ROAD TRIP AND CAT TALES!
Starting with this article, I will be sharing a few amusing tales from our first ventures out into the exciting world of RVing. The first is about our maiden RV road trip with our traumatized cat, Sedona.
We had camped in a Volkswagen bus and slept many times in the back of our various station wagons on camping trips, and I had even slept on a quilt spread on the ground with nothing overhead, and attempted tent camping once. I'll write about those adventures later. But for our first real RV trip, we rented a 24-foot camper to attend a sailing regatta in California.
Since we were traveling that far, we decided to go on to Sedona, Arizona and take our young, big beautiful and colorful Maine Coon cat, Sedona, who was named for the brilliant landscape in the area. Why we thought she would appreciate seeing the inspiration for her name, I’ll never know.
Sedona immediately decided the only safe place in the camper was her litter box, which we had placed in the shower. It was familiar to her. She didn’t eat or drink for two days because she didn’t want to soil her ‘bed’. When we finally arrived at the lake in California and found a campsite in a rustic National Park, you could see the gratitude in her eyes as she made a beeline for her water and food, then scurried back to her box to relieve herself.
It was only then that I decided to take her out for a walk to acquaint her with California nature on a leash with a harness guaranteed by the pet store to keep Houdini from escaping. The pet store employee obviously never met Sedona! She quickly figured out that if she planted her back feet firmly in the pine needles, put her front feet together and shrunk her head to the size of a pinpoint, when I pulled on the leash I would yank the harness over her head. Score one for the cat! She didn't run, though. She just stood there glaring at me triumphantly.
After the regatta, we headed for Sedona (the town) and a campsite just above Oak Creek. It was lovely, and a short walk and plunge into the cool waters of the creek kept the 100-plus temperatures from getting to us. No more walks for Sedona, though—she was relegated to the camper where the air conditioner ran continuously to keep her and us cool. It wasn’t long before we discovered another of her quirks.
Having been born and raised in western Washington where thunderstorms are rarer than hot, sunny days, Sedona had never lived through one. When the first rattling clap of thunder boomed between the bright red cliffs above us, Joe and I were thrilled to sit and watch the show, snapping pictures of the lightning bolts bouncing off the fiery buttes. Sedona was having none of it. She went flying back into her box—not as clean as it had been when we started out.
When the show was finally over, we fished her out and proceeded to bathe her in the shower to make her clean again. Although she was two years old, she had never before had such horrible indignities imposed on her! After suffering through a thunderstorm and a bath, both in the same afternoon, she proceeded to climb up on a pile of our clothes and show us what she thought of our idea of cleanliness. We locked her in the bathroom and headed for the laundromat.
Sedona settled down after that (no more thunderstorms, thank God!) and didn’t seem to mind the long trip back to Washington until we got within 60 miles from home. I don’t know if she sensed that home and sanity were close by or was simply fed up with the drive, but she suddenly set up an ear-splitting yowl that lasted the rest of the trip. We didn't have to carry her from the camper to the house when we arrived at home - she flew down the hill like a furball on fire.
That week-long trip in an RV convinced us that we would definitely be buying a motorhome and Sedona would just have to learn to adjust. As I told her often during our deep, philosophical discussions, she had the same fur to get glad in that she got mad in. Okay, so not glad, but at least agreeable.
She traveled with us until a few months before she would have turned nineteen, and it was only in the last couple of years that she finally learned not to fear thunderstorms or the moving motorhome. We suspect she might have become too old, too sleepy, and maybe a little too deaf to notice the occasional loud booms of thunder or the RV's movement and engine noise. But anytime we finally got parked, she was always eager to run to the doorway to peek out and see where this trip had landed her.
Starting with this article, I will be sharing a few amusing tales from our first ventures out into the exciting world of RVing. The first is about our maiden RV road trip with our traumatized cat, Sedona.
We had camped in a Volkswagen bus and slept many times in the back of our various station wagons on camping trips, and I had even slept on a quilt spread on the ground with nothing overhead, and attempted tent camping once. I'll write about those adventures later. But for our first real RV trip, we rented a 24-foot camper to attend a sailing regatta in California.
Since we were traveling that far, we decided to go on to Sedona, Arizona and take our young, big beautiful and colorful Maine Coon cat, Sedona, who was named for the brilliant landscape in the area. Why we thought she would appreciate seeing the inspiration for her name, I’ll never know.
Sedona immediately decided the only safe place in the camper was her litter box, which we had placed in the shower. It was familiar to her. She didn’t eat or drink for two days because she didn’t want to soil her ‘bed’. When we finally arrived at the lake in California and found a campsite in a rustic National Park, you could see the gratitude in her eyes as she made a beeline for her water and food, then scurried back to her box to relieve herself.
It was only then that I decided to take her out for a walk to acquaint her with California nature on a leash with a harness guaranteed by the pet store to keep Houdini from escaping. The pet store employee obviously never met Sedona! She quickly figured out that if she planted her back feet firmly in the pine needles, put her front feet together and shrunk her head to the size of a pinpoint, when I pulled on the leash I would yank the harness over her head. Score one for the cat! She didn't run, though. She just stood there glaring at me triumphantly.
After the regatta, we headed for Sedona (the town) and a campsite just above Oak Creek. It was lovely, and a short walk and plunge into the cool waters of the creek kept the 100-plus temperatures from getting to us. No more walks for Sedona, though—she was relegated to the camper where the air conditioner ran continuously to keep her and us cool. It wasn’t long before we discovered another of her quirks.
Having been born and raised in western Washington where thunderstorms are rarer than hot, sunny days, Sedona had never lived through one. When the first rattling clap of thunder boomed between the bright red cliffs above us, Joe and I were thrilled to sit and watch the show, snapping pictures of the lightning bolts bouncing off the fiery buttes. Sedona was having none of it. She went flying back into her box—not as clean as it had been when we started out.
When the show was finally over, we fished her out and proceeded to bathe her in the shower to make her clean again. Although she was two years old, she had never before had such horrible indignities imposed on her! After suffering through a thunderstorm and a bath, both in the same afternoon, she proceeded to climb up on a pile of our clothes and show us what she thought of our idea of cleanliness. We locked her in the bathroom and headed for the laundromat.
Sedona settled down after that (no more thunderstorms, thank God!) and didn’t seem to mind the long trip back to Washington until we got within 60 miles from home. I don’t know if she sensed that home and sanity were close by or was simply fed up with the drive, but she suddenly set up an ear-splitting yowl that lasted the rest of the trip. We didn't have to carry her from the camper to the house when we arrived at home - she flew down the hill like a furball on fire.
That week-long trip in an RV convinced us that we would definitely be buying a motorhome and Sedona would just have to learn to adjust. As I told her often during our deep, philosophical discussions, she had the same fur to get glad in that she got mad in. Okay, so not glad, but at least agreeable.
She traveled with us until a few months before she would have turned nineteen, and it was only in the last couple of years that she finally learned not to fear thunderstorms or the moving motorhome. We suspect she might have become too old, too sleepy, and maybe a little too deaf to notice the occasional loud booms of thunder or the RV's movement and engine noise. But anytime we finally got parked, she was always eager to run to the doorway to peek out and see where this trip had landed her.
