This morning I had a cute moment with Pixie, my youngest cat. While recovering from a back injury, I have graduated from a regular two-wheeled walker to one of those four-wheeled walkers that has a seat and saddle bags. I can definitely do more with it since it enables me to carry stuff around the house more efficiently while I regain my strength and balance. One of the "things" I had to carry around the house the very first day was Pixie. Pixie is the traveling cat in this household. When I drove my katz 14,000 miles around the country last year, Pixie was thrilled. She took to traveling in the front of the pickup like she was born to be the companion of a long-haul trucker. It was amazing really. Anjolie and Bootsy? Not so much. They rode under the seats the whole way. The thought bubble over their heads read, "If I can't see where we're going, then I can pretend it isn't happening." Not so easy to do when it goes on for days and days, but they persisted in this practice. Pixie, on the other hand, loved every minute of it. From the very first day, she climbed into the litter box for pit stops while we were in motion. Li'l Grey was almost as comfortable with driving. He just wasn't thrilled with transitioning from truck to hotel to truck to hotel, etc. He wanted to do one or the other. Pixie was game for anything, including hopping out of the pickup at our Phoenix hotel and taking off across the parking lot towards the gas station. I don't know what she thought she'd find there since she doesn't go for kitty treats unless they are organically grown and very green. Perhaps she thought they sold cat mint, catnip, and/or wheat grass at the convenient store. My dear friend, author Lynn Ames, who was helping me to get the katz upstairs to the room despite a cat allergy, sprinted off after her and reunited the runaway with the rest of the katz. Pixie was just as happy to be captured, snuggled, and carried back to her family.
Back home to a more stationary life, Pixie has had to stick to her four legs to move about the house. Enter 4-wheeled walker with a seat. Recalling her penchant for travel, I invited her up onto the seat and took her for a ride around the house. The house is fairly large so I was able to give her a pretty good ride while getting more exercise for me. She seemed to think it was fun, although probably not nearly long enough. Then this morning at 5 am when my housemate didn't get up at her regularly scheduled time, the cat alarm committee sprang into action. When Jan doesn't get up at her regular time, they don't go to her and wake her up. Oh no, they seek me out. Me, who doesn't ever have to get up with the chickens, but who is sometimes seen clucking around at that time in the morning. Today was one of those mornings when I was already awake and lying in bed wishing I were still asleep. I looked up and noticed that Pixie had jumped onto the seat of the walker. Ahem. I took that as a hint that not only did I need to check on Mommy Jan to make sure she was going to get up for their feeding time before she went to work, but I also needed to drive Pixie to our destination via the purple walker kitty cab. I got up and started pushing her out to the kitchen but stopped along the way at the bathroom. I invited her to join me in the Gecko Cafe, our new name for the bathroom, since tiny geckos have taken to hanging around on the outside of the window in there. After studying them for a few days, Jan noticed that when the light was on, little moths fly up to the window, trying to reach the light inside. The geckos have decided that this is a lovely opportunity to dine on moth meals in a relatively safe environment. I say "relatively safe" because the katz who can fit on the window sill have started sitting there in order to have a front-row seat for watching the geckos munch moths. They can't reach the geckos, but the geckos were not certain of this at first. Now they're more comfortable with the fact that they are merely being observed while dining at the Gecko Cafe rather than being mentally stuffed and dressed to wind up as a kitty snack.
Pixie declined to engage in her regular habit of gecko gazing and chose instead to wait in the "car" for me. Only I wasn't fast enough because Mommy Jan's kitty breakfast noises were getting too much to resist. By the time I came back out, she had abandoned her roost and gone to the kitchen to await breakfast. However she did come back for a ride after she ate, so I drove her up and down the hall and around on our usual route so she could get her promised ride. Hopefully I'll be able to build up to more and more laps around the house as my balance improves and my endurance increases. I'm looking forward to being completely ambulatory on my own, but in the meantime, I can be found most days, driving Miss Pixie to the Gecko Cafe.
