I practice this definition more so than in my home, where I want things clean so I can tell when something is not. Perhaps my trait comes from inviting cats to meander through my home, but when someone—and by “someone” I do mean feline—barfs, poops, or pees either in or out of a designated area, I want to detect it so I can remove it promptly. Although I can train any cat to roll over on command, I have yet to get a single one of them to save me just a bit of work by making a beeline for a toilet bowl when they feel a retch coming on. Too bad, since so many millions of much less capable college students seem to know this as second nature.

On weekends at home I did, every now and then, light up a mildly scented candle or, in winter, enjoy the woody smell of burning logs in the fireplace. With that in mind, while at a cat show I purchased one of those decorative fragrance warmers, a popular item that diffuses scent by means of a lightbulb heating fragrance-embedded wax cubes.

I was delighted with my cute little warmer and, like other customers, I too picked up a handful of the scented wax cubes in a full range of enticing aromas. Though I had not actually used the warmer yet, I was eagerly awaiting a chilly winter weekend at home to plug it in and enjoy one of the seasonally appropriate ambient auras.

Therefore, I was rather surprised—no, I was downright shocked—when I walked through my door after arriving home from work and was overpowered by “Autumn Sunset,” “Embers,” “Echo,” “Pomegranate Morning,” “Festival of Trees,” and a hairball two feet from the doorway that smelled vaguely of “Cozy Fireside.”

Combined, the mob of fragrances did a great deal to suggest that I had fallen into a terribly deep, smothering compost pile from which I would never escape.

I stepped over the “Cozy Fireside” dried hairball and, walking further into my house, saw that each of the plastic packages of the wax cubes had been bitten into—and were spread all over the house.

Repeatedly bitten into.

The evidence arrayed at my feet suggested that likely one cat first bit into every one of the containers, realized that not even “Pomegranate Morning” offered any type of true feline gastronomic promise, and left them for the other cats to each have a go and discover the same thing. Once the cats had riddled the containers with bites and deemed the experience a letdown, then the only value the loose cubes had were as hockey-puck-like amusements. No doubt, as each lump of molded wax sailed across the floor, down the stairs, and under the sofa and chairs, the delightful scents within escaped, coalesced, and thus became one huge, unbearable, undesirable, and unforgettable stench.

This was not a “clean” smell; this was the smell from hell.

Of course, the group of feline offenders, having such sensitive and precise noses, had done their best to escape the overwhelming odor. Concerned for their safety, I ran upstairs to find the cats burrowed under the comforter on my bed—healthy, but in no mood to return to the bouquet downstairs. In fact, I didn’t see their cute little faces again until I had opened all the windows in the house for a few hours, and the “pure” scent (and sound) of the freeze-dried chicken treat bag being opened had roused them.

Our smelly suffering finally over, peace was restored. The cats reemerged. The warmer left the premises and found its way as a donation on a distant cat show raffle table.

Although I do feel there is some commercial potential for “Cozy Fireside”–fragranced alternative-fuel lightable hairballs.

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The splashy design catalog heralded a chair that I would never welcome into my house, beckoning me to perish in it.

The “Pelican Chair”—a wide, low, deeply swooping contraption—promised the kind of painful, gulping embrace its odd namesake avian would be proud of.

It is so low and angled down that, once I sat in it, I would pretty much be committing myself to remain there for the rest of the day. No doubt, I would have made advance arrangements in getting any and all bathroom visits out of the way.

The wing-like sides of the chair stick out so far that, not only would my arms never be able to reach down to the floor to attempt to prop myself up with my knuckles, but I would also be prevented from even properly rolling out of the chair and onto the floor. Being able to roll onto the floor to get out of the chair would be the best option, because really, I would already be right down there anyway. But no, the floor would, literally, be out of reach.

The covering, sort of a fuzzy nubby white fabric, at least looks soft, like it’s made from terry cloth. This is a texture that is an out-and-out advertisement for my cats to consider it a spacious and thoughtfully convenient to reach scratching post. They would have their way with it and render it transformed to shreds in 10 minutes. And then they would invite any feline friends over to do the same. Behold, the $10,000 (list price) floor-level cat tree.

That nubby, towel-like texture is probably designed to absorb the sweat any sitter expends trying to stand up from the chair. And it’s white. Nothing good ever comes from white upholstery in my house. The episode plays out in my mind: happy-to-see-me guests would come into my house and, immediately drawn to the allure of sitting on the floor without actually sitting on the floor, would say, “Oh look at that beautiful new white chair!” and would sit right down in it. And I would announce sternly, “Hey, DO NOT go sitting in that chair! Get your ass out of that chair RIGHT NOW!”

But then they wouldn’t be able to. Because they were already in the chair. Which means I would be stuck with the guests, all day. I could try to ignore them, but then they’d want something to eat, and there would be no way I’d let them eat in that white chair. They could only watch ME eat as I sat, comfortably above them, on a dark sofa.

This chair is its own scenario begging for the mandated wearing of a monitor necklace that can summon emergency authorities with the call “Help! I’ve sat in a chair too low to the ground and I can’t get up!”

I don’t know if such an emergency alert is included with the $10,000 price of the Pelican Chair. But I do believe it comes with a warning that it should not be used by people with artificial hips or knees, those with real hips or knees, cat owners, or those with inseams of more than 10 inches.

The bespoke furniture catalog described the Pelican Chair as art.
But pelicans survive by entrapment.

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I was on the return leg of delivering a cat to Wisconsin for breeding. I had my normal accompanying gear: cat carrier, little fold-out-and-fit-inside litterbox, harness and leash, and kitty chicken treats for airport concourse waiting time. But no cat.

The little fold-up litterbox was washed and empty; the carrier was a hollow space with strands of telltale hairs adhering to the Velcro closures. There was no movement, no adjusting, no jostling, no kicking, and no poking to disrupt the taut canvas hanging from my shoulder. There were no soft, otherworldly moans coming from inside the bag.

There was an eerie emptiness.

Therefore, I considered this cat-free return trip an opportunity to shop therapeutically. With room in the carrier, it would have been a pity to let that space go to waste.

Wisconsin provided an opportunity to find treasures at big Fleet Farm and Menard’s stores, craft chocolates from Oshkosh, neat books on raising goats (even though I don’t raise goats), and serious snow boots (that I did not have serious snow to wear them in). And cheese. Glorious, wonderful Wisconsin cheese, in all its various forms.

About 35 miles from the Madison airport, I discovered a terrific little cheese shop. I went rather wild with my purchases. Among my highlights were some wonderful cheese spreads. I made sure to buy them frozen because the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) considers cheese spreads to be banned carry-on items—their consistency places them in the category of “liquids”—except when frozen, during which time they are considered allowable solids.

I arranged my plastic tubs of frozen cheese spread in the little fold-up litterbox, while packing the other solid, wrapped cheeses in the hotel room laundry bag. I placed all of this in the cat carrier. This arrangement gave the carrier considerable ballast, with the kind of weight I would have had if I were carrying a cat.

