I went to the bathroom all by myself!

Usually, one hears that from a toddler. It is usually met with great fanfare on behalf of the parents.

In this case, it is an occasion for some angst.

For the last 9 years, we have had a cat. Roscoe P. Coltrain is his name. He had many quirks. So many that we used to say “He’s retarded, but he is ours…”

One quirk was he likes to drag socks, sweaters, t-shirts, uhh, unmentionables, out of the laundry basket. He liked to drag them into various parts of the house and curl up in them, purrrring loudly.

Another quirk:

When we first got him, his food and water lived in the bathroom. Whenever someone went into the bathroom, he would run in and eat and PURRRRR really loudly.

Houses change, things get moved. His food and water are now in the downstairs bathroom, that doesn’t get a lot of use. At least not by humans.

But he still always followed people into the bathroom. It didn’t matter where he was in the house. He would hear you and come trotting in.

He would do it in the middle of the night, middle of the day. It didn’t matter.

When he had been outside, and we let him back in, I would swear he would look at me as if to say “I hope you didn’t go to the bathroom without me…”

He liked to roll around on the rug and have his head rubbed. His purrring was audible in the bedroom next door on a quiet night.

He and our other cat, Maia, went to a new home yesterday. (It would have been impractical to take them to Cairo).

While we know that they are going to a good home, and we know that they may not have even survived the quarantine and travel stress and we know that this is for the best….

Still.

This morning I went to the bathroom all by myself….