Some cats are more vocal than others. The Maggie, however, is a conversationalist...and a rather intelligent one at that. She once taught me you can save money on traveling by reading, looking at photos, eating similar foods as you would while traveling, and then staying home and dreaming about it instead - essentially a 2020s feline take on astral projection. Quite wise and ahead of her time considering she first started talking about it before the pandemic made people seriously consider astral projection as an alternative to reality-based travel. She just reminded me of this when at the last minute I recently forfeited the airfare for a planned trip (that I had previously postponed) to a tropical oasis due to business issues (read: issues with a business).
While I was pretty ok with the decision I had made to cancel the trip (mostly because I had no choice but to be ok with it) and commended myself on the adultiness of having done so, I couldn’t help but to imagine the tropical paradise I was missing. So there I was, lost in thoughts of coconut shrimp and fish tacos with the Maggie sleeping comfortably (more for her than me) on my lap, and right about the time my legs had fallen asleep and reached the point of being completely numb, she started twitching and sleep meow-chirping as if she was dreaming of hunting birds or taunting some sort of fowl then suddenly woke up looking a bit disoriented and disheveled, meowed at me quite loudly over and over as if to tell me as story…a story which I was finally ready to hear (or at least attempt to interpret and perhaps project a bit)...then ran to her food dish to ravenously devour her entire bowl of food.
The next day, I knew exactly what I had to do. Off to the store I went for coconut shrimp, a bottle of Pacifico and the fixin’s for fish tacos. I returned home and set the thermostat to 82 degrees, put on a pair of boardshorts and flip flops, set the Pandora to Tropical Music, smoked and fully enjoyed a normally not all that enjoyable free pre-roll joint from a dispensary that once was lost but now was found (the joint, not the dispensary and no, not the joint from the lady which is still yet to be found). A very gluttonous coconut shrimp and fish taco feast followed and then soon after that came an inevitable but unintended nap.
Intended or not, I went with it and drifted off into a food coma-style nap. Taking a cue from the Maggie, I imagined I was in the tropical paradise I had never been to with the help of the pictures I had seen and reading I had done in anticipation of the trip. Soon, there I was, enjoying the sunset while laying in a hammock on the beach and listening to the sounds of the crashing waves, just like in the pictures. It was amazing and I’m sure I will be going back…maybe even tonight.
Is there a moral to this story?
If you are overdue for a vacation but don’t want to deal with long lines, unruly fellow travelers, picking up covid, syphilis, gonorrhea or other travel related illnesses, have an unstable work sitch, or just don’t want to leave your critter in the hands of a sitter, reduce your carbon footprint and give astral projection a try.