Street Cats, Feline Festivals, Cat Cafes and Other Ways to Make Kitties Part Of Your Next Trip

Foreign.

Welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

I'm your host, Pauline Fromer.

I want to start today's episode with a bit of a personal story.

When my husband, then boyfriend invited me to his parents Christmas celebration, he had a special surprise for me.

He had created what he called a kiddie condo.

He had taken a barrel and he had cut holes in it and he had created little shelves in the middle which he put carpeting on because he knew I was a cat lover and that nothing would make me happier than this little house for my cats, my soon to be mother in law.

My husband and I have now been married 29 years, but this was the first time I was spending time with her.

Then spent the next five Christmases giving me cat items.

You know, jewelry, T shirts, everything you could think of.

Until my husband finally said to her, she loves cats, but she's not really going to be wearing these cat items around.

My next guest probably would wear the items.

I think he is Jeff Bogle.

He has written the most charming book, it's called Street Cats and wearing to find them the most feline friendly cities and attractions around the world.

So Jeff, it's so nice to meet a fellow cat lover.

Welcome to the Fromer Travel Show.

Pauline, thank you for having me.

It's such an honor to be on this show.

I love the show and it's kind of surreal to be talking to you right now.

So thank you so much.

Oh, that's very kind of you.

So you've heard a little bit about my private life.

Yes.

And I would wear, I mean, it'd probably be covered in cat hair.

Whatever I'm wearing is usually covered in cat hair already, whether I'm at home or traveling or traveling to make this book.

But yes, I would wear.

But it is funny, isn't it, how someone learns one thing about your personality and that's what they gift you, that's what they kind of associate you with.

We used to decorate our Christmas tree, my ex wife and I, with snowmen, all themed around snowmen.

And every year my parents, and they're my own parents, they've known me for a while.

They know I have other interests and like other things, constantly give us snowman things.

Like we have to.

You have to stop mom and dad.

So yes, that's, that's very funny.

And what you described, the kiddie condo actually sounds a lot like what I found in a lot of cities around the world.

People had made little cardboard huts with blankets inside, really cute shapes and designs and placed them in parks and on streets around the world.

It was one of the, one of the real joys to see because that's an active representation of people caring in those places and trying to look out for their vulnerable yet extremely resilient feline neighbors.

Well, that's so interesting because when I think of street cats, I think of a talk I had with a veterinarian in Jerusalem.

I was sitting at the bar, I was visiting on my own and I had that earlier that morning I had checked into this Christian guest house that was open to all religions and it had an open air lobby.

And strolling through the lobby were these beautiful cats.

And I said to the guy behind the desk, oh, what's the name of this cat?

And he looked at me like I was nuts.

He said the cat has no name because I assumed the cats belonged to the hotel.

But this was an open air lobby and Jerusalem is filled with street cats.

And I told this to the veterinarian I was sitting next to at the bar and she said yes, it's been a big problem.

Cats were brought into Jerusalem to kill mice and they had no natural predators.

And so we have thousands of street cats and they live very difficult lives.

Yeah.

And so I don't think in Jerusalem they take care of the cats from what I could tell.

But in certain cities they do.

And you've highlighted those cities.

I have and I highlighted some of the ones where cats have it rougher.

So I wanted to paint a.

As full a picture as I could.

You know, within 224 pages.

This isn't.

Wasn't going to be a war and peace tome on.

On street cats, although I could have.

They are, as you said, Jerusalem's not in the book.

They're there.

They're in Bergen, Norway.

They're in Maui, Hawaii.

They're everywhere.

I focused on 20 specific locations and.

But not all of them.

It's not all cupcakes and rainbows.

There are Cairo, Egypt, once a place, you know, we associate.

Egyptians love cats.

They worship them.

Sure, not so much anymore.

Amman, Jordan.

Cats have it rough there.

I wanted to give people a full picture of what it's like that you can see them, you can help them.

They're not all going to be super cuddly.

They're not all going to be pristine.

Some of them are going to be have been in some scrapes.

But I wanted to kind of show the full world, literally and figuratively of street cats.

Will you.

You go around and you do cuddle these straps I think of.

I've always wanted to But I've always been worried that A, they'd be feral or B, they've had.

They'd have fleas or ringworm or other communicable diseases.

So let's talk about the safety aspects first, of course, interacting with street cats.

What's the difference between a street cat and a feral cat?

So a street cat is, I touch it on in the book.

A feral cow is a wild cat.

It has never been domesticated.

