I sold my house of 10 years. The
day before the closing, I put my two cats in their carriers into my old Honda
Accord and with every crevice of the car full, I drove to Westerly, Rhode
Island where my boyfriend lived.
The adventure began. I had
medicated the two babies, Lucky and Rocky and I didn’t hear a peep the entire
ride down, which took about an hour.
Two days in Westerly were traumatic
enough for Rocky, the youngest at 13 years of age. Guilt washed over me like a
typhoon as I felt I had ripped them from their home and everything they knew:
their comfort, their territory, their corners, where it smelled familiar and
where the daily routines had been ingrained for a whole decade. In contrast,
after a few curious strolls around the house, Lucky plopped on the bed and
slept, or looked outside the window at birds or the occasional car, and his
change of scenery didn’t seem to faze him one bit.
Rocky, on the other hand, found any
corner to hide in, behaved aggressively and transformed into this feral creature
I didn’t recognize, as he hissed, growled like a panther and scratched the
living daylights out of our skin. He had passed on his anxiety and fear onto me
a couple months back every time I had to remove him during an open house when
car rides and strange houses were involved.
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| Lucky |
The vet had sold me two things: one
was kitty Prozac and the other was a pheromone spray to put around the carrier
or space 15 minutes prior to their presence. He told me I should start the pill
two weeks before leaving, but after two days, I had stopped, because these boys
were not themselves. They were shadows of their normal selves and I only
resumed drugging their food two days before departure. We left Rhode Island on
May 3rd, and these guys were nearly comatose. I almost thought that
the spray was more effective without side effects for them, just a lingering
unpleasant smell that was still faintly present in my car, three weeks later.
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| Rocky |
Our first stop was right off the
highway in a place I had never heard of, Emporia, Virginia, then two days in
Myrtle Beach, SC, a place I had always wondered about, but will no longer, as I
found it to be too commercial for my taste even though we did find the best
tasting Thai sweetened iced tea on the planet somewhere in town. Then two days
in Saint Augustine, Florida which were very pleasant, and finally we spent an
entire week at a La Quinta in Fort Pierce, FL right off the highway, where the
ample room didn’t do much for Rocky’s unhappiness. He kept sleeping in the
smallest of carriers, and it didn’t matter if we were in the room or not, it
seemed he didn’t leave his cage.
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| Lucky at La Quinta |
While at La Quinta, we would leave
them in the room, and we would venture off looking at places to rent. It wasn’t
easy to find a place that would be willing to do short term rentals, accepting
of cats, but after what seemed million
phone calls, we lucked out and found a 1 bedroom 1 bath condo on a gated
community right on Hutchinson Island, a miserly 3-minute walk from the beach,
one of the reasons we were relocating.
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| Rocky at La Quinta |
After lugging the contents of our
cars into the 2nd floor unit, we couldn’t believe we were steps from
the ocean – we could even see a little bit from our screened narrow balcony. I
opened the oversized glass sliders, and the cats immediately ventured outside.
The sound of the birds, the hot breeze and the scent of the sea provided a
cocktail of hope for us and the curious cat kids. Deep down, I knew we were
going to be alright.
