Just then, there was a knock on the door of the apartment. Is it food? Margaret wondered. Margaret is always hungry when she wakes up.

“Come in!” the Pope called out from across the room.

In walked a man with a tray, and on the tray, much to Margaret’s delight, were several of her favorite breakfast dishes.

She saw fresh, warm rolls, butter and jam, a cup of yogurt, and a much larger cup (it was really the size of a bowl) of caffè latte. That means warm coffee with milk.

Cats don’t usually drink coffee, and they probably aren’t supposed to, which is why the cooks in the Vatican know to make Margaret’s morning latte with a whole lot of frothy milk and very little actual coffee.

Margaret grabbed a roll in one paw, and began to slurp the latte. While she slurped, some of it splashed onto the coffee table. Then, when she reached for the jam, to add it to her roll, her paw went right to the bottom of the little dish in which it was set. This meant that for a few minutes wherever Margaret walked there were jam paw-prints on the white carpet. The steward who had delivered the tray looked annoyed. The Pope just smiled.

The Pope said, “I want to show you my chapel, Margaret. Finish your breakfast.”

So, she finished that roll, and quickly grabbed another, but when the jam was all gone, she lost interest. Lapping up the remaining bits of milky goodness in the saucer, she walked over to where the Pope was sitting in a chair by the window studying a stack of papers.

“Ready?” he said, and when Margaret purred back at him, he knew that she was. She still had froth on her whiskers.

Now, Vatican City, where Margaret and the Pope live, is situated on the banks of an ancient river: the Tiber. Not tiger—Margaret wouldn’t like that! — but Tiber.

On the other side of the Tiber River from the Vatican is one of the most historic, ancient, and beautiful cities in the world: Rome. For more than 1,000 years, Rome was the center of Western civilization. Before there was a Vatican City, the Pope was the ruler of all of Rome, and beyond, including most of Italy, and even beyond Italy, of other countries in Europe. And when popes ruled these vast lands they hired famous artists to build beautiful churches, galleries for art, libraries, and chapels.

So off went Margaret and the Pope out of the apartment and down the stairs into a corridor. There were Swiss Guards all along the hallways as they walked side by side. Some of the guards stood at attention, as they usually do, without looking at Margaret. But one or two of them, who have taken a special liking to her, nodded or winked.

The Pope often visits this chapel, but I’ve never seen it, Margaret thought to herself.

As they approached, Margaret saw a line of people who looked like they were waiting to get in.

“The Sistine Chapel,” a sign read, in front of them.

“Holy Father, the chapel doesn’t open to tourists for another hour,” one of the guards said to the Pope, adding, “Would you like more time than that?”

“No, that’s fine, thank you, Michael. I only want to show Margaret around,” the Pope replied.

As they walked across the threshold, Margaret’s eyes became huge like the saucer that held her morning latte. She couldn’t believe what she saw. She had never seen anything like this before on the streets of Rome. She hadn’t seen anything like this, yet, in the Vatican, either.

Every inch of the walls and ceiling was painted with the most amazing pictures!

While Margaret began to take it all in, the Pope walked quietly to the front of the chapel and knelt on the stairs in front of the altar. What is he doing? Margaret wondered, but then she looked again at the walls, the ceiling.

She almost fell over backward, trying to see the paintings on the ceiling above her head. The ceiling in the Sistine Chapel is forty-four feet tall in the middle. That’s as tall as seven or eight adults standing one on top of another!

Looking up, Margaret saw a huge man painted on the ceiling directly above her. The man was reaching out his finger and touching the finger of what looked like another, much older, man. Margaret didn’t know it, then, but that picture is how the famous painter imagined God creating the first man, Adam, in the Garden of Eden.

Margaret looked again at the Pope. He was still there, kneeling in the front of the chapel. She walked over to where he was and placed her paws in front of her. His eyes were closed. Margaret looked carefully at him, and she began to think. A minute later, Margaret closed her eyes, too.

The Pope was praying. Do cats pray? I honestly don’t know for sure, but it looked as if Margaret were praying too.

After a few minutes, the Pope opened his eyes and smiled at Margaret there beside him. He made the Sign of the Cross. Then he got back onto his feet. Margaret did, too.

As they walked out of the Sistine Chapel, the Pope explained: “Margaret, five hundred years ago Pope Julius II asked a great artist named Michelangelo to paint this ceiling. Fifteen thousand people will come through here today, as they do every day, to see these paintings.”