Everything Girl

When I first told people that I was taking my 3-year-old Manx cat on a road trip to Maine, they looked at me as though I was a mixture of the bravest person they knew and the stupidest. And having never done any long pet trips before, I was inclined to agree with them. But I figured, what the heck? You only live once. So I did it anyway.

Off I scampered to my local independent pet shop to pick up a pink harness and leash. It had to be pink you see. No real reason why. And off I went to Target to get a little pink/purple collar with a bell on it (I would regret this later when I heard tinkle tinkle tinkle tinkle next to my ear at 4 am) and a soft-sided pet carrier, in the prerequisite pink, of course. And off I went to the Army Surplus Shop to get a soldier’s dog tag engraved. We had to make a statement, you see, what with having all that pink. And to be fair, her harness was pink camouflage.

All in all, here is a list of our cat travel supplies:

• Pink soft-sided carrier designed by Isaac Mizrahi (I tell you the designer because that’s what everyone asks me all the time. All my pet lover friends want to know where to find a carrier just like it)
• Pink breast cancer awareness leash
• Pink camouflage harness (originally made for a small dog, but we won’t tell her that. It’s astonishingly hard to find harnesses for a cat, let alone an attractive harnesses)
• Pinkish/Purplish collar with a bell from Target (It cost less than $5 and it was sparkly. How could I pass it up?)
• Two of her familiar toys from home
• A small plastic litter box
• A small food and water dish combo with a rubber grip (so as not to slide around in the car)
• A small bag of Fresh Step litter
• A small bag of Meow Mix, her food of choice
• A small hand vacuum for litter spills (of which we had several, so I was grateful to have this along. It made cleaning up after her in the car and in the motel bathroom so much easier. She likes to kick her litter everywhere, and there is nothing so annoying as to walk on a bed of litter to get to the toilet or shower)
• A litter scoop (I actually didn’t use this often at all. Usually she’d hold it all day until we got to our room and then proceed to kick most of her litter onto the bathroom floor and then use the rest of what was left in the box. It was easier just to dump the litter every morning before resuming our trip.)
• A soft, cushy blue pet bed (which she never really used unless it was in my husband’s lap)
• And most important of all, my husband’s lap. Because if you have read Marley’s Catbook page (on Facebook) you know that she loves my husband more than anything else. So having him along on this trip was imperative. (For me too, I love him quite a lot as well!)

Before starting off on our precisely 2,572-mile roundtrip, we thought it might be wise to do a couple practice trips before hand. We loaded Marley up in her harness, collar, ID tag, and leash (she thought we were crazy) and took off down some back roads around our house. I let Jon drive at first and I held her in my lap. Let’s just suffice it to say, she was not amused. She didn’t care for the bumpy roads at all and let us both know it. And it was clear she didn’t care for me being the one in the passenger seat. So a few miles down the road we stopped and changed places. She was a completely different cat when she settled into Jon’s lap. She was politely curious about the goings on outside the window, but for the most part, she was content to curl up and purr. We began to feel hopeful at that point.

The next evening, after a long day at work, we decided to try another practice trip. We bundled her up again and stuck her in her cat carrier. She put up with that surprisingly well. I like to think she enjoyed the color, but that’s just me. We hit the road again, but this time we headed for the interstate, since the majority of our traveling would be by highway. Jon let her out of the carrier and kept a firm grip on her leash (lest she decide to get too curious about the gas and break pedals under my feet. At no time was she ever allowed to sit in the driver’s lap while the car was in motion. Much to her dissatisfaction on occasion.) She was a perfect angel. She sat in Jon’s lap and purred the entire journey. By the time we made it back home, we were convinced she could easily handle our long road trip.

If you want to hear more about Miss Marley Barley’s road trip, check back for Part 2 next month. For now I’m out of room to keep writing.

A.B. Monk is a graduate from the University of Tennessee. She is an avid animal lover and has worked with the University of Tennessee Veterinarian School, the Knoxville Zoological Gardens, and Tiger Haven Big Cat Sanctuary. She is currently working with a nonprofit health care organization to support herself until she has the education and funds to start her own animal sanctuary and green living corporation. You can visit her website at www.spiniffy.com or her pet blog at critter.spiniffy.com. She is a regular columnist here at All Things Girl….

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