More Days in the Life of a Crazy Cat Lady

Many years ago, long before his Daily Show fame, I saw Jon Stewart perform a stand-up comedy routine on TV. I remember that it started out as a funny account of his taking a cranky indoor cat to the vet for the first time. Slightly predictable hilarity ensued. What really raised the routine into the realm of the brilliant, the realm of things you remember 10 years later, was his musing at the end of the routine. He said, “Now here’s the thing. That trip to the vet was the only time my cat has ever left the apartment. But he sees me leave every day. Does he think that’s where I go?”

I thought of Jon Stewart’s homebody cat when I took my guys in earlier this week. My cats are slightly more worldly than Stewart’s, having both been born in San Francisco (we got them both at the SFSPCA), and later relocated across the Bay. Teacake lived with me in Berkeley for about a year, and Tommy went to a kitty B&B in Albany, CA once when we were on vacation. But that’s it. They’ve both only been to a few cities in their lives.

So it was in that spirit that in returning from the vet, I decided to take them on a little road trip. Leaving the vet’s office, you can turn either left or right, and either way, it’s about the same distance home. Usually, I turn left, back the way I came, because that feels like the most direct route. But this time, I went around the loop the other way, because I realized that the right-hand way cuts through a corner of the town of Piedmont, and I wanted to add another place to their life lists.

Because travel is, after all, about broadening your horizons. (The cats may disagree, but they don’t have a blog, so we’ll never know.)