As I learned on our latest fall vacation, you are apparently not officially a Crazy Cat Lady until you have seven cats and vacation with all of them in a fifteen-foot travel trailer. Seven. Cats. In fifteen feet of RV craziness. Vacation? That is not vacation. Sifting that cat box literally every hour does not make a vacation!
And listen, if you have seven cats at home, there is absolutely no judgment from me. Rescue seven cats. Rescue twelve. Build them a catio. Where I begin to have questions is when you decide all seven of those cats need to go camping with you.
I know it is 2026 and apparently every emotional-support-or-not animal now requires an Instagram account, a hiking harness and a personal brand, but cats are not dogs. Cats do not wake up thinking, “You know what would make today magical? Six hours bouncing down Highway 395 in a travel trailer amongst 45-mile-an-hour winds followed by sleeping in what is basically a fancy hardsided tent.”
Cats want a warm house. Cats want their catio. Cats want seventeen hours of uninterrupted sleep and another seven hours to sit motionless in a window fantasizing about murdering a chickadee. Cats in 2026 want a self-cleaning litter box that you can control from your phone and costs approximately the same as a lightly used Honda Civic. They do not necessarily want to become the next #AdventureCat because Mom needs more Instagram followers.
So if you do coexist peacefully with seven cats at home, congratulations. You may simply want to invest in one of those high-end self-cleaning litter boxes that looks like something Elon Musk designed during a slow afternoon. This is 2026. We have the technology. We have automatic litter boxes, odor filters and probably an app that can tell you which cat just pooped. Pair that with your preferred clay clumping litter—or pine pellet litter if you ar
e the kind of true Bohemian Cat Mom who owns reusable produce bags and has strong opinions about eucalyptus essential oils—and everyone can live happily ever after.
True story: on our latest Eastern Sierra vacation, somewhere between hiking miles and miles of trails through my favorite mountain range and chasing the last fall colors of the season, I ended up chatting with several other Crazy Cat Ladies. And honestly, aren’t rescue Cat Moms some of the best people? We can meet for thirty seconds and immediately exchange medical histories, adoption stories and photographs of cats sleeping in laundry baskets like we have known each other since kind
ergarten.
But seriously, seven cats in a trailer just slightly larger than my Jeep Cherokee SUV still feels ambitious.
I bought one of those ridiculously oversized camp chairs at Costco recently because I have been lusting for one and it was on sale for some absurdly low price, and I told my boyfriend, “This is not actually a camp chair. This is a body bag for when I come home with three more cats.” He did not laugh nearly hard enough.
Unfortunately, all good things must end, and that includes a month of Eastern Sierra hiking, camping and pretending normal life does not exist. On our final morning, the Sierra decided to send us home dramatically with wind gusts around fifty miles per hour and temperatures dropping hard enough that even I finally admitted perhaps it was time to leave.
We pointed Stormy, our beloved Fleetwood motorhome, south on Highway 395 and began fantasizing about being home in six hours. Well, some of us were dreaming of home. Some of us still needed a stop at Costco, restock the healthy snacks and make a stop at Bennetville. And no, this time I do not mean the actual historic Bennetville, the abandoned silver-mining town near Tioga Pass that I had literally hiked through two days earlier.
For years, “Bennetville” was also what our lives occasionally felt like because we helped look after our elderly neighbor Paul Bennet, who has dementia. These days Paul is living in a care facility down in the High Desert, so one of my stops on the long journey home was visiting him.
The real Bennetville, however, was one of the coolest off-the-beaten-path hikes I did during those last few days in the Eastern Sierra. This forgotten silver-mining ghost town sits near Tioga Pass, not far from Yosemite National Park, and even though I hiked there on the Sunday of Columbus Day weekend, I saw exactly two other hikers the entire time. That is my kind of trail. Also the lakes in this area were stunning.
I think I enjoyed the hike more when I knew I would soon be trading alpine lakes, abandoned mining cabins and high-country silence for Costco, where every checker has a neck and face tattoo and questionable customer service skills.
That is exactly the kind of hike I love: quiet, scenic, almost nobody around, and absolutely no one wearing pajama pants in public. I knew that later in the week I would be back in Victorville, wandering through Costco and asking myself why apparently half the population had dressed for bed and then accidentally left the house, so during those last few days of our Eastern Sierra camping and hiking vacation, I tried to
squeeze every last ounce of mountain zen out of the trip.
I knew I would not be back in the Eastern Sierra until the following June, so I wanted all of it. More alpine lakes. More ghost towns. More granite peaks. More cold mountain air. Basically, I was trying to emotionally stockpile enough Sierra Nevada scenery to survive several months of errands, ski town traffic and trying to deliver great customer service when tourists are not always polite.
By the time we reached Kramer Junction and unhooked my Jeep Trailhawk from the back of the motorhome, I was apparently so excited to escape RV life that I forgot to put on actual shoes. That is how I ended up doing all my errands in Victorville wearing slippers. Not cute slippers. Actual “I have been living in a motorhome for weeks and civilization is optional” slippers.
Victorville is not exactly my favorite destination on earth, but desperation makes people do strange things. After weeks of camping, I was running tragically low on healthy snacks. Suddenly Date Hummus and almond-butter-stuffed pretzels sounded like emergency provisions. So yes, I went to Sprouts. I mean, I may hate the High Desert but at least they have a Sprout’s Nutrition, these days.
When you have spent weeks eating hiking snacks from coolers and campground cupboards, grocery stores become oddly exciting. Costco was less soothing. At one point, someone brought a pug inside that apparently believed the warehouse floor was its personal restroom, while I was trying to convince an employee not to load my groceries into boxes so heavy that my already cranky back would file for divorce.