The airport in Madison is attractive and comfortable, and best of all, there was no line at TSA security.

Off came my shoes, and as is normal when I am traveling with a cat, I carefully unzipped the carrier and gingerly pulled out the little fold-up litterbox, which now contained the frozen cheese spreads. I placed the litterbox in one of the plastic bins to send through the X-ray machine.

I then stepped up to the walk-through metal detector and, as I always do, announced to the TSA agent, “I have a fake hip and am traveling with a cat, and I will set off the alarm.”

The officer nodded, acknowledging my disclaimer, and motioned for me to walk through—at which point I set off the alarm, and he called out, “Female assist please—and traveling with a cat!”

Which is when I realized I was not actually traveling with a cat.

“So where is the cat?” asked the officer at the metal detector. Clearly, he was onto something.

“Is this the cat carrier?” asked another TSA screener, pointing to the canvas bag coming off the X-ray conveyor.

“Uh, yes, but . . .”

“Ma’am . . . there is no cat in there . . . and you are not carrying a cat. I don’t see any cat at all. There are only cheese products in these bins.”

The officer held his hand up, signaling me to stand still, even though I was already standing still. “Please follow me,” he said, which I took to mean that I was to stop standing still and come along in his direction, which I did. But then he held his hand up again, firmly, in a “halt” position and said, “Wait—and then follow me.” So, I again stood still, in my best “halt” position, and looked at the TSA officer’s face in the same manner my cats give me when they are intellectually overwhelmed.

After a few seconds, his hand came down, and I followed him to a little room where travelers who give stupid answers are taken so that their mental status can be evaluated and judged to determine whether they are a threat to the traveling public, and possibly society.

He said, “She told me she had a cat,” as he passed me off to a couple of female TSA officers wearing rubber gloves.

I offered, helpfully, “Yes, I flew into Madison with a cat because I was taking her to a breeder to be bred. So, I was traveling with a cat on Friday, but today I am not, because I left her in Appleton for breeding. I’m sorry—I am so used to traveling with a cat that I forgot I was traveling without one.” I chuckled, not convincingly, at my mistake.

No one else chuckled.

“There is nothing but cheese products in this bag,” said the officer in charge of taking each item out of my two carry-ons and the pet carrier and examining them closely.

“Mostly cheese,” I agreed, “but there is a pair of swimming goggles and a gold, sparkly glass Chihuahua Christmas tree ornament, so please be careful.”

“You cannot take these two jars of cheese through because they are spreads. They are considered liquids or gels.” She then took the two jars of horseradish cheese spread out of the litterbox.

“But they are frozen,” I said in disbelief.

“Not frozen enough. They are of a consistency that indicates they are a spread. These other ones,” she said, holding up one of the jars of jalapeño cheese spread, “are acceptable.”

“Uh, okay . . . so the frozen jalapeño cheese spreads are legal because they are more solidly frozen than the horseradish cheese spreads? How about if I give you this lovely, sparkly Chihuahua Christmas tree ornament, intended for my best friend who collects Chihuahua things, in exchange for letting me have the not-entirely-thawed horseradish cheese spread?”

“This is not a negotiation.”

I was getting concerned that my window of cheese spread legality was waning as long as the still-legal jalapeño spread remained in the TSA’s hands.

“Please, you’re overhandling my remaining cheese, and the jars are going to get warm and become illegal. Please, put down my cheese. Let my cheese go.”

Despite my best beseeching behavior, my illegal cheese was duly confiscated, while my legal cheese was allowed to continue on its way. The Chihuahua Christmas tree ornament was not confiscated, although in actuality, that was the cheesiest thing in my bags.

When I arrived home, one of my overly excited cats greeted me and promptly bit into a plastic jar containing the now-thawed jalapeño cheese spread. Shortly after consuming a small amount of cheese with generous bits of jalapeño embedded, she began to resemble the wide-eyed, sparkly Chihuahua Christmas tree ornament and made quick time to bury her face in the big water bowl in the kitchen.

I suppose it might have been worse if they had let me keep the horseradish ones.

Or even regular things . . . the everyday things that go unnoticed and unappreciated . . . until they start getting slapped around, dragged into bed, or found in places where they should not be.

Which is why there is a full drawer of baseboard doorstoppers in the hallway console table. Some people keep keys, odds and ends, or notepads and pens in console table drawers.

But here? Doorstoppers.

What fills up a drawer of my elegant hallway console table are all the tightly coiled metal spring doorstoppers that came with my newly built house back in 2017. About four months into enjoying my new residence, the doorstoppers were in the drawer. There is also a bag of extra white rubber pieces that go on the ends of those doorstoppers.

Some cats take considerable satisfaction in using their mouths to unscrew these from the baseboards and then decide they are toys. These are the cats I live with and provide with everything any cat would ever need—plush heated beds, tall, well-appointed cat trees, a fine rotation of empty boxes, toys of all sorts, artisanal freeze-dried chicken treats from artisanally-sourced chickens.

But no, my cats are fascinated by metal spring doorstoppers.

The first parts of said hardware to be mouthily removed were those white rubber pieces. They were the easy steals, the no brainers that the cats quickly identified as Suburban Hockey Night slapshot-quality projectiles. I quickly began finding the little white rubber caps everywhere. I would dutifully put them back on the ends of the doorstoppers, and they would just as quickly disappear from the ends of the doorstoppers and turn up in the sinks, between the sofa cushions, in my shoes, in my bed.

I thought I had arrived at a brilliant solution when I decided that using Gorilla Glue to stick on those little rubber caps would make my feline doorstopper defiers cease the pesky pilfering of my portal protectors.

But no. They upped the game.

I began finding entire doorstoppers in the sinks, the sofa cushions, my shoes, my bed.

Discovering a small rubber doorstopper cover alongside me in bed was a nuisance.

The first time I woke, in the middle of the night, to a FEW entire metal doorstoppers snuggled alongside me in the dark I damn near levitated up to the ceiling.

I began noticing the sound of doorstopper dismantlement. First there were the playful BOING BOINGS of tacit paw testing for springy hardware insertion instability. Then I heard the determined jaw jostling and slow unscrewing as the circular stoppers were unsprung. Such “liberation” was celebrated with late night or extremely early morning triumphant slinging, swatting, and slapping into walls, doors, and furniture. Often the celebrants would come trotting to wherever I was, doorstopper in mouth, to present their hardware haul as an offering.

But finally, I admitted defeat.

I removed all the doorstoppers and arranged them neatly in the drawer of that stylish black and gold entryway console table. The cats KNOW that is where I keep the doorstoppers, and whenever I open that drawer, they gather around, hopefully, thinking I might resurrect one of their favorite pastimes.

