![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Chicago installment part two, a
Nov. 16th, 2001 05:18 pmAfter a rough night's sleep on the floor with some rather schizy kitties we woke up and started packing the car.
We did NOT clean the house, though I did sweep a bit. I've heard the insane landlady started demolition immediately after we left so it's good we didn't try harder.
There was a bit of stress induced miscommunication--James decided to take his server with him and I was still under the impression it was being shipped. Even though he told me it never sunk in, so I was thinking, hey there will be room for this extra bit of laundry and the comforters...oops.
We got the car packed to the gills and still there wasn't enough room. I had to toss out some cosmetics (almost all freebies from hotel stays and old stuff my mom sent me...gee that WOULD be old) and some favorite body shop bubble bath (half full) plus two comforters. They were old and the covers were torn but it bugged me. Everything else fit but barely. So after packing the car for about two hours and drinking a lot of water we had all four cats in their cages and things wedged in and around every small bit of space in our Saturn.
What really worked--having cages big enough for them to walk around in--our cats are all 12 lbs or under and not terribly tall. The cages were 21 inches tall, so they didn't have to hunch over.
Two went to a cage 24'D x 21'H x 20'W with a pillow on the bottom, various catnip toys or blankets and the pillows were covered over with towels that had been sitting out in the cages for a few days previous to the move. so they smelled familiar. We also had backup towels packed which was a good thing.
Over the top of the cages we put a comforter from our bed, which we also brought into the hotel each night. This gave them a cave like atmosphere yet they could still see and hear us. They managed the hotels well too much to our surprise.
The beginning of each drive day and the end were angsty for the critters--a bit of mewing (Andrew and gwen have called it klingon opera)but not much and a hand though the cage could calm them most times.
We stopped to offer them water and litter boxes each time we stopped. The two youngest boys (the aby Zachary and the maine coon like kitten, Mr. teatime)availed themselves of both while the geriatric cats (a Burmese, miss ninny and a tuxedo, Mr Newguise) ignored everything until the hotel.
They also ate like champs twice each day, something I was warned they wouldn't do.
We were not more than 20 minutes into our leaving of San Francisco, 9:30 in the morning we rolled out of the driveway and blam blam blam, before we hit van ness avenue Zach got that look in his eyes...and let fly with a prodigious poo right there. It was HUGE and very STINKY. He was distressed. We pulled over and whipped that towel out and put in another and just dropped it by the side of the road. Luckily, though he left a poo hiding under another towel there weren't really any squishies and the smell dissipated as we got further from the towel. We were being approached by one of the city's ubiquitous homeless at the time, but one look from us convinced him to move along. The poo disposed of, we started on our way.
And you know, there wasn't any melancholy, there wasn't any real disquiet other than wondering if we were going to live through the next three days. I guess I left San Francisco sometime earlier this year when we started looking at Seattle. I knew I would miss all our friends and I would miss the familiarity but I was already gone. I wasn't even really scared. This could be the calming effects of the overdose of hormones that pregnancy is at times or it could be denial who knows.
The first day was long, possibly the longest on the trip even though each day never went more than 12 hours. We were so worried about the kitties--which we didn't need to be and the car, which ran perfectly. The landscape was a whole lot of nothing and
Salt Lake City was a psychotic mess--trying to get into even the outskirts was like negotiating an escher painting made real.
Stopping along the way was funny too because while I sat with the kitties James would stop for our fast food rations. And we had to stop every 3 hours or so. At one place he walked by and heard "exorcist" whispered in reference to him. Apparently a lady was telling her daughter that people who dress like he does (black tshirt and black jeans tucked into his combat boots with black spikey hair) like to watch the exorcist. Which
um, was funny if not exactly true.
We ended up being turned away at the first motel we went to. No cats. The second one said one pet per room, yeah right. So I just didn't say anything and we hauled them all in.
They ate and excreted like mad, we cleaned off the bit of poo on Zach's pillow and we all passed out until early the next morning.
We did NOT clean the house, though I did sweep a bit. I've heard the insane landlady started demolition immediately after we left so it's good we didn't try harder.
There was a bit of stress induced miscommunication--James decided to take his server with him and I was still under the impression it was being shipped. Even though he told me it never sunk in, so I was thinking, hey there will be room for this extra bit of laundry and the comforters...oops.
We got the car packed to the gills and still there wasn't enough room. I had to toss out some cosmetics (almost all freebies from hotel stays and old stuff my mom sent me...gee that WOULD be old) and some favorite body shop bubble bath (half full) plus two comforters. They were old and the covers were torn but it bugged me. Everything else fit but barely. So after packing the car for about two hours and drinking a lot of water we had all four cats in their cages and things wedged in and around every small bit of space in our Saturn.
What really worked--having cages big enough for them to walk around in--our cats are all 12 lbs or under and not terribly tall. The cages were 21 inches tall, so they didn't have to hunch over.
Two went to a cage 24'D x 21'H x 20'W with a pillow on the bottom, various catnip toys or blankets and the pillows were covered over with towels that had been sitting out in the cages for a few days previous to the move. so they smelled familiar. We also had backup towels packed which was a good thing.
Over the top of the cages we put a comforter from our bed, which we also brought into the hotel each night. This gave them a cave like atmosphere yet they could still see and hear us. They managed the hotels well too much to our surprise.
The beginning of each drive day and the end were angsty for the critters--a bit of mewing (Andrew and gwen have called it klingon opera)but not much and a hand though the cage could calm them most times.
We stopped to offer them water and litter boxes each time we stopped. The two youngest boys (the aby Zachary and the maine coon like kitten, Mr. teatime)availed themselves of both while the geriatric cats (a Burmese, miss ninny and a tuxedo, Mr Newguise) ignored everything until the hotel.
They also ate like champs twice each day, something I was warned they wouldn't do.
We were not more than 20 minutes into our leaving of San Francisco, 9:30 in the morning we rolled out of the driveway and blam blam blam, before we hit van ness avenue Zach got that look in his eyes...and let fly with a prodigious poo right there. It was HUGE and very STINKY. He was distressed. We pulled over and whipped that towel out and put in another and just dropped it by the side of the road. Luckily, though he left a poo hiding under another towel there weren't really any squishies and the smell dissipated as we got further from the towel. We were being approached by one of the city's ubiquitous homeless at the time, but one look from us convinced him to move along. The poo disposed of, we started on our way.
And you know, there wasn't any melancholy, there wasn't any real disquiet other than wondering if we were going to live through the next three days. I guess I left San Francisco sometime earlier this year when we started looking at Seattle. I knew I would miss all our friends and I would miss the familiarity but I was already gone. I wasn't even really scared. This could be the calming effects of the overdose of hormones that pregnancy is at times or it could be denial who knows.
The first day was long, possibly the longest on the trip even though each day never went more than 12 hours. We were so worried about the kitties--which we didn't need to be and the car, which ran perfectly. The landscape was a whole lot of nothing and
Salt Lake City was a psychotic mess--trying to get into even the outskirts was like negotiating an escher painting made real.
Stopping along the way was funny too because while I sat with the kitties James would stop for our fast food rations. And we had to stop every 3 hours or so. At one place he walked by and heard "exorcist" whispered in reference to him. Apparently a lady was telling her daughter that people who dress like he does (black tshirt and black jeans tucked into his combat boots with black spikey hair) like to watch the exorcist. Which
um, was funny if not exactly true.
We ended up being turned away at the first motel we went to. No cats. The second one said one pet per room, yeah right. So I just didn't say anything and we hauled them all in.
They ate and excreted like mad, we cleaned off the bit of poo on Zach's pillow and we all passed out until early the next morning.