It is living on its own.

It has no interest in being pet, in probably in getting food or being taken care of.

It is a truly wild animal, a street cat or a stray cat.

So all feral cats are street cats, but the same is not true in reverse.

So street cats are cats that may have lived in a home and were dumped.

That happens way too often for cat lovers.

It's unimaginable to do that, but it happens everywhere.

That's the way a lot of street cats get on the street.

And they are used to being loved, many of them.

They are used to just sitting up, jumping up and curling up on a stranger's lap, which happened to me in so many places.

It was one of the joys of making this book not for my own cats at home, although for I say that they loved it.

They loved smelling my shoes, sitting in it like reveling in a world of cat smells.

I tended to wear the same pair of shoes everywhere, everywhere I went.

I made this trip over.

I made this book over five or six very long spread out trips, tended to wear my same favorite pair of shoes.

So my cats enjoyed it as well.

But the cats that are street cats that are cuddly, they probably have been in someone's home at one point, or at least they have a lot of experience being around and being comfortable with people in parks, in markets and on busy streets.

So they're not truly, I mean, they're wild, they live outside, but they're not truly feral in that sense.

So I guess what you're saying is you can tell the difference between a feral cat and a street cat because they will approach you.

Exactly.

So I have a section in the book called Staying Safe with Street Cats because I wanted to address that because I've gotten a lot of weird looks when I'm in the world, and I'm sure every cat lover has.

When you see a street, see a cat and you go up and you put your hand out and you crouch down on their level and they come near you and they might rub up against your hand, they might circle, do figure eights around your legs and if you sit down, there's a very good chance they're going to climb up on your lap and promptly fall asleep.

And, and I wanted to share with people ways to do that, ways to interact safely for your, for, for humans and for the cats.

And some of the simple ways to do that, some of the real quick high level ones is, is I already mentioned crouching, getting on their level.

I mean, we are a heck of a, we are imposing to, to even the largest, even a Maine coon, which is like a small mountain lion, we are still more way larger than them.

So you want to.

Not that you're going to see a Maine coon on the street, but different topic in the book.

In the back, I touch on cat cafes and there was one in, there's one in Taiwan in Taipei that is all Maine coons.

It's amazing.

Anyway, so, yes, you crouch down on their level, you put your hand out gently.

You try to be as quiet as possible now, which sounds funny because some of these places that these cats live are so loud.

The Medina in Marrakech, there are motorbikes just zooming past constantly.

But you still want to be quiet.

Use hush tones, put your hand out and let them decide.

Let them make the first move.

And cats have an amazing ability that I wish humans had to suss people out or vet people very quickly.

I feel like cats can tell who's a good person and who's a dodgy person, like within one sniff.

And boy, wouldn't that be helpful if we could do that, we would avoid a lot of bad relationships and a bad friendship.

So, yeah, they will, they will say, I trust you, I want to be pet by you.

I want to sit on your lap, I want to rub up against your leg incessantly.

And then you've made a friend for a minute, for an hour, possibly for a life.

There's been a lot of stories where people have adopted cats that they've met off the street.

And that's a beautiful, beautiful thing to give a street cat a home.

And a lot of times you'll see little clipped ears on these cats.

Usually I think it's their left ear.

Although country from country, I think that varies.

And that means that they've been attended to.

Usually that means they've been trapped, they've been neutered and released.

They've possibly been vaccinated.

And in my research and I spoke with a woman in Athens who does cat tours for the staying safe section, she verified that most diseases that a cat might have are not transferable to humans.

Oh.

Now, obviously if they have rabies and you get bit or scratched, there could be an issue.

But like ringworm things that you mentioned, they're not going to.

Sitting on your lap and you petting them is not going to infect you.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah.

I'd like to think I'm living proof of that because I can't even count the number of cats that I've had on me on my chest, in my hands.

Yeah.

What if you see an open sore or something?

It's clear the cat is sick.

What do you do?

Well, there's two things.

One, you probably want to avoid having that cat on your lap just out of safety and they might be tender there.

Or you may pet them and trigger something in them.

A fight or flight type situation where you don't want that.

There are ways.

You could simply Google if you have cell service or you bought an ESIM card.

If you're traveling abroad to a quick Google for an animal rescue organization with the city, name of the place you're in and give them a ring or a WhatsApp.

A lot of places around the world use WhatsApp.

So give them a message, tell them where you saw that cat, maybe take a picture, and then they can provide the support that that cat would need.

Yeah.

