RVing With Peanut

Peanut came to live with us when he was just a kitten, so for most of his life he has lived in our Montana. When we are traveling from place to place, he is very content to ride in his carrier in the back seat of the truck. Only on very long days does he get restless and start to cry. 

Climbing the Walls

On the stove

He has learned when we are ready to move. We take him to the truck just before we put the slides in. I certainly don’t want him running loose for that. We were in a campground once when a dog got caught between a slide and whatever it was moving against. It broke a bone or two. Anyway, I am very careful that Peanut is completely out of the Montana before I put the slides in or out. When we stop at rest areas for lunch or a potty break, he also gets to come inside to his litter box and food and water bowls. Again, I am careful that the open spaces which allow access under the bedroom slide are sealed off so he can’t get under there. It looks like a great hiding place for a cat to me.

In the Christmas tree

In the pantry

When we are parked, the Montana is his domain. Peanut is deaf, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down any. He knows every nook and cranny. And he knows how to follow the path of a bird, dog, rabbit, or squirrel by racing from one window to the next in a great long circuit around the trailer. He can spend endless hours on the back of the sofa watching for any movement outside. For naps, his favorite place is the recliner. Since we have a rear kitchen, we only have one recliner and he apparently thinks it is “his chair”. He eats his dinner at 5 PM while it is usually 6 or 6:30 before we have ours. In that hour to hour and a half, he has eaten, groomed, run and played, and before we can get up from the table after our meal, he is sacked out in the recliner for his evening nap.

Play hard; sleep hard

I must say that Peanut was on his best behavior this week when we had company. He isn’t shy in the least and is very friendly with strangers. In his earlier, kittenhood days, he seemed to want to show out for guests. He was much better behaved this week. I remember one occasion when we had guests for dinner. Peanut was the perfect cat all during the preparations. He napped, dreaming little cat dreams, as far away from the kitchen as you can get in a trailer. He woke up about 30 minutes before the honored guests were due to arrive. It was his dinner time so he was quite content to eat and groom himself afterward. It wasn’t until after the guests arrived, when Gene was giving them the grand tour of our home, that the sugar or whatever kicked in and Peanut took off. He raced from one end of the trailer to the other using every handy piece of furniture as a springboard for the next. As far as I know, Peanut only stepped in the middle of one plate. I quickly whisked it away and replaced it with a clean one. Clean is a relative term now that the cat dander had been stirred up. Peanut had to spend the rest of the evening in the truck. That was like the terrible twos and I’m glad we’re past that stage in his life.

He is far from a sedentary cat but not as energetic as he was, so I guess he is now in his adolescent/young adult years. He has become a cuddly little lap cat. He is as sweet as he can be and quite adapted to the RVing lifestyle.