Unfortunately, all vacations end, and mine ended with me running errands in Victorville in slippers. By the time I realized I had forgotten to put on actual adult shoes, it was too late. There I was, proudly displaying my Hiker Hooves, with toenails that had not seen a pedicure since sometime during the dog days of summer. Luckily, I blended right in. Victorville is one of those places where showing up in slippers at noon barely registers as a lifestyle choice.
As I zoomed around Victorville, in my Jeep, trying to run every healthy errand and hoping to not run into anyone I knew with my Hiker Hooves on full display, I also found myself wondering whether I was the only sober driver on the road that afternoon. Between the impressive number of cannabis shops and the fact that approximately no one seemed interested in lanes, turn signals or basic geometry, driving through Victorville felt less like transportation and more like an unsupervised group project.
I freely admit I am not a High Desert person. Big Bear is only about forty miles away as the crow flies, but I know shockingly little about Victorville because I generally avoid spending time there unless absolutely necessary. But I will give Victorville this: they finally have a Sprouts. And after nearly a month of camping, when your healthy snack stash has been reduced to three stale almonds and one suspicious protein bar, you become very motivated by the promise of organic Lion’s Mane coffee.
Costco was a different story. After one employee glared at me for politely asking not to have my groceries loaded into boxes heavy enough to require a forklift, the checker somehow ended up asking how many cats we had. I told him, with great confidence, “Definitely not seven.”
Four. We have four
rescue cats. Four is reasonable. For some people. That is my story and I am sticking to it.
And after weeks away, I cannot even describe how happy I was to walk back into our mountain cabin and see those four ridiculous fluffy faces waiting for us even if two of them were sprawled on the kitchen counter.
As much as I love traveling in Stormy, hiking the Eastern Sierra and waking up beside some ridiculous alpine lake, there truly is no place like home. Especially when home contains what some may say is a ridiculous amount of cats.
And a brand new espresso machine that I may have missed almost as much as those cats.
I had purchased my first legitimate grown-up espresso machine about a week before we left on vacation which was terrible timing because I had exactly one week to become completely obsessed with pulling espresso shots, steaming milk and pretending I had opened a tiny Italian café in our mountain kitchen. Then I had to leave it behind for weeks. Cruel.
By the time we came home, I am not sure who I was happier to see: the four rescue cats or the espresso machine. The cats probably won by a whisker, but only because none of them can make me a double shot.
This is the espresso machine I have been using lately, and I genuinely love it. It makes the kind of rich espresso and foamy milk that has turned my morning coffee habit into a full-blown personality trait.
The cats have adjusted. Mostly. They now barely react to the steam wand hissing across the kitchen every morning while Crazy Cat Mom makes another boozy hazelnut cappuccino and explains to absolutely nobody that crema quality is very important. At this point, my kitchen is basically a coffee shop with four unpaid feline supervisors.
For that entire week, I drank an embarrassing number of boozy hazelnut cappuccinos while learning to steam milk and pretending I had somehow become an Italian barista despite living in a mountain cabin surrounded by rescue animals.
Then we left for the Eastern Sierra and I was forced into espresso-machine detox. I told myself this was wellness. Self-care. A healing journey into nature. Definitely not caffeine withdrawal. And then I did not drink a single high-quality cup of coffee for 2.5 weeks.
But apparently there are worse addictions than a Frangelico cappuccino made with fresh espresso, Kahlúa, hazelnut liqueur and a little cinnamon. Especially when you return home after weeks of camping and the cats have already gotten used to the fact tha
t your kitchen now sounds like an extremely small Starbucks. The hiss of the steam wand does not even faze them anymore.
They just sit there watching Crazy Cat Mom make another hazelnut coffee cocktail, probably wondering why humans need all this equipment when cats figured out happiness thousands of years ago. (Spoiler alert, it’s catnip)
And that is basically how this Boozy Hazelnut Cappuccino for Crazy Cat Moms became my favorite easy coffee cocktail for coming home after a long hiking vacation. Two shots of espresso, a little cream, a little milk, Frangelico, Kahlúa and cinnamon. Nothing complicated. But I swear this is the autumn coffee drink that is missing from your life. You will never PSL again.
Boozy Hazelnut Cappuccino: Because I’m fueled by Espresso and Cat Hair
2 shots of espresso
2 teaspoons of milk
1 teaspoon of cream
1-3 teaspoons of Franglico, depending on how sweet you like it
1 teaspoon of Kahlúa
1 touch of cinnamon
For this, boozy hazelnut cappuccino, first, remove your Norwegian Forest Cat from the kitchen counter. Wait five seconds. Remove your Norwegian Forest Cat from the kitchen counter again.
Now place your espresso machine on the approximately six inches of counter space your cat has graciously allowed you to use.
Pull two shots of espresso into your favorite mug. Preferably one that says something embarrassing like My Heart Belongs to a Norwegian Forest Cat, because at this point we are not pretending to have dignity.
Use the frother on your espresso maker to foam the milk and cream. Add to your espresso and give everything a gentle stir. Now comes the important part: Frangelico.
Add one teaspoon if you would like your boozy hazelnut cappuccino lightly sweet and civilized. Add two teaspoons if you have already removed the cat from the counter four times. Add three teaspoons if your cat knocked something breakable onto the floor before 7 a.m.
Add one teaspoon of Kahlúa for a little extra coffee sweetness and enough cocktail energy to make this officially more interesting than the latte you were going to make. Stir everything together. Dust the top with a touch of cinnamon.
Serve this boozy hazelnut cappuccino immediately, ideally beside a fluffy cat who is judging your life choices while pretending he has never been fed.