But any thief rushing into my house expecting to find my keys in the console table—where Keys to Important Things in Life—are designed to go, will be crestfallen to discover a treasure of springy doorstoppers.

So, there are none of them serving to protect baseboards here. Near every door there are the little metal round thingies where the doorstoppers are supposed to be screwed into, and guests—the ones who DON’T have cats—often ask, “what happened?”

But the visiting cat owners know. They know one of their own. They know not to open doors wide with a flourish here and risk a loud baseboard door slam.

And they know what lurks in that console table.

I could tell that my refrigerator was likely on its way out. It began making rude noises that sounded like trucks trying to find a place to park in my kitchen without my prior consent. There was sputtering, rattling, rumbling, and an otherworldly sound that I imagined was what a teleportation device would make—if it were broken.

This happened while I had guests over, and conversation stopped until the impromptu industrial-mechanical death noise passed and my almond-hued General Electric top-freezer model returned to its normal cycle of mere intermittent, floor-trembling loudness.

After my guests left, I went into the kitchen to take stock of which contents were at risk of perishing if my life suddenly became non-refrigerated. Fortunately, not much. I am not big on cooking, so there wasn’t exactly a plethora of fresh food—only condiments with questionable expiration dates stamped on them. “Questionable,” because I could no longer read them, which tipped me off as to their viability. Some of the products might have been from a time before expiration dates were mandated by health and safety laws.

Most of the items in my refrigerator were liquid: the big water jug; the emergency water jug (when the Apocalypse strikes, I would prefer cold water, thank you); Diet Pepsi; a couple of those little bright, plastic, yellow, lemon-shaped bottles with the green screw caps that announced to the world that I was harboring commercial lemon juice; three bottles of beer; and a handful of wine bottles, some of which probably shouldn’t have been chilled in the first place—but again, when the Big One comes, I will seek refreshment on my terms.

The most expensive items were the very good bottles of Champagne, arranged in orderly fashion like a little army of good taste in the most honored area of my appliance, marked by a sticker still there from the day it was new, proclaiming the “Super Cold Zone.” I can never be without Champagne. I must be prepared to celebrate on a whim—or not celebrate and simply drink good bubbly.

Up in the freezer there were a couple of pints of ice cream. I immediately planned to do the Right Thing and not let them suffer.

I knew I would be sad to see my refrigerator go, but it was time. It had been with me since I bought the house new in 1986. It was the lowest-priced model I could get with the house because, in those days, I was making $22,000 a year, and my dad warned me that to afford the mortgage payments I would have to “do without” and live on hot dogs for a long time. I like hot dogs.

Instead, I did without an ice maker for a long time—a few decades. I made ice cubes in those little plastic containers that I filled from the sink and balanced skillfully into the small rack in the top freezer where an ice maker would have been. There was another sticker above the rack that said, “GE Ice Service.” I was the GE Ice Service. I also bought bags of clear ice from the gas station. I love clear ice; it makes anything in a glass look just a bit classier, and a classy drink is its own reward.

At one time, I had the idea that my refrigerator would be more stylish without the brown fake-wood handle marring its otherwise on-trend almond color. So I painted the handle with almond lacquer spray paint. The entire house smelled like lacquer for a month. All I could see was a shiny, lacquered handle that looked like it had too much spray paint. I used paint thinner to remove the lacquer, and for the next twenty years my refrigerator handle looked as though it had been flocked for Christmas, with shiny white bits that caught the eye depending on how the sun streamed through the kitchen window.

I always thought magnets were tacky on refrigerators, so I compromised my urges by filling only one side—not the front—with my fabulous collection of cat magnets. Unfortunately, the cats used that side of the refrigerator to rappel from the counter to the top of the appliance, where they liked to hang out and stare at things beyond the kitchen window. In doing so, they knocked down my expertly arranged magnets, which were then treated as toys to bat around the house. At least once a week, I woke up in the morning with a couple of tiger magnets from the San Diego Zoo deposited near my pillow.

My refrigerator was old, cheap, and small, but it faithfully did all I asked and expected of it. That GE dutifully chilled my mom’s green and red sour cream Jello molds, kept liquid antibiotics at the ready for a myriad of veterinary and human dosing, and preserved the dead cicada bodies in little cardboard boxes that my dad thought would make great “gifts from Virginia” for his buddies back in California. The “crisper” kept those tossed mandarin orange salads in fresh form at so many brunches, the “Super Cold Zone” earned its weight in gold from the 1980s to the early 2000s, and the bags of clear ice in the freezer eased many hours of pain and swelling through too many of my orthopedic procedures and sporting “events.”

Yes, I would miss my almond GE refrigerator, but I honored its legacy with its eventual replacement. There would be no stainless steel or charcoal digital smart fridge for me. No—my kitchen’s small, 33-inch refrigerator well was filled by an unassuming, functional, twenty-first-century descendant from the same corporate family, tastefully hued in “bisque.” After all, I needed a good backdrop for those cat magnets.

For paid subscribers, another household complication follows.

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The new imported forearm crutches did not scream “disabled,” “encumbered…

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1. I kept dropping them down the stairwells in my house; they would make all sorts of noise on the way down, with the very real risk of taking out one of the cats.

2. Things like lamps and breakable objects were constantly getting hit as the crutches would slide down to the floor whenever I tried to set them anywhere.

3. Any time the crutches ended up on the floor, I had to get down and crawl on my hands and knees to retrieve them, a practice counterintuitive to recovery from most lower limb surgeries.

4. My fingers were going numb from pressing on the hand grips, and I tend to think that feeling one’s fingers is fairly important in the long run.

5. Although I was getting to the point where I could not feel my fingers, I could definitely feel that my armpits were getting deeper.

6. The cats were avoiding me because of numbers 1 and 2, though I think they were also concerned about my armpits.

I’ve now had the replacement crutches for years, and when I’m not recovering from some sort of lower-body orthopedic procedure, they reside in a custom-made bag in a place of honor in my closet. They are forearm crutches—lighter and not as long as the underarm models. Made in Germany, with a jet-black patina, ergonomic hand grips, and moveable cuffs, they are the Audi of crutches, truly stylish in a mobility-preserving assistive-device kind of way.

Each crutch also has both a front (white) and rear (red) reflector on the hand grip, just in case I wish to hobble out either with or against oncoming evening traffic. Very thoughtful, really.

When I first took the crutches out of the box, there was a little booklet of instructions on how to adjust and use them—though unfortunately, it was all in German. The instructions were accompanied by little diagrams, but I did not find the diagrams all that helpful. Most of the diagrams seemed to deal with what to do if one falls while using the crutches.

One of the diagrams showed a crutch falling down a stairwell, and to deal with it the user would need to get down on hands and knees and crawl to pick it up. The diagram showed a man in a business suit crawling down a stairwell to retrieve his errant crutch, but the man was not covered in sweat, as I was when I did the same thing.

