WHAT MOVING WILL BE LIKE

Soon I'll be leaving my nice little home in L.A. Gee, I'll miss it. 

I'll say goodbye to my neighbors....

...and my friends... 

....and my mistress. She's a good egg. She'll land on her feet. When we get where we're going, I'll send her some bon bons and movie magazines.

That's (above) my wife. "Let's go, Honey!"

We'll have a lot of driving to do. This is a big country!

Maybe we'll get a little tourism in along the way. 

Wow! We'll cross the Western frontier! If only the mountains and dried grass could tell stories.

The tales they would tell!

Eventually there'll come a point when we find our new town...

 

...then another where we find our new street...

...then still another, where we find our new house.

  

"Just put the baggage anywhere, Honey!"

My wife will no doubt make a project of fixing up the house. I'll put in a lot of work in, too. I'm scared to death that if she does all the decoration we'll end up with a girly house.

Sheeesh! Can you imagine living in something like that (above)? 

My wife still wants pets. She read a kids book we had around the house and now she entertains the possibility that cats can be cool and urbane. 

Cool and urbane??? A CAT? Even the fluffy ones are crazy and homicidal.  Even one cat (above) can be a pill to take care of...

...and nowadays nobody ever gets just one. 

TO BE CONTINUED.......

LIVING WITH YOUR PARENTS

I have a comfortable little house (above) in the suburbs and all my kids were raised here.

It has the usual amenities: books, TV, etc., etc.

And a well-stocked refrigerator; you gotta have that.

Yes, all in all it's been a good life.

That's why I can't understand what my grown-up kid told me over dinner last night. He said he needed a place to stay for a few months but that he didn't want to live here. I asked why...I mean, the rent here is free, and we like having him around...and he said that he'd never get anything done here. It's way too cozy.

"Too COZY???," I asked. "What's wrong with cozy?" Everything, he said. Everything here is soft and cushy and mushy and quiet...you could spend years here without being aware that time had passed. A house like this could rob you of years of your life.

Yikes! Well, I felt I had to defend the honor of the house so I pushed him to be more specific.

DAD: "Let me see if I understand. You're saying you're suffocating here. The house is dulling your mind."

KID: "Well, yeah, sort of. I don't want to exaggerate."

DAD: "Hmmmm. Come to think of it, when you were a baby you were always trying to escape."

KID: "Well, sure. Freedom. Everybody wants that!"

DAD: "So with ferocious hounds at your feet you escaped the clutches of the evil parents."

KID: "You're taking it all wrong."

DAD: "No, I get it...If you were here you'd be in quicksand. It's a slow death where the mud and the grass fill your lungs (Cough! Cough!) and you can't breathe anymore. That's it, right?

KID: Well....I didn't mean to imply....

DAD: But it's like that, right!? Like the Sargasso Sea???"

KID: "The Sargasso Sea!!!?? What's that got to do with anything?"

DAD: "The Sargasso Sea...a timeless, smelly, weatherless morass of rotting ships mired in decaying seaweed. A sailor caught in that is never seen again. That's what you think this house is like!"

KID: "Not exactly. Look, I don't want to offend. Maybe it's your collection of cats!"

DAD: "Huh? What cats? I don't have any cats!!!"

KID: "Ah, but it's as if you had cats, even if you don't! And your false teeth..."

DAD: "What are you babbling about!!!!??? I don't have false teeth!!!"

KID: "Ah, but it's as if..."

DAD: "I know, I know. It's as if I had false teeth."

KID: "Look, suppose I lived here and I wanted to bring a girl over? I can't do that with you here!"

DAD: "Why not? I wouldn't bother you...oh, wait a minute..."

DAD: "Now I get it! You want make your room into a HIPPIE LOVE NEST! Why didn't you say so? Hey, that's all right with me. I'm a guy myself. You can talk to me about things like that."

KID: "Yuuuuch! Nobody wants to talk to their Dad about sex! "

DAD: "Oh, yeah...right. Well...talk to your Mom about it then."

KID: "Yikes! That's disgusting! Dad, you're not getting what I'm saying."

KID: "I want to take risks! I want to take big risks without carrying a packed lunch and an extra sweater in case the weather turns bad."

KID: "I want to meet the people from the right side of the tracks and from the wrong side of the tracks."

KID: "I want to eat at the finest restaurants..."

KID "...and when my survival depends on it, I want to eat dirty scorpions from the Kalahari Desert."

DAD (REALIZING HE'S BEATEN): "Okay, all this talk is making me hungry. Let's see...I don't have any dirty scorpions..."

DAD: "...but I do have this half-eaten Doritos!"

KID: "Excellent! Let's eat!"

MORE ABOUT CAT HOUSES

'Still on vacation. I'm back to post a few more cat pictures then I'll retreat back to my mint julep and pool.  

About cats: the new trend in cat ownership is to have lots of cats, rather than just one. Now, where did that idea come from? Maybe it's the fault of all those reality shows that make maverick pet owners look sympathetic. I'm not sure.

I'm a dog person myself but I have to admit that cats have advantages. If you're going to have huge herds of pets it's better to have multiple cats than multiple dogs. At least cats don't bark at the neighbors.  

Pet stores sell elaborate cat trails that you can attach to walls.

How do you like these cat book shelves (above)? I think they're great! I don't even have a cat and I want one. 

Some of the latest cat furniture (above) looks like human furniture. You could be in a house with cats and never know it.

Where do you think the idea for cat trails came from? Maybe from Dr. Seuss. I can imagine an indoor cat city along the lines of the drawings in his books.

Or maybe the cat trail fad started with Habittrails. Like Sara implied in a comment to the previous post, maybe people began to envy the cool space stations their hamsters lived in. 

Where's all this leading? My guess is that we're psyching ourselves into building Habittrails for humans. Isn't that what Disneyland's "Tarzan's Treehouse" is really about? The attraction is leading millions to ask why hamsters should have all the fun.  

CAT HOTELS

(I'm still on vacation but I can't resist putting up just one post)

Jobs are getting hard to find but one business seems to be thriving: I refer to the cat hotel business. If you're willing to put up say, a dozen guest cats in your home, you can make what a beginning engineer makes. No kidding.

Of course it helps if you have a nice house and look like Aunt Bea. People like to think their cats are taken care of by a loving granny.

 A friend recently had to board his cat in a cat hotel for a few days. He didn't mind the expense because he thought the owner earned every penny. Taking care of cats isn't easy.

The hotel had automated litter boxes.

I'm surprised that cats use them. I mean, cats are usually so fussy.

Amazingly, the cats get along with each other. The older cats just lie on their backs all day and the kittens do nothing but play.

The hotel had a whole room full of cat trees. I wonder if they were as nice as the ones above.

Probably not. Most cat trees are weird modern art objects covered in rug.

I'd like to be around when people of the future dig up these things and try to figure out what they were for.

I imagine there's even more money to be made in the dog hotel business, but those would be hard dollars to make. Some dogs are aggressive...some are even psychos. Yikes!