And I gotta tell you, our cat Pepe is a rescue cat and he has a clipped ear.

Nice.

Excellent.

From Puerto Rico, there was somebody who decided to rescue a whole bunch of street cats in Puerto Rico and bring them to Baidui in New York.

Oh, wow.

Where we got him, bizarrely enough.

And I always joke that if we play salsa, he goes crazy.

Old San Juan is in the book and it is a story I tell.

It was during.

During COVID Right.

As I'm a travel writer by trade.

So one of the.

As cruising began again and all of these brand new cruise ships were kind of queued up, I spent a lot of time cruising still in Covid, but after they released ships that you're allowed to have guests on again, and my wife and I were in Old San Juan, we fell in love with a cat.

We named it Saffron.

There's photos of my wife interacting with Saffron.

And the organization there in Old San Juan is called Save Agato and they do adoptions and you could fly back with it.

But at that moment during COVID they weren't doing it.

It was that portion was still shut down or else Saffron would absolutely be at my feet right now.

I think about that cat a lot.

I have some beautiful photos of it yawning and butting its head up against my wife's hand, just as I described that first interaction I captured, and that was even before I was making this book.

I just was.

I take pictures of cats wherever I go and my wife and I are crazy cat people.

So.

Well, and a lot of them are in the book.

And also a lot of places you went in search of cats that are also going to be interesting to listeners to the show who hate cats and just want to go interesting places like Kotor, Montenegro.

Kotor, what a wonderland.

Can you tell our listeners a little bit both about the cat side of it and the non cat side of Kotor?

Sure.

So Kotor is a medieval walled city right on what looks like.

And it may be a fjord, although I can't imagine fjords being in Montenegro.

But if you've ever been to Norway, it's a little arm of a body of water that looks a lot like a glacial fjord.

It sits right on it.

Cruise ships stop there, which I will tell you, not unrelated about a cruise that's going to go there that I'm going to be on, guiding people to see street cats in a lot of the locations that are in the book next year.

But I took my oldest daughter on that portion of my book making Adventure.

We went to Croatia and drove down to Kotor, Dubrovnik.

And it is a wonderland.

It's a wonderland of a place.

It is small and compact, extremely walkable, save for one fact, that if you're staying at an accommodation in the old town of Kotor, all of those are up massive flights of stone steps.

Everything in the city, if you're visiting restaurants, cats, a cat museum, shops are all without steps, but all of the accommodations are up high.

So just something to note if you're planning on staying in the old town.

But yeah, there's.

There's cats everywhere.

But specifically there, there's one little pocket of the town in a corner by one of the entrances where it's a cat park and cats.

There's benches there, there's a fountain and there's cats everywhere.

There's little boxes, little homes for them and there's a vending machine where you put in.

So clever.

I've seen this in two places, Cyprus and Kotor.

You put in your old plastic non reusable bottles into the machine and out the bottom of the machine comes dry food.

So you recycle, cats get food.

It's quite genius.

Yeah, it's a Lovely place to sit.

And right from that cat park, there's steps up to go to the walls, the top of the wall of Kotor to look out over the water, look out over a cruise ship if it's there in port.

A stunning, stunning location.

Yeah.

Closer to home.

I've never heard of Tangier Island.

Yeah, not many people have in Virginia.

And wow, what a place.

Fascinating.

First of all, so fascinating.

You say like New Orleans, but no alcohol.

Exactly.

So they have their own dialect in Tangier that doesn't exist anywhere else in the country or the world for that matter.

It is a.

If you were going to describe it negatively, you could say it's like a backwater place.

I won't do that and I don't do that in the book.

But it is, it's right in the Chesapeake Bay.

It's not far from Smith Island.

There's three.

There's ferries that run there only in season that bring tourists there to bike or kayak or take little guys golf cart tours.

It's a three kilometer island.

You could walk it in.

I walked it in a few hours, but it is cut off seemingly.

You feel like you're not quite 18th century, but a lot of the history of the island goes back to Revolutionary war times.

There are cats there, there are community cats.

So these cats belong to people, but there are no real predators on that island.

So they wander around, they hang out by the docks when the, it's the salt, it's the soft shell crab capital of the world, Tangier Island.

And so the cats know when the fishing boats come in and all go down to the dock and wait.

Yeah, they, they're kind, they, as they're cleaning them and deshelling them, they get, they get some scraps.

So the cats are no dummies.

And that's the amazing thing about cats.