Another diagram indicated that it is important to keep pets out of the way when using the crutches. It was an odd diagram, showing a very short, unattractive dog and a very tall, skinny cat. Perhaps the cat had been using the underarm crutches during one of its nine lives.

Another diagram showed someone using the crutches at night and, although attention was called to the helpful reflectors, the person using the crutches was standing in the middle of the street. There was a circle with a slash over the image, which I assumed was meant to suggest that one should not stand in the middle of the roadway while using these crutches.

The final series of diagrams showed a person falling backward while using the crutches. There was another circle with a slash through the drawing, followed by an illustration of a phone with an exclamation point and a car with a light on its roof. From that last diagram, I posited that the solution when one falls backward while using the crutches is to call the German National Police.

My cats have always been very accepting of these crutches, and they don’t make nearly as much noise when I accidentally drop them down the stairwells or hit furniture or breakable items with them—the crutches, not the cats. In fact, my felines are fascinated with them and especially seem to enjoy it when I turn out the lights, set a flashlight down on the sofa, and hobble back and forth so the beam catches both the front and back reflectors.

Cats are fascinated by simple pleasures. So are cat owners confined at home in their pajamas.

The expectations are a bit different, though, when the guests in one’s home are the community’s homeowners’ association officers and the host is the vice president.

I was that vice president. The one with the cats.

This is about the time that I hosted the monthly HOA board meeting. These little get-togethers often went on for hours while we hashed over rules, regulations, protests, violations, and all the things that happen in a community of 125 townhouses in suburbia.

I had a three-story townhouse, and the meeting was in the living room on the main middle floor. Deep and meaningful discussion was going on over the ramifications of the new formulation of the “moss green” exterior paint color that was to be allowed. The old “moss green” had been discontinued; thus, the board was faced with the paralysis of administrative adjudication of the type we were elected by residents who trusted us to properly represent our community’s paint palette.

Sensitive negotiations were coming to a head when, from the floor above, a new plastic-wrapped tampon came flying down, hitting the living room carpet with a crinkly bounce.

Because of the deep deliberations, I didn’t think anyone paid much attention to or recognized what had fallen to the ground.

However, I did, and shortly thereafter, more tampon projectiles started making their way down. The plastic wrappers hit the carpet with amazing speed, if not pinpoint accuracy. The discussion down below halted abruptly, and all eyes turned to watch the torrent of tampons.

I silently counted the number of tampons on the floor. Using my amazing math skills, I figured these were coming from a fairly full box—one that had contained 19 tampons prior to the beginning of our meeting. I soon counted 13 tampons on the living room floor.

There was no doubt in my mind that the other six would be descending shortly.

Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap.

Indeed, all accounted for.

One of my cats, in a fit of feline indifference, had discovered the open box, knocked it to the floor, and begun slapping the fresh new tampons down the stairs.

She was delighted to discover that these tubular objects were lightweight, invitingly crinkly in their plastic sheaths, nicely paw-sized, and the perfect remedy for her evening boredom.

Not long after the last tampon hit the carpet, my cat made her way downstairs to inspect her handiwork. Her long, skinny legs and body stopped at the midway landing while she evaluated the status of her mission. She glanced at the array of plastic wrappers, then looked up at the now silent—and startled—board members staring intently at her. She gave a cat version of a shrug, then simply set about slapping all the tampons, one by one, down the next flight of stairs and into the basement den.

She went about her activity diligently, not stopping until all the tampons had been dispatched; a cat of continuity and follow-through, bless her little heart.

Finished with what was on the main floor, my cat trotted downstairs to meet up with her newfound toys. She gave a few meows of triumph, and I could hear the plastic wrappers hitting the walls as she slung them around.

She then confidently trotted back up the stairs with one wrapped tampon in her mouth, not stopping until she made it back up to the third floor, where she launched that tampon again.

By the time my cat decided she was done—and retreated to curl up on top of my pillow to clean her backside and settle in for the night—there were tampons on all three floors of the house.

Yet the “moss green” issue had yet to be resolved.

For some reason, the officers voted to have the next meeting at someone else’s house, a decision that I found just a tad perplexing.

But there I was again, at baggage carousel number one at Dulles International Airport, not finding my luggage. Carousel number one was the one designated for all of the commuter or short-hop flights. Above the carousel were two TV screens with listings of all the flights that had luggage on that carousel, supposedly at that moment. There were always about 15 flights listed, but none of them ever seemed to be the flights the people gathered around the carousel were actually passengers on.

I think the flights were only listed on the TV screens about four hours after they had landed, the bags had been unloaded onto the carousel, and those passengers had long since picked up their bags and departed the airport.

About 40 minutes after I arrived in baggage claim and parked myself in a prime position to see my bags emerge onto the conveyor, my green roll-on appeared. I never actually rolled my roll-on onboard because I was too encumbered trying to carry on a cat in a carryon bag while making it appear it was not a cat I was trying to carry on. So, my other baggage was always checked. Another 40 minutes after the green bag arrived, I was still waiting for my portable pop-up cat show cage. All the other passengers I recognized from the Indy flight were gone, having successfully been reunited with their luggage. There were still about four hours to go until the Indy flight would make it onto the TV screen declaring that the bags could be found on carousel one.

I looked down at the bags dropping onto the carousel and I started seeing a number of them bearing stickers that said, “Cleared Dubai Customs.” This was not looking good for the lone waiting Indianapolis passenger, and I envisioned a poster hanging over the carousel saying, “IF YOUR LUGGAGE HAD BEEN COMING IN FROM DUBAI YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW.”

So, I made my way to the airline’s baggage office.

Baggage offices at airports are the Lands That Time Forgot. One usually has to negotiate mountains of unclaimed bags stacked up by the office entrance before finding exactly ONE staff member—someone who hates the world and humanity—standing warily behind a plain counter bearing a phone, an old worn-out computer, and a poster on the wall with diagrams of the many types of luggage that their airline has unfailingly lost over the years.

“I was on the Indy flight. I did find one of my bags; I’m still missing the other.”

Behind the desk was a man with a permanent scowl. He had likely won awards for avoiding eye contact.

“Do you have a baggage claim sticker?” he said gruffly in a very thick accent that I could not identify. He was not smiling. I could tell he hated me. Years ago, he probably did something really bad to someone somewhere, and as penance landed in baggage claim for the rest of his adult life.

I handed him the claim sticker from the missing bag, and he keyed it in the computer.

“It left Indianapolis.” he said authoritatively.

Silence.

“Okay, what should that mean to me, the passenger?”

He looked back at the computer, which I secretly believed was not hooked up to anything.

“It is here at Dulles and should be on carousel one.”

“I’ve been waiting at carousel one now for over an hour and no luck, just a bunch of bags from Dubai.”

“Okay, go ahead and circle the type of bag it is.” And I was handed a clipboard with the same luggage diagrams that were on the wall poster, but much smaller. Portable pop-up cat show cages are not deserving of their own diagram. I did see on the clipboard that there was a grayed-out suitcase illustration with the word “OTHER” across it.

