Let's face it: most cats hate to be caged in a car because it rarely happens except in visits for veterinary care. Thus, they have had few reasons to enjoy the experience, and strong reasons to dislike it. Yet we had to come to grips with the fact that we were going to move almost 120 miles with four cats all caged in our car.
Even before my husband's death in 2008, I knew the time would come when I'd need to down-size from our 2700 square foot two-story home and buy something smaller. We'd lived in our waterfront home in the California Delta for 26 years, and the time had come for my youngest adult son and I to move with our four cats to a location over 100 miles away from our old home.
From the date the contract was signed, we had 30 days to locate a new home and move. We were lucky to have the best real estate agent in our our to sell our home and help find us a new one, and he had already driven us hundreds of miles scoping out the market for the kind of home we wanted. My son, Lance, and I wanted to live on a property with some acreage, in the California foothills, where we could have some forest and wildlife.
Just when we had reached the point of desperation, my son and I separately, but simultaneously found the ideal property. The house is quite a bit smaller than our existing one (which was also part of our plan), and is on almost two acres of forested land in the foothills of the California Gold Country. It was a bank-owned home, another of the tragic foreclosures which result from an economic downturn. Although many foreclosed properties are left in sad repair, either intentionally, or because of the haste of moving, this home was advertised as "immaculate," an adjective we all were skeptical about until we saw it. The minute we walked inside, I wanted this house. Through a series of breathtaking miracles, I was able to buy it for even less than my original offer (banks love all-cash, short escrow offers).
The challenge was one of actually moving four cats almost 120 miles by vehicle. Joey had plenty of experience in driving long distances in a cage, as we had made several round trips to the VCA Hospital in San Leandro, about 40 miles from our old home, for radioactive iodine therapy for hyperthyroidism in June. These trips had been particularly stressful for Joey. Jaspurr and Jenny had also had several trips to the two veterinary clinics we used in the past eight years. And poor little Billy, had only been to the veterinarian once after his initial appointment when we first adopted him at five months. Subsequent appointments had been canceled because he had flung himself about so wildly in the crate that we were afraid he would injure himself. Billy has always been a fearful, timid cat, afraid of everyone except Lance.
The fact that all the cats had already been subject to the stress of having strangers in and out of the house regularly for several months was also a definite concern. We had had a veritable swinging door of tradespeople: plumbers, carpenters, and painters, completing an interior remodel, followed by "open houses" almost every weekend. We had a system for the latter: locking Joey, Jennifur, and Billy in the downstairs master bedroom, and allowing Jaspurr to stay in the great room area. We hung a sign on the front door which said, "OPEN. Please ring doorbell before entering." We knew that the minute the three isolated cats heard the doorbell, they would run under the bed and not come out until the strangers had left.
And, of course, the act of packing away everything but the last minute essentials prior to the move, just added to the existing burden of stress for all of them.