They learn and adapt and have dealt with so much heat, humans, weather, extreme weather, and they learn to adapt.

They learn where the food comes from, they learn who to trust.

And I think we have so much to learn from them.

And that's so this book, Pauline, is dedicated to my soul cat Tilly, who's got two pictures of her in the front of the book, which I'm going to try not to cry.

I cry every time I talk about her.

I lost her six years ago, but she was the love of my life, my second cat I ever had.

I did not grow up with cats.

It's a whole introduction is kind of a funny thing about the way my parents kind of negatively talked bad about Cats, although none of us had interactions with them.

So I grew up thinking I didn't like cats until I had one.

And then I, within a minute, I was in love with it.

Right.

Tilly was my soul cat.

She taught me to relax.

I'm a doer, I'm a go go goer.

I'm a non stop person.

And I was that way when I was traveling too.

And Tilly would force me to sit down on the couch.

Like I just run around constantly and just breathe, man, just slow down and street cats help you when you're traveling.

If you're a doo doo dooer, they let you stop and look around and hear the sounds and smell the smells and just be present in a place.

Because a lot of times when you're traveling, if you traveled like I used to, you would do a lot, but you would experience very little.

You would, you would not.

You would, you would have been to a place, but were you really there if you just saw all the things you were quote, unquote, supposed to see?

Did you go to a side street?

Did you sit in a local park and eat from the food cart?

And cats help you kind of pause and see things in a new way on their level.

I'm 6 foot 5.

When I'm sitting crisscross applesauce on the ground, the world looks different.

And it helps me as a travel writer and just as a human, see things differently and a photographer see things differently.

Interesting.

Okay.

And you also talk about another cat island.

This time very different.

Tashirojima.

Yes.

Wow.

Japan.

Japan.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Japan has a few cat islands.

And by that they mean islands where cats far outnumber human inhabitants.

So there's two big ones.

I went to one of them.

It's up by Sendai.

More in the north of Tokyo is about 3 hours by bullet train to Sendai.

An hour local train and then an hour ferry.

It's a commitment to get there from Tokyo, but if you're up in the north, it's great and easier to do.

And there is, there are about, I want to say about 50 to 75 people that live there.

Upwards of 300 cats.

This is one of the locations.

So in every location I put who, how you can help the cats, a website to donate to buy something.

The.

The cat islands of Japan require no help.

They, the, the residents take care of them.

They are their island cats.

There is some gift shops, there's a restaurant with a bit of a shelter where a lot of the cats hang out because they get food there that you can.

And every dollar you spend on the island is indirectly helping the cat.

You can also stay there.

So what's really fascinating for fans of anime, Japanese anime or manga artwork, some modern manga artists designed the cabins that are shaped like cats that you can rent and stay.

They're fantastic.

And there's original manga art drawn on the wooden walls on the inside of these cabins, covered in glass.

But the artist, like, did original work.

Truly special place to see water all around in the distance and cats all around in the foreground.

Yeah.

And what I love is in the book, I mean, to me, when I go to Japan, one of the things you see everywhere is this cat statue with a little waving arm.

And you explain what that came from.

And that was.

I loved that.

So tell about the temple and where that statue comes from.

So beckoning cat came long time ago.

In Japanese lore folklore, a lord was returning home from a day of falconry, which is just an amazing sentence in and of itself.

During.

Don't we all return home from a day of falconry?

It was pouring.

It was absolutely pouring.

At this point, a friendly little cat came by and like, beckoned him into the temple to stay dry.

And after a little bit of a chin wag, which I use a lot, I'm an Anglophile, I use a lot of British isms throughout this book.

A little bit of a chin wag.

The.

The lord left impressed.

And then he financially backed that the temple be rebuilt late, rebuilt later.

And that is why this welcoming kitty has become part of the lore, because the cat protected a lord from horrendous weather and that a temple was built in its honor.

And so it's a good luck cat called a manekineko cat.

I just loved that.

And we've all seen them, even if we've never seen the temple.

If you've walked anywhere in the world, you see these cats in windows.

It's adorable.

And there's a lot of them.

I mean, you can imagine there's a lot of them throughout Japan.

What was interesting about Tokyo, what you don't see a lot of in Tokyo, which were cats.

So Tokyo was my first trip.

I went.

We went to my wife and I.

My wife accompanied me on that one, went to Tokyo, Kyoto, the cat island, and then Taipei.

We flew to Taiwan and went to Taipei City, which is the birthplace of the cat cafe and the Hutong mining town.