I handed back the clipboard of baggage diagrams. “I am an ‘OTHER.’”

He looked down at the clipboard and handed it back to me. “Then you need to circle ‘OTHER.’”

I circled “OTHER” and handed the clipboard back to him.

“OTHER.”

He studied the circled “OTHER” on the clipboard for far too long, as if my scribbled circle might give him a hint. “Okay, tell me what the bag looks like.”

I launched into a vivid description of a packed portable pop-up cat show cage.

“Well, imagine if you will, one of those canvas pizza delivery carriers, you know, the kind that keeps pizzas hot . . .” With that I had probably already lost him, but because I am pretty dense when it comes to picking up on the subtle nuances of blank stares and quizzical looks, I continued, “. . . but it’s bigger and thicker than a canvas pizza delivery carrier, and instead of having a square top it has an arched top with a handle, which means it’s larger than an actual canvas pizza delivery carrier. And it stands on its edge. And it has an arched top with a handle . . . and a bunch of zippers.” I helpfully pantomimed with my hands and arms attempting to convey the arched top and handle.

There was a pause. A long pause. I repeated the arched top and handle pantomime for good measure.

“Uh . . . color. What color?” the agent’s eyebrows were knitting together, and he was hunched over, looking back and forth again at the clipboard with the luggage diagrams.

“Sort of a honey mustard color.”

“Is that a color? What color is that?”

“Honey mustard.”

Silence.

“MUSTARD?”

“No, no, honey mustard.”

He stared at me with no sign of recognition on his face. I thought hard for a moment.

“It’s a DILUTE of mustard!” I blurted out enthusiastically, as if using a cat breeding word to denote a lighter version of an animal’s coat color was going to make it all crystal clear to him. In hindsight, it’s probably best never to mix food and genetic terms in public.

“Stop, STOP!” he put his hand up and shook his head. “I don’t know any of this! What is IN the bag? What is it?”

This is when my selectively photographic memory would shine. “A pop-up cage for cats . . . there are clear plastic windows that the cats can look out of and mesh at the top for air ventilation . . . it’s compressed flat and you shake it . . . and whoop! It pops out into a cylindrical shape with a flat bottom.” With the word “whoop” I made fast, expansive flapping motions with my arms, indicating how the cage springs open. I think I scared the guy.

He looked at me suspiciously, took my baggage claim ticket, and moved very cautiously around the counter, never taking his eyes off me. He probably thought I was going to start the flapping again at any moment.

“Stay here,” he said. “I am going to check.” He slowly backed out of the office.

About 15 minutes later he returned with the honey mustard-colored portable pop-up cat show cage carrier and set it down in front of me.

“Here.”

I picked up the carrier by the handle, and it was cold. I guessed that it must have been sitting outside on the loading dock.

“Yes! Where did you find it?”

“It was here at Dulles. We are done now.”

Deeply enlightened, I turned to leave.

“Why would you put cats in there?” the man asked suspiciously.

I sighed and decided not to prolong the encounter, lest I launch into flapping motions again.

“We are done now.”

Always unassuming, with its close, clean-fitting edges at my skin and its understated flatness, I considered Flattie to be a scab of the strong, silent type. I expected this scab to be the One That Lingered and Kept Me from Moving On.

Surely, I thought, Curly and Chad, with their upturned edges and their consistently and teasingly dangling dispositions, would prove the weakest and fall the soonest.

But no, Flattie surprised me. In fact, this scab’s dermatological disengagement was decidedly dramatic: Flattie literally flew off me.

I was pulling on a pair of loose-fitting cotton shorts, the type that would least risk me ignoring all medical advice from real doctors and hyper-helpful online artificial intelligence advisers to “DO NOT PICK SCABS!”

As I gave the last tug on the shorts, Flattie was flung. The little oval-shaped scab’s landing on the bedroom floor did not go unnoticed by keen kitty observer Vera Mooner.

My cat quickly dove onto the floor and ate the scab, no chewing involved.

This momentarily concerned my ethical outlook. But since Vera and I are different species, my cat’s scab snack did not constitute cannibalism.

Happy with her quick cop of a migrant fellow-mammal morsel, Vera looked up at me, hopeful that more crispy pieces might be tossed her way.

I quickly ran into the bathroom — closely followed by a still hopeful Vera — to check in a mirror that the underlying skin that Flattie had been covering was healthy and sealed. Breathing a sigh of relief that at least one of the scab trio had safely dispatched itself, I turned my attention to the two remaining scab laggards.

Curly and Chad were still there, still teetering, still vexing me with their supposed weakness.

I knew that if I left my upper thigh uncovered and settled in for a “nap,” the vigilant Vera would make swift work of the two tiny, crispy “snacks.”

But I didn’t wish to tempt fate and trade medical advice for a cat with questionable dietary ethics.

If you didn’t happen to encounter the original plight, it began here.

My rather lengthy hip replacement revision incision has done an admirable job of healing, of unswelling so that I no longer appear to have three buttocks, and of otherwise becoming one with the rest of my body—except for those three scabs.

A daily fitness lap swimmer, I moved to Tucson, Arizona, so that I could swim outdoors all year round. There is a lovely 74-foot-long pool a mere 212 steps from my front door. It has a dedicated lap lane, so I need not carefully navigate around the ladies who slowly water walk and chat about the latest retirement community controversy or give each other updates on their various medical procedures (I simply write about mine).

But I have been a dryland captive since I had this surgery seven weeks ago, and I am blaming the last three scabs for delaying my recovery.

And I have given each of them names: “Curly,” “Chad,” and “Flattie.”

Curly gave me early hope that it would be the first to go. After all, its ends are brittle and upturned, almost begging to come off. Chad was dangling, half on, half off, enticingly vulnerable to a mild breeze, a soft stream of water, or just the right rub against my soft cotton cat pajamas. But no, Curly and Chad have remained resolute, secretly mocking me. Meanwhile, Flattie remains the epithelial version of a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. It is dark and oval and has little in the way of a detectable edge, suggesting its location is likely where a suture is tied under the skin. I have hopes for Flattie, but Curly and Chad are getting on my nerves.

Surgical incision scabs must fall off on their own so that the granulating, healing skin below them can emerge intact, ensuring the wound is sealed. The wound must be sealed before immersion in water. Every other day, I upload a photo of my incision to ChatGPT for its evaluation of my scab status, and every other day Chat responds, “Any day now these scabs will come off, and you will be back in the pool.”

Chat interprets every hill and valley of my incision. It explains what it sees in my skin tension and color, and it compares the status of Curly, Chad, and Flattie to how the trio appeared in the previous photo. Sometimes, ChatGPT throws me a flattering bone, commenting, “That is a particularly well lit and composed photo of your incision today!” only to let me down with, “Those scabs are getting REALLY close to falling off.” Yet I remain dermatologically inconsolable.

