Bye for now, kitties

Having the cats cry for hours in the truck was very hard, and I moved quickly on Monday to ask at work if there was someone willing to take them for a year while we travel. It is something of a long shot of an ask, so we weren't hoping for much, but it was definitely worth trying. They really hated driving.

Incredibly, later that morning we did find someone interested, and it looked like a really good fit. A coworker named Rena had interest and some questions, which I answered, but then she didn't respond and I continued to worry. Tuesday morning I checked in again, and she was still interested, so we talked some more. Kristin and I got on a Zoom call with her and it still felt like a really good fit. She seemed excited to have them, has had cats before, and in fact had been looking for a bonded pair of cats earlier this year before COVID hit and the pet shelters all got cleaned out. We made plans for her to come by Wednesday afternoon to meet them and bring them home to her place.

Squeezing in some lap snuggles.

The reality that the cats were going away for so long was pretty heavy. We've had them for 5 years, since Audrey was about 3 and the cats were about 1. While we know intellectually it's not the long goodbye, the emotional impact is pretty real. We gave them lots of cuddles that day, and made popcorn - Brubeck's favorite vice - and had a family cat lap snuggle that evening. Kristin relished her morning lap time with the boys today, knowing it would be her last in the RV. It's weird with cats, you can't really communicate to them that something is changing or coming soon. They mostly slept in sunbeams today the way they always do. But we knew.

If RV life meant sleeping here all the time, they would have loved it.

Around midday today I went to the storage unit to pick up the cat tree and big scratching post, as they love those things and Rena's condo has room for them the way an RV doesn't. We made a list of all the cat accessories in the rig that would need to go along with them - a surprisingly large number - and around 2pm on Wednesday Rena arrived. We woke them up and brought them out, everyone liked each other. We gave the rundown of small health issues, eating routines, what food to buy, and all the stuff that goes with them. There were scritches and treats, then it was time to load up the truck with a litterbox and all the rest, put the boys in the carriers for the last time in a while, and hit the road.

That big truck cab gets small real fast.

The kids and I drove down to Lake Oswego where Rena's place is, cats yowling as usual the whole way. It was a lot less hard to listen to when we weren't towing and facing several more hours of yowling. It's the last time on the road with them for now, and a short trip. Good news, boys, no more drives for a long while.

Rena's condo is nestled into trees and has huge windows with sills to sit on. There's room for their tree, and couches to sleep on, and I think they'll be very happy there. Much happier than stuck in carriers every week for multiple hours. The things one does to keep cats - the messy food dishes, the litterbox space, room for scratching posts and beds - they're small things relative to a whole house worth of space, but in 300 square feet, they feel costlier. And we could manage that if they were calm about car rides, but when everyone in the truck is getting gray hairs from the stress of it, well... it starts to become too much.

Personally I'm mostly relieved. As the person responsible for safely moving our RV every time it budges, having to do it with cats howling in my truck cab (or worse, climbing with claws out all over it!) has created a feeling of dread about traveling. The whole point of this adventure is the travel part, so having that be so stressful was going to put a real damper on it! It is complicated and kind of emotional, and I think all of us will process it in different ways over the next few weeks. I'm keen to give that lots of space. We as a family have grown together with those cats and their foibles, fur, and silliness. Things won't be the same without them. But nothing about our lives is the same this year.