Old mining town now called the Hutong Cat Village.

But Tokyo is my very first thought.

I'M so excited.

I'm gonna make the book of my dreams.

I get there, I go to Yanaka Ginza, which is the famous quote unquote cat town in Tokyo.

And we're walking the street and there's cat shaped pastries and cat gift shops.

And I'm looking around and I was like, something's missing.

Where are the cats?

And I, after a mild panic attack that day, I'm like, well, this isn't a good start to make in this book.

I went to a cat cafe, which is wound up.

It's my favorite cat cafe in the world.

And spoke to the owner, learned a lot about what happened to the cats there, which is a good news story all in all, which I describe in.

The book about before we leave this cat cafe.

This was a cat cafe for abandoned cats.

Right.

And he put them up for adoption.

And I loved the fact that he looked at the temperament of each cat and.

And would try and match.

Yeah, match it with the right adoptee.

That was beautiful.

His name's Massimo.

I'm still in touch with him.

The way he runs his business, there's no fee to adopt.

You come in.

It's a full fledged restaurant that blends his Italian heritage, his grandmother's recipes with his wife who's Japanese.

They met in Australia.

It is a true global story.

And it's Japanese fusion with Italian amazing food.

It's not just like coffee and pastries, which a lot of cat cafes.

It's full fledged meals.

And yes, you're.

If you express an interest, you come in.

Over time, he feels you out.

You take the cat home for a couple of weeks to try see how the cat adjusts to you, how you adjust to the cat.

And then if it's a fit, there's no adoption fee.

The cat is yours.

He's a lovely human being who runs such a socially conscious place that just wants to do good for his community and for the cats who live there.

And before we leave cat cafes, you said very quickly that Taipei is where the first one was, which makes so much sense.

They also created bubble tea and the variety of cat cafes in that city.

I want to go to the one that has the unusual breeds.

Yes.

I've always seen pictures of like sphinx cats and Maine coons, but I've never gotten to interact with them in the wild.

And this is just a place where you get to meet all the really unusual types of cats.

It's an amazing Taipei city.

I properly fell in love with one of those places.

You immediately want to return to We've all had those while traveling.

You haven't even left yet.

You're trying to book another trip to come back.

Taipei was that for me and all the places I went.

And yes, there's about, I would say approximately two dozen cat cafes including the original which is still there.

It's under a different name but the building's there.

Still cats there.

But yeah, the one you're talking about, they have rescues with tipped ears.

They have lykois and devin rexes and ragdolls.

It's like the United nations of cats.

All under one roof looking out over a night market with waves, floor to ceiling windows on the second floor looking out.

And we were there at night.

And I developed in Taipei.

I developed because I thought it would be funny.

A 24 hour cat cafe circuit.

So to walk you through from where to start your day with a coffee or a tea and a pastry, to have brunch, lunch, a little midday snack, dinner and then end at this place we're talking about to unwind.

Every night at 8 o' clock they give dinner to their cats.

And so if you're there for that, they all line up in a straight line.

It's like the children's book Madeline with 12 little girls and two straight lines and they all line up.

Two of the cats there are so fluffy and furry.

They put little bibs on them and they're like little grumpy cat cats.

And they are not.

They look so unhappy.

There's a picture of it in the.

One of them in the book.

They're such.

They make such a mess.

They have to wear little bibs.

And it is a sight to behold because I think at the time we were there, obviously this number probably changes.

But over 20 cats there again every different color and breed you can imagine and rescues and they're all lined up in front of you and it's just a photographer's dream to watch them all.

You don't even know where to focus your eyes because they're all so cute and they're trying to steal each other's food.

Like one would constantly leave his plate and go around behind everybody and come and sneak attack his.

His neighbors.

So there are great photos throughout the book.

Thank you.

I took you on a digression.

So you're in Tokyo and there are no cats in the cat neighborhood.

So where were all the cats?

Well, a lot of them are relocated to cat cafes.

So cats cafes became.

A lot of people think they started there, but they didn't.

They took the idea from Taipei and made it world famous.

And then so a lot more cat cafes are in Tokyo.

And what I think the biggest reason is in a long time ago, people, because of flats, apartments are so small.

There's the landlord restrictions were so, well, strict, you couldn't have animals.

So people would spend time with cats outside and in cat cafes.

That was loosened those restrictions.

So a lot of cats got off the street and moved into people's homes and apartments.

So it's a mixture of an increase in cat cafes and a lessening of kind of housing restrictions.

Interesting.