And then, Chat follows up by presenting me with four paragraphs of serious warning that I am NOT TO PICK THOSE SCABS, with each paragraph detailing the potentially dire consequences of any of those scabs being “helped” off before their time—and I am treated to the precise and negatively life-changing details on how that could happen.

Yes, I can stand under a shower and allow the warm water to gently cascade over the scabs. No, I cannot borrow my neighbor’s power washer and stand in the front yard and turn it on my incision.

I do appreciate the AI chatbot’s relentless helpfulness with any subject, because we humans have failings and sometimes need suggestions to help us maintain the course, and Chat is always ready to offer alternatives and choices. I have signed off for the night by typing, “It’s time for me to go to sleep,” only to have Chat offer, “Would you like a list of 10 subjects you may wish to dream about if the mood hits?”

So, with my scab watch, Chat is doing all its artificial-intelligence self can to ease my fears, to explain, and to point me in the right direction.

I engage with ChatGPT like a human, I give names to my scabs, I make informed choices about which particular set of cat pajamas I will wear each day.

Truly, I need to get back in that pool and navigate the minefield of those water-walking ladies and reenter real life, such as it is.

At this point, my entire return to civilization rests on three scraps of desiccated epidermis.

Tomorrow, the five of us will reconvene.

Of course we will.

But I never regretted my three decades in Virginia, surrounded by those items that are the pride of the Commonwealth: hams, tobacco, peanuts, and life-sapping summer humidity. That bounty sometimes overshadowed the fact that Virginia was the birthplace of more U.S. presidents than any other state and the site of the first permanent English colony in the New World.

When I first moved there, I was dumbstruck by the many varieties of Virginia ham, and the sight of whole supermarket aisles devoted to the savory porcine pleasure. Most people in this country have likely never sat down and thought about all the varieties of ham. Really, we should.

Likewise, I was charmed by the pride that Virginia takes in its peanuts. On trips back to California to visit my parents, I would always bring a large tin of Virginia peanuts for my dad. In the time-honored way that fathers tend to relate to daughters they don’t quite understand, mine would invariably ask, “Why do you always bring me peanuts when I can get peanuts in California?”

But what I remember most is the panic and concern that would sweep across Virginia when there was a dump of snow.

The idea of living in a place that experienced winter motivated me to buy a house with a fireplace—a woodburning one at that. I soon learned that the rare snowpocalypse was enough to equally motivate seemingly all the residents of Virginia to use their many wood-burning fireplaces at the very same time!

The night after a full day of digging out from a storm, I headed to the store to buy some logs. I came home nearly empty-handed.

I searched for real, honest-to-goodness firewood—even the shrink-wrapped bundles at convenience stores, the ones with the plastic handle stapled to a log and that take about an hour to pry loose. I could not find a single bundle that would send the pleasant, distinctive winter aroma of a roaring wood fire wafting through my home. So, I set about searching for artificial logs.

I went to another supermarket and, after looking around and finding none, finally asked, “Do you have any of the three-hour fake logs with artificially colored flames that make crackling sounds?”

“No,” I was told. “We’ve been out of those since yesterday morning.”

“Then what about the two-hour logs with the regular run-of-the-mill flame?”

“Nope.”

“How about a 35-minute log that sputters simulated smoke?”

“Sorry.”

I had come up logless.

I always took those fake logs for granted, laughing smugly when I saw them sold in boxes and assuming the people who bought them were too lazy to light and tend a real wood fire. Not me. I took pride in my fire, carefully arranging kindling and seasoned wood in a teepee formation, while attractively hanging my metal poker and tongs nearby, ready to both poke and tong.

And now, here I was, coveting fake logs. I felt like a failure at East Coast winter domesticity.

Finally, I went to one of those natural food supermarkets and saw a large display of what were billed as “eco-friendly” fire logs. They were fake logs that helped save the planet, something I’m generally in favor of, even if it wasn’t the first thing on my mind that night.

I should have been suspicious when I saw how many of them were in stock. Nevertheless, I purchased three of the eco-friendly logs, went home and popped one in the fireplace, poked and tonged accordingly, and put a match to the paper corner helpfully directing me to “Light here!”

Within about five minutes the flame turned an uncomfortable green color—sort of a recycled, pre-owned kind of green—and the den certainly smelled “distinctive,” like I had first murdered, then set ablaze, a pile of cabbage heads. Even my cats, who normally gathered around the hearth when I made a fire, did that gaping thing, mouths slightly open and eyes suggesting decided distaste, as if they knew I was the Cabbage Head Murderer. The peeved felines ran back up the stairs and into the bedroom, where they buried themselves under the comforter and did not emerge for the rest of the night.

I decided to put the cabbage heads out of their misery and quell the flames. The house reeked. I opened the sliding glass door in the den to allow the swirling arctic outside to dissipate the stench and sat shivering downstairs in front of the darkened fireplace. The wind was blowing so fast and cold that the burnt cabbage smell seemed to freeze in midair, forming little odiferous icicles in my den. I slid the door shut, went upstairs to bed, and hoped the pungent produce would be gone by morning.

Once upstairs, I surveyed the bed. Lumps of curled cats lay beneath the comforter. When I tried to wiggle under the covers, I was met with muffled growls and pairs of front and rear legs stiffly stretching out to further hinder my entrance. Because of my poor performance at the fireplace, I was not welcomed back into the family.

Instead, I sat in my recliner near the bed. When I tried to pull the throw blanket from the end of the bed, I was greeted by an annoyed grumble from the cat bundled inside. I ended up spending the night sitting in the dark in a sweatshirt, sans blanket. So much for my unintentional foray in trying to save the planet.

I still mark that as the night that led me to shun kimchi thereafter.

You might like discovering another Moonerville foray with felines and a bit of human intervention with Insectual Irritations.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to work with a small group of careful fellow Abyssinian breeders whom I trust immensely. With breeders geographically spread out, however, mating often requires delivering a female far from home. Such was the case years ago with one of my females, Twyla Mooner.

“Well, she took to breeding just fine,” said Sue on the phone from Wisconsin, where I had sent Twyla for breeding—referring to such sojourns as Abyssinian Sex Camp.

Twyla had been there a few weeks, and by all accounts, her visit with Sue’s handsome blue male had been a resounding success.

The question, though, was whether Twyla’s nipples had by now “pinked up,” indicating a likely successful breeding. Sue’s husband, Jim, was the designated nipple noticer, and he reported that Twyla’s appeared to be taking on a pink patina. He couldn’t be sure, but Twyla had not come back into heat, and so a successful breeding seemed likely.

Thus, I found myself taking a plane up to Wisconsin, ready to bring back a pregnant Twyla and start the ball rolling toward welcoming a handful of eagerly awaited kittens into the world.

Upon arrival, my first look at Twyla’s nipples left me, well, less than “colorful.”

