My husband and I traveled from Maine to Key West, along the southern US border to CA, then up the Pacific Coast Highway as far as Carmel. We wanted to spend three months escaping a Maine winter.
We had a 1982 Westphalia camper pop up van, with a diesel engine. This last part was important. Its chassis was heavy but the engine was a rabbit 4 cylinder. This meant it went slow. But the diesel got 24 miles to the gallon and that was all right by us! We saved money and we weren't in a rush.
When we decided to take the winter and just "go" we had a cat at the time. I loved her to pieces but she was definitely a special ed cat. She was unpredictable, grumpy, nice, scratchy, affectionate ...a bundle of contrasts. No one would take her in when we left for the winter. They all knew about 'Abby the Menace'. So we had to take her with us. Some time before we left we trained her on a harness and when it was time to go, we plunked her into the van, turned on the engine (which was a loud diesel as you know diesels can be) and took off.
Well, she spit fire for a few hours but then something strange happened. The noise of the diesel and the swaying of the van seemed to calm her! It was like the white noise of the interior canceled out her interior stress, and she became a model citizen.
It was back to the old Abby when we turned off the engine though, and she was her unpredictable self.
At the start of our journey we had the harness on loosely, concerned with her comfort and not wanting to cause chafing. We were still kind of feeling our way long with the camping thing, the cat in the van thing, and the husband-wife thing driving and never asking for directions thing. (This was before GPS and I as the navigator had the map, but when I said 'turn right here' I was usually met with an 'Are you sure?' Husband made it out alive...but barely).
Sometimes Abby would escape her harness. This was a problem. Here is the vignette:
Abby got out of her harness and we had to put on gloves and a thick coat and grab her by the neck and literally wrestle her back into it. I ended up with scratches, she's fast asleep in the way back, and husband is looking for a pet store that sells harnesses "she will never ever get out of...she'll be buried in it!"
2 comments:
Did he find such a harness??
I can't remember, but from the photo which we took in Ft Myers FL, and the vignette occurred prior to getting to that point, it's the original harness we left Maine with her in.
I do remember that she was used to the harness by the tie we got back and we kept it, putting it on her easily to take her outside with us. She liked to play a game where I threw acorns and she jumped up and batted them away, or catch them in her paws. When she was in her harness we never left her alone outside but were always within leash length, due to predators everywhere. In Maine, eagles, in TX, mountain lions, in FL, other aerial prey, and so on. We tied the other end to an anchor.
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