The Cat in the Bag, or why moving every year is so hard on Maggie the Cat
Thursday, October 15th, 2009I move a lot. I’m constantly on the lookout for a better apartment that is actually worth the rent I pay (i.e. bug-free with functional heating and cooling), and rarely if ever at the end of the year do I feel like renewing my lease. I hate packing (and unpacking) almost as much as my cat Maggie hates being transported to a new place. Unfortunately for her, since I adopted Maggie the Cat into my little family back in early 2004 I’ve moved 6 times.
After one of those moves, I’d been in my new apartment a day or two when I came home from work to find Maggie hiding in the coat closet with a piece of a Bath and Body Works bag draped around her neck, hanging by the handle. The remaining pieces of the now-destroyed bag, along with the cat toys that had been inside it, were scattered throughout the living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen. And the vase of dried flowers I’d left sitting amidst the boxes on the kitchen floor was lying overturned.
Piecing together the clues (and the bag), I imagine Maggie arrived in this predicatment as follows: she found the bag containing her cat toys on the kitchen floor, and wanting to play with one (no doubt seduced by the smell of catnip), she stuck her head through the handle and into the bag to nose around. Realizing when she tried to pull her head up that she was trapped by the handle, she tried to back her way out—and ran into the vase of flowers on the kitchen floor, knocking it over. The crash sent her into a panic and she bolted out of the kitchen, frantically biting and clawing at the bag as she tried to free herself, ripping it into pieces and strewing her toys right and left in the path behind her.
Poor Maggie. She was meowing very mournfully when I walked in. I guess I would be too if I had spent the day wearing a paper bag around my neck. Next year when we move, I’ll unpack the cat toys first.