Okay, so before I let you go, I have to ask you about some of the historic sites associated with cats.

And this was mind blowing.

The national palace in Mexico City, it's swarming with cats.

It is, it is.

And they're protected forever by a presidential decree.

Two Mexican presidents ago, I believe now decreed that they are for as long as they're living.

And no matter what political party or who's in office, they have access to the grounds.

They are to be cared for and fed.

And they.

I. I don't even know if I know or touched on the history of how they showed up there specifically.

But they are protected cats, politically protected street cats who live in the palace.

If you are allergic to cats, you cannot run to be president of Mexico, I guess.

Yeah.

Or you have to get a supply of pills to help keep your allergies at bay if you want to be Mexican president.

Yeah.

And the book also has museums about cats festivals, one that I love.

Key West.

You go to Key west, you see Hemingway's house, Famous lover of cats.

Yep.

Yeah.

And not only that, he had an unusual cat with extra fingers on his paws.

And they still that that they all still descendants of that cat, all still live there.

So you'd go.

When you go to Hemingway House, you will see cats that truly don't look like any other cats you've ever seen.

Which is one of the neat things.

I mean, that's what we want when we travel anyway.

Right.

We want to see things we can't see at home.

And with cats, you see different.

Like Egyptian cats look.

Definitely look different.

But Hemingway's cats for sure, I don't know.

I mean they probably do exist in the world, but they in a very concentrated spot.

You can see them while your cruise ship is docked in Key west or while you have made the drive through the keys to end up there.

Yeah.

And I want to just really quick talk about if you don't mind.

So this book was born on a cruise Ship.

I went to Istanbul on a cruise.

Finally, Kat Stanbul, as it's commonly known as, and came home and had this idea for a book and the wheels were set in motion.

But I wanted to go back because I mentioned Kotor and a cruise I'm going to be hosting what I believe to be the world's first street cat cruise is going to go to the places in Croatia that I.

That split into Bruvnik.

It's going to stop in Kotor, Valletta, Malta, Greek Islands, and then end in Athens with a street cat tour by the woman who I interviewed in the book.

So every stop on this cruise on Celebrity, and that's@streetcatcruises.com it was serious enough.

I bought a domain.

Pauline.

Pauline yeah, people are already booking it and it's going to be, I have so many fun plans.

There's no fee, there's no extra fee.

On top of a group rate, which is an amazing rate, people want to take a walk with me before or after their regular excursion that they might book to see, you know, the actual famous stuff in all of these places.

I will guide people, teach them how to photograph cats, tell store behind the scenes stories of the making of the book, and then do little like surprises on the ship, leaving cute little things in the room about cats.

It's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be something else.

When is this?

And give the web address.

Oh yeah.

They're a great partner for this or my favorite cruise line.

I've done a lot of cruise riding and it's streetcatcruises.com which is where you can find information about the book and about this first ever street cat cruise.

And wow, we're taking deposits all of which are completely refundable up until next July.

So you could have almost a year to back out if you want to.

But it's going to be special, Pauline.

I promise people that I, I don't do anything half heartedly.

So this is going to be a, a pretty special occasion.

I'm so proud of it.

And again it, it just to go back just to mention Tilly one more time.

It's, I tell people when I talk about it, this whole book was just a ruse to get Tilly in the book because, and I will now cry because I know that this is one way she'll live forever because she'll be on bookshelves and on people's coffee tables forever.

So she'll never truly, never, truly be gone.

Well, she'll be in my bookshelf forever.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

It's been such a delight speaking with you, Jeff, and it really is just a gem of a book.

Thank you so, so much for appearing on the Fromer Travel Show.

I really appreciate you.

This was so much fun.

And that is it for this week's show.

I thank you so much for listening.

And to those who are traveling with or without petting cats everywhere you go, may I wish you a hearty bon voyage.

Sour candy on the table?

Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants?

Watching cable?

Well, it feels so far away?

All the channels seem the same?

Trying to remember all the songs we like to play?

Cause those lazy afternoons?

Those come so frequently these days?

Oh, it's been so long?

And I cannot help but wonder?

Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy?

In the boat house on the lake?

Oh, but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tastes?

I can't get you off of my mind?

Looking out the window?

Where we spend so much of our time?

Cause I miss the way?

But I guess you can't control those damn cards?

With all the balls of us are happy when we're free?

But would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?

Oh, it's been so long?

And I cannot help but wonder?

Are you ever gonna coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boathouse on the lake?

But I hate.