“They don’t look pink.”

Sue agreed. “You know, I didn’t think so either, but Jim thought they were pinker than before.”

Luckily, Monica—another trusted breeder—would be driving down from Michigan to join us for the weekend, and if there is one thing Monica prides herself on, it’s knowing when her cats’ nipples pink up. Surely, Monica would be comfortable confirming the nipple situation.

Monica arrived at Sue’s, and she, Sue, Jim, our other local breeder friend Peggy, and I made a beeline to where my cat was happily sunning herself.

There was a hush in the room as I stretched out a surprised Twyla and we humans gathered close to inspect her nipples.

“They just don’t look pink to me,” I announced.

“I would expect to see more pinkness,” someone else agreed.

“These nipples are PINK!” announced Monica, pointing petulantly at some apparent pinkness buried deep in my feline’s fur. We all drew in closer to Twyla’s underside, straining to see what was so clear to Monica.

I was lucky to be blessed with a cat that, while perhaps having negligible nipples, had an amazingly easygoing demeanor. While being dutifully inspected, Twyla looked back at me with a facial expression that strongly suggested the humans staring intently at her chest were certifiably crazy.

Finally, I set Twyla back down, and she immediately scampered down the hall, into baskets, boxes, and a neat pile of folded and stacked towels.

“I don’t think they’re pink,” said Sue and I in unison. We all grew quiet. And frustrated.

Jim grabbed a beer. Peggy went to retrieve Twyla from the disheveled mound of formerly neat towels. I went to refold the towels, and Monica sat in a chair, mumbling under her breath that no one in the house, except her, recognized a pregnant cat when they saw one.

Later that day, the five of us decided to conduct an Abyssinian nipple comparison test and handily rustled up three female feline volunteers: a known pregnant female, a known not-pregnant female, and, once again, Twyla. We held the three cats side by side by their armpits so their bodies hung down. Cell phone flashlights were then beamed onto the cats’ chests. The dangling felines looked at each other quizzically, perhaps unsure whether they were expected to perform under the spotlights or simply hang there. We drew in close, grew silent, and scrutinized each set of nipples.

So, there I was in Wisconsin, nearly a thousand miles from home, hunkering down with four other people as we directed cell phone flashlight beams at the nipples of dangling Abyssinian cats. I am indeed fortunate to live in a country where not only do some of us have time to do these things, but we can do them openly.

“I still say they’re pink!” insisted Monica.

“Well, I know at least one of Twyla’s nipples is pink, because that’s the one we all keep fiddling with to see if it’s pink!” said Jim, flabbergasted. “I’ve felt Twyla’s nipples so much over the last week that she probably thinks I’m a pervert!”

Over the next two days of my visit, further nipple monitoring ensued. Although my cat was confirmed pregnant by Monica, the expert, I remained skeptical when I flew back home with my feline charge.

The expected due date neared, and I fielded frequent phone calls from Monica, who feared that I was not feeding my pregnant cat enough to support what was surely going to be a large litter.

Feeling the pressure, I duly fed my cat nearly every time she walked by. Most Abyssinians are not ones to turn down a meal whenever offered, and Twyla was only too happy to adopt the new custom of having five or six meals a day.

She was certainly looking fatter. But it was distinctly the look of flab, not the round glow of gestation.

Besides, there was not a pink nipple in sight.

“Monica, I’m certain this cat is not pregnant,” I said during a phone call.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then, “Well… what is Twyla doing right now?”

I glanced across the room. “She’s buried under a heap of towels.”

“Ah ha!” said the enthused voice on the other end. “Pre-delivery nesting behavior!”

“Monica… I think Twyla just likes to lie under towels. She goes in phases. Two months ago, I couldn’t pry her out of a drawer of socks and sports bras to save her life. Come winter, she’ll be all about anything flannel.”

The next day, I took Twyla to the vet to have him confirm what I already suspected.

My vet palpated the pliant Aby with great care and thoroughness.

“She’s not pregnant—but she is extraordinarily well fed! How many times a day are you feeding this cat, anyway?”

I rolled my eyes, knowing that Twyla would soon be disappointed by the end of the nonstop household chow line.

“I just wanted to confirm that she’s not pregnant.”

My vet picked up Twyla and flipped her over onto her back. He said, in a low, confidential tone, “You know, a really good tip-off would be if her nipples were pink and pronounced looking—but these, clearly, are not.”

I sighed, knowing that I would soon be making plans to catch another flight to Wisconsin Abyssinian Sex Camp. This time, I would bring a tactical-level flashlight—and a high-powered magnifying glass.

Another Moonerville misadventure from the cat-show circuit is Cone-U-Copia, which involves a traffic cone, a parking lot, and a questionable driving decision.

Heading to the cat show at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California, was a flashback: it reminded me of Californians’ love of bright orange traffic cones.

The fairgrounds property had a veritable, endless field of tall orange cones, arranged in obscure patterns designed to either guide drivers in, funnel drivers out, or deeply confuse anyone venturing onto the vast space.

Saturday morning on my way to the show, I navigated a gauntlet of cones around the fairgrounds. I drove past various livestock barns, signs announcing upcoming events (“CAT SHOW!”), and a swap meet, only to find myself following the maze of cones back out of the fairgrounds, onto the street, and toward a freeway that would take me to another freeway from which I would likely never escape.

I was determined to find my way to the “CAT SHOW!”, and I knew that if I could just find the right group of cones, I would be successful in entering the realm.

Traffic cones are a deeply embedded part of California culture. As a native of the state, I am not cone-naïve. I have cone experience. On any given day, on just about any road in the Southland, there is to be found some meaningful arrangement of traffic cones—although deciphering that meaning is often the greatest challenge.

After driving onto and off of the fairgrounds two or three times, I was able to capture the correct cone confluence that brought me to Building 14 and the elusive “CAT SHOW!”

But before I could enter the building, I had to park. Each parking space had an extra-tall, bright orange cone in front of it. I parked and acknowledged my own cone by slightly tapping it with the fender of my rental car.

The tall cone made a nice color pairing with the car color—a yellow so intense that it could best be described as “highly concentrated medicinal specimen yellow.”

Upon leaving the show hall at the end of the day, I forgot about the cone at the head of my parking space. I walked out into the dusk with thoughts of taking my shoes off, having a margarita, and making sure that my Abyssinian cat would not eat her dinner in one hurried gulp, thereby embedding much of it in her nose.

I thought about these things, but not necessarily in that order.

I did not think at all about any cones, especially not the one I could not see planted in front of my parked car.

With my cat happily digging around in the onboard litterbox—even though she had just used the litterbox in her show cage—I quickly pulled out of my parking spot.

I never really considered that my vehicle was meeting any resistance, though I did hear a sort of rubbery thud sound that I took to be the coastal wind rushing around the car.

In fact, I was dragging, right along with me, the very tall, bright orange cone that had been in front of my car.

