One night, not long ago, at a hotel room in Lawrence, Kansas, I had a nightmare that my new, little house in Montana had been taken over by cats while I was away.
In the all-to-real dream, I returned home from my 3-month work trip to find felines in every corner, cabinet, and closet. The cats were all different colors and sizes, adults and kittens, domestic longhairs and shorthairs, Siamese and Abyssinian. There were cats crouched on the kitchen counters, lounging on my down bedspread, napping on the loveseat, davenport, rocker, and dining room table.
All night long I counted the cats like one counts sheep. Of course, I kept needing to start the tally over again because the purring intruders would not hold still. They moved here and there around the house like they owned the place, coming up to me and pressing their warm bodies back and forth across the legs of my jeans.
“I own three dogs that hate cats,” I thought as I stood in my doorway, suitcases still in hand. “I have no cat food. The baby is allergic to cats.”
Of course, I have no baby - this was a dream, after all.
Finally, I decided that my beloved haven was no longer my own. I drove to Harlow, rented a room, and then - thankfully - woke up.
This year, I should have been more at ease leaving for my 3-month Iditarod talk tour because for the first time in my adult life I now have my very own home to return to.
But before I departed, I became an obsessive-compulsive neurosis case (actually, I am always this way), making sure all of the electronics were unplugged, the oven was off, the furnace thermostats were set, and the frig was empty, unplugged, and wide-open. I wrote out several pages of directions for my friends who were watching the place.
And then I set the mousetraps. There is nothing worse than returning home from a trip to find that mice, or even worse, packrats, have claimed your domicile as their own.
Just one experience with a genius packrat can make a person never want to leave home.
“A human-less shelter is up for grabs,” a packrat thinks.
Once upon a time, I moved into a friend’s primitive cabin that was currently owned by a packrat or two.
“How hard can it be to get rid of a few rodents?” I told my friends. “They’ll just move out when they see my dog and I have moved in...”
The packrats did not leave - they reproduced and rallied the troops.
I baited your standard mouse and rat traps; they dined on the cheese and hummus and peanut butter without ever setting them off.
An old-timer neighbor offered to come over and set several massive, rusty-jawed bear traps around my house while I was away.
I returned home to discover that the packrats had set off the traps, eaten our offerings, and then pulled all of the heavy, steel traps into a large pile in the middle of my living room - along with one of my stuffed animals, some beer bottle caps, a sock, the dog’s squeaky toy, and so on. The packrat(s) then pissed and shat upon the entire mound.
I moved out immediately. Those packrats scarred me for life.
Now, many years later, I feared my little house on the Meagher-County-prairie was too good to be true.
“Will my precious abode still be there and still be mine when I finally return home?” I worried throughout my trip.
“A house full of cats is much better than a house full of packrats,” I told a friend as we drove across the border, finally back into Montana.
“Yeah, I think so...” she said back never looking up from the newspaper she was reading. I knew she thought I’d lost it.
My housesitters had already reassured me several times by e-mail that I had no new feline friends awaiting my arrival.
“But there is some big bird pooping all over your sidewalk,” they warned me.
Compared to my recent nightmare and past experiences, my reunion with my little house was uneventful - thankfully.
But it did take a snow shovel to scoop the thick layer of bird poop off my front sidewalk. While I was away, a very big bird took over the massive pine tree right by my front gate. I think it might be an owl, but I have yet to spot it.
All I know is that my new big bird kept those rodents and cats at bay. From now on, my sidewalk is his sidewalk.
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