Good companions can make or break any travel experience.
Of course, very few of us have been doing any real traveling lately — but the past year and a bit have felt strangely like a long voyage through strange lands. Witness the popularity of seafaring shanties and the marmalade craze. I theorize that the latter was a subconscious urge to ward off psychic scurvy as we scour the horizon for post-Covid land. That could have just been me though.
This trip we’re on has involved a lot of sitting around and waiting. Waiting for new graphs and statistics, waiting for test results, waiting for vaccination appointments, waiting to see people we miss, waiting for things coming by mail, waiting for second vaccine appointments …
It reminds me of train trip gone awry, leaving you stuck in a dusty waiting room on an obscure rail line you hadn’t meant to travel on. Every once in a while the public address system crackles to life and emits a very urgent sounding, but totally incomprehensible, announcement; its purpose only to add to the generalized anxiety.
But I digress. I’m writing in praise of my travel companions, Edgar and Geordie.
There have been a couple of humans in the covid rail car too — my husband and my adult son. It’s really in no small measure thanks to the pets that we are still speaking to each other. It’s often easier to “hear” things from the animals.
“Edgar feels that you’re freaking out and that listening to the news less would help.”
Or, “Geordie is really worried that you’ve forgotten it’s you turn to make dinner!”
Over the last few months I’ve gotten into the habit, being up first among the humans, to spend a quiet half hour with Geordie and Edgar. In part it’s “snuggle training” for Geordie, who’s early months as a stray seem to have put him off cuddles and such nonsense. I encourage him to sit by me on the couch while I have my coffee (treats are involved) and we have a quiet chat that might approach a snuggle. Inevitably Edgar wants in on the action and the three of us end up having our lovely moral boosting coffee meeting each morning before attempting anything more challenging.
I sometimes suspect that Edgar is briefing Geordie on plans for a world wide pet takeover.
Of course, even the best of friends are apt to fall out from time to time during this difficult time …
Sometimes it’s good to have another friend to share your problems with …
At the other of the day, there is entertainment to be had in seeing how Edgar and Geordie sort out their sleeping arrangements.
They each have a bed — a big one for the dog and a smaller one for the cat.
I’m sure you can see where this is going.
On rare occasions, things are arranged in a logical manner …
But much more often the arrangement is something like …
Inevitably leading to …
Once Geordie is resigned to the cat bed, Edgar, having made his point, often vacates the dog bed and wanders to his second luxury cat bed by the fire in the living room.
If I happen to be awake in the night and come upstairs for a cup of Ovaltine and some reading and ruminating, then Edgar is always up for company. He will gradually purr me back to sleepiness.
All in all, you really couldn’t ask for better cabin mates on the Covid Cruise ship we’ve been adrift in.
I hope your voyage is going tolerably, or perhaps even nearing its conclusion, but in case you’ve hit a choppy patch, perhaps Geordie and Edgar can offer companionship from afar.
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