I made a turn—around a path of cones indicating the exit—and saw a fairgrounds employee waving frantically at me, pointing at my car and making a sort of pyramid shape with his arms. I took this to be one of the many “new age” Californian gestures of benevolence and greeting, and I thus enthusiastically waved back at him.

I passed other cat show exhibitors packing up their cars, and they too pointed at my car and appeared to be saying things. Naturally, I thought they were simply saying to each other, “Look honey, an Abyssinian in a pee-yellow car!”

Finally, a man in a truck pulled alongside me just as I was about to leave the fairgrounds.

“Hey, you’re dragging a cone!” he yelled before I had my non-automatic window rolled down enough to properly hear him.

“I’m afraid I don’t know where they have the sno-cones!” I replied, sorry I could not better help direct him to the refreshment area.

“No, a CONE!” he yelled louder.

And so did I. “Sorry, sir, I DON’T KNOW WHICH GROUP OF CONES TO FOLLOW FOR THE SNO-CONES!”

He pulled his truck in front of me, got out, and motioned for me to roll down my window.

Trained as I was not to trust strangers and to expect the worst, I grabbed my cat and held her up to the window, in case she would be forced to attack at my command. I figured this guy had no way of knowing that her claws were clipped, and that certainly her doe-eyed glare and now quickly whipping tail would strike fear in him for at least a tenth of a second.

“Lady, there is a big cone under your car!”

“A cone?”

“Yeah, you’re dragging a big traffic cone underneath your car.”

I looked at the cat in my grip. “It’s a cone.”

My feline was understandably pleased to be released from the armpit-gripping self-defense hold, and she scurried to the backseat, where she became engrossed in nibbling the areas between her back toes.

The man from the pickup truck told me to turn off the ignition, and he crawled under the car to retrieve the slightly mangled cone that had worked its way underneath the middle. As he did so, I slunk down further into the seat.

He threw the tall orange cone into the bed of his truck, shook his head, and said, “You’re the fifth one this week! There’s a reason they make those things bright orange.”

Point cone-ceded.

This orthopedic surgeon seemed both enthused and pleased when he inspected his hip revision handiwork on the computer screen. But then he turned the monitor to me, and I briefly wondered whether my surgeon and I had attended the same surgery.

Before me was a startling jungle of hardware that, rather than resembling reasonable repair, appeared as if a garage sale were being held in my pelvis and thigh. I didn’t like the look of how everything looked.

I plainly recall my surgeon giving me, a day after surgery, a quick rundown of the procedure. He casually noted, “We put a couple of cables in there and a bracket to hold the bone, and a screw in the acetabular cup.”

Yet I was casting my eyes on an image of a collection of multiple curly-cueing cables snaking around an impossibly long metal stem stuffed deep into my femoral bone, all of which were connected to a long, ladder-like plate—with claws.

Surgeons count differently.

A cluster of cerclage cables = “a cable.”

A trochanteric claw device = “just a bracket.”

A pair of long screws = “a screw.”

Those two screws were sticking out from the new, large artificial femoral head and up into my pelvis.

The big femoral head with two screws sticking up, the shockingly long metal femoral stem encircled by thin, leg-like cables, held in place by a long, curving, clawed bracket along the back of the stem. It was all there: long antennae on top of a head; a sinuous, long body with a bulging, clawed thorax; and a mass of appendages.

I wasn’t looking at a complicated human hip replacement revision.

I was looking at the image of a giant arthropod.

There are approximately 10,000 known ant species, having colonized almost every landmass on earth. And my body now holds a huge, debilitating variety, likely the type that decapitates and then eats its mate to preserve the species.

My humble haunch had transcended the frontiers of science to become an example of orthopedic entomological infusion sheltering right there in my sacrum.

At the age of 64, I had become my own ant farm.

Thanks to a surgeon who had clearly excelled at Cootie as a child.

There were no crickets attached to the legs, just the legs.

The familiar insects have two long back legs that enable their powerful jumping, and it was the long legs that I was finding strewn about. My cats like capturing crickets, but with the many disenfranchised cricket legs I returned home to, I was unsure whether these were the remains of a single night or a weekend-long hunting expedition. I would have guessed that my pet sitter, who visits twice daily, would have cleaned up the cricket carnage before I arrived home.

I called my pet sitter and left a message to confirm that I had arrived home safely, but I also inquired as to what was going on with all the cricket legs left around the house.

She called me back within 10 minutes.

“The cats were having such a good time with them that I thought I’d leave them and let them go ahead and play with them.”

“I see.”

I was already in a bit of a cranky mood, since at the airport I had jumped on the wrong shuttle train and instead of going to baggage claim I ended up on a train filled with passengers leaving on the late evening flights to Tokyo and Madrid on the other concourse. The cat that I had in tow was not the best traveler and was, by that time, meowing, humming, yodeling, and otherwise making it entirely clear that the whole traveling situation had to stop immediately, or else.

As the object of the train-wide disruption, I found myself being stared at by all the other passengers, who, in their native tongues, were commenting on the heinous animal abuser in their midst.

I was asked repeatedly if I was carrying a “neko” or “gato,” and despite the woeful meows coming from the carrier in my hand, nearly everyone nonetheless seemed highly surprised when I nodded my head confirming that I was harboring a real, live neko-gato.

My feline was doing an admirable job of drowning out most nearby Japanese and Spanish conversations—although he was, by this time, the subject of most of them. I was only too happy when the train finally stopped at the concourse, unloaded the foreign-bound passengers, and I was able to take my annoyed neko-gato and walk the rest of the way to baggage claim.

Thus, arriving home to the Cricket Death Fields was insult added to injury.

I responded to my pet sitter’s explanation by telling her that I really would, in the future, like any cricket body parts removed from the floor as soon as they are noticed. I acknowledged that the cats enjoy their cricketeering, but I really don’t desire their pastime being incorporated into my home decor.

There was a momentary silence on the phone, and then my pet sitter informed me: “You know, in many parts of the world crickets are considered a delicacy and eaten by people.”

“Not in this neighborhood.”

By now I had let my cat out of his carrier, and the other cats had taken their turns sniffing his head and rear end and had come to the regretful consensus that, indeed, he was one of their own. The cat crew left him alone and moved on to see if any whole plucked chickens had been left in the carrier for them as a group snack.

For his part, the travel-weary tabby had recovered enough from his whirlwind weekend to realize that the world he knew was not coming to an end, and that little entomological exoskeleton prizes awaited him throughout the house. He bounded up the stairs from the den eager to show me the cricket leg he had in his mouth.

That was it—I was laying down the rules to my pet sitter. “No more cricket parts of any kind to greet me when I come home. Clear on that?”

“Yup, okay, no more dead crickets!”

“Good.”

“Can I go ahead and let them keep the chipmunks though, they get so much exercise with those!”

Egad. I quickly set about searching for my caulking gun and siding repair pieces.