Teenage Waste-Land

What a long, strange year it has been.  Until yesterday, I had been planning on writing a blog post about Reggie and his itching.  He'd been doing a lot of unexplained itching, so we took him to the vet for the fiftieth time a few weeks ago and found out that he needed essentially Stridex pads for his chin acne (or "chacne," as we call it) and mousse for his bare spots.  Yes, our 15-year-old was sent home with pimple medicine and styling products.  The similarities between having kids and having cats seem to keep getting bigger and bigger.  

But then Hurricane Matthew reared his ugly head and I suddenly had a much bigger story to report:  we had to evacuate with the remaining three cats in tow early this morning.  

It was kind of the whole reason we left Charleston in the first place.  I'd lived in constant fear of having to evacuate with Mister, Mango, Otto, Wanda, Reggie, Elroy and Leon and the thought of it terrified me beyond the capacity for rational thought.  Where would we go with seven cats?  What if we got stuck on the highway for 12 hours like they did in Floyd?  And the bigger question--would it even be possible to find everyone or would we have to leave somebody behind (i.e. Mango or Leon)?  The concept was unthinkable.  So, eventually, we moved the brood to the mountains.

But now we're back on the coast, and we're also down three cats.  While the losses of Mister, Wanda and Otto have been devastating, it's also been a much easier evacuation with just three of them.  For example, when I checked in and Sean had already told the front desk clerk that we had three cats and an hour later she asked me how many cats we had, I didn't have to lie about having six.  Instead, she said, "You have a cat?" 

 I looked at her. 

"Two cats?" she said conspiratorially.  

"We can go with that," I responded.  

I had just a moment earlier noticed that their pet policy said there was a two-pet limit, which wasn't mentioned when I booked the room.  She looked around to make sure nobody else was listening, shot me a sly smile and nodded.  I was pleasantly surprised to notice later that it didn't look like she'd charged us the $10/day per pet surcharge either.  Her kindness was much appreciated.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Last night, when we started packing, bringing in porch furniture and generally battening down the hatches, Cooper seemed to know something was wrong and was plenty worried about it.  Zelda just seemed to think it was fun.  I'm pretty sure Reggie thought Sean and I were going away for the weekend and weren't taking him.  

So we woke up this morning at 5am, ten hours before the official evacuation would get underway.  We did the last part of the packing that we hadn't done last night.  Then we put them each in an individual carrier and seat-belted them into the back seat of the xB.  We turned off the water and the hot-water heater.  We locked the house and started the car and waited for Reggie to vomit.  Weirdly, he didn't.  (Those of you who are just joining this blog may not know that Reggie always vomits in the car.  Always.  If he doesn't vomit, he poops.  And if you're lucky, he might do both.)

So we got all the way to the bridge before I made a comment about turning on the ice-maker.  Sean, who had organized this exodus with military-style precision was not amused.  "You WHAT?!  The water is off--it's going to burn up the motor in the freezer!"  He turned the car around.

I felt pretty silly.

But in some ways it was actually good.  Because while we hadn't heard the telltale "erp, erp, erp," that indicated that we were getting ready to see Reggie's kibble again, I had noticed a disturbing smell permeating the car.  It was part undigested kibble, and part...digested kibble.  When we got back to the house and took Reggie out of his carrier, it appeared that we had won the bodily evacuation lottery along with the storm evacuation lottery.  We're pretty used to this, so while Sean went back in with Reg to turn off the ice maker (ahem), I pulled out the soiled towel and started cleaning his carrier with non-toxic cleaning solution.  

Hurricane Evacuation, Take Two! 

We were almost back to the bridge when I started smelling poop again.  I sniffed the back seat.  Didn't seem to be coming from there.  Checked out Sean's shirt:  "you probably got some poop on you when you took Reg back into the house."  Sean looked down briefly and shrugged.  Nothing we could do about it now in evacuation traffic.  

I turned back to the road, feeling pretty smug for figuring it out.  Except the smell seemed to be getting worse.  Sean ran his hand over his shirt (perhaps not the best move) but felt nothing.  Maybe Reggie did poop again?  

Then, all of the sudden, my consciousness became aware that I had noticed that I had something on my knee from kneeling on the driveway cleaning out the carrier.  It felt like tiny pieces of gravel.  I looked down.

Let's just say that the mystery of the poop provenance was solved.  (Served me right.)

Because of Sean's good judgment, we had smooth sailing all the way to Forsythe, GA.  As a matter of fact, we got here over three hours prior to check-in, creating a bit of a logistical conundrum:  three scared cats wanting to eat and potty who were stuck in a car until who-knows-when.  (See previous story about nice lady at the hotel...)

Long story short, we're all safe.  I have cleaned my knee at least four times (I can be a little OCD sometimes.)  Reggie is now finally sleeping beside me and Zelda has come out from under the bed to check things out a few times.  Cooper, in contrast, has been WIDE OPEN since we got here.  He's been running back and forth across the room, dashing to the window every time he hears someone walking out there.  While we're probably going to hate the highway 75 traffic not far from our window, Cooper thinks it's AWESOME!  We've been playing with his favorite toys and every time he comes up to me he head-bunts me vigorously as though thanking me for the BEST VACATION EVAR!  Cooper has some good lessons for me.  Here's video of him having fun:

Cooper Enjoying the Motel Room

Stay safe out there everyone.  And try to have fun if you can.