Memorial day was The Pub’s first expedition and it was a crashing success! Accompanied by quite a bit of yowling displeasure. Cats are often like children, they fight amongst themselves no matter how many times you use a squirt them with a water bottle, they complain so much on car rides you momentarily consider (but never would) leaving them at the rest stop just to have a few minutes of peace and quiet, and even though one of them insists upon using your new chairs and carpets for a scratching post instead of the actual scratching post you provided, you still love the little critters and would immediately regret accidentally leaving them anywhere.
Seriously, I do love my cats…most of the time…
Rini is our eldest, fluffiest and most diva like cat. Having rescued her from my neighbor some 12 years ago (before moving in with Dave) her age is unknown but I’m pretty sure she’s around 17 this year. Don’t worry, she wasn’t catnapped as the neighbor in question was happy to let us have her. Like a fine wine, Rini has become better with age, being more loving than aloof and distant as she had been up until a couple of years ago. She also sits, purrs, meows and acts like the lady she is. Even when the walls of her new home closed in and then drove away with her in it hiding behind the sofa, her vocal complaints (two hours later in mind you. Two hours! Not right away but after two hours!) were still more pleasant to hear than Pinto’s normal voice.
Granted, my dragging her out from behind the couch in an attempt to show her everything was okay, might have instituted her wandering up and down the hallway for 10 minutes yowling at the top of her lungs in a display of not being amused by the situation, but that’s up for debate. Eventually she quieted down, even spending some time on my, the passenger’s, lap before hiding under the table for the remainder of the drive to the family farm in Idaho.
Pinto (Left) and Rini (Right) pretending to get along
Pinto is the next oldest. He is a delinquent of an old man even at 16 years of age. He lived with my sister from kittenhood until about eight years old when she needed Dave to take him, since then he’s been a part of our family. He is seriously the most overly loving cat I’ve ever had to deal with and truthfully he adapts to most situations with a great deal of ease, however (there’s always an however isn’t there?), however, he refuses to simply stop doing the things he gets in trouble for. He knows he’s doing something wrong. You can see him crouch or prepare to dodge the squirt bottle as soon as he knows we’ve see him. Or he’ll run and hide before we have a chance to respond to what he’s done. He has simply decided he doesn’t have to listen anymore and the more time that passes, the worse he becomes. His saving grace is that not only was he the best mouser I’ve ever had (and squirrel killer. Not a single one was left in our neighborhood when we moved), now retired, but he is a DEMANDING attention getter…it makes him lovable most days.
Pinto’s response to his home shuttering up and then moving was to relentlessly attempt to sit on the vast dashboard he is normally allowed to perch on. Unfortunately for him, when the RV is in motion, he has to settle for the view from my lap. I lost track of the number of times he tried to worm, jump or sneak his way onto the dashboard. He would try to make me believe he lost interest in it by laying on the back of the couch contentedly but when I wan’t paying attention, back he came.
Pinto on the dashboard
The baby at nine years of age in our trio of furry companions is Ursa, who holds a special place in my heart. We were at an SCA camping event when my son informed me he and his friends had discovered four tiny kitties (they were maybe six weeks old) abandoned under the shower truck. After checking with the land owner who confirmed the kittens did not belong to him, the kids took the initiative to find all of the babies new homes among people attending the event. All of the kittens but one, the cutest little black furball. I looked at this wee fluffy thing my son was petting and asked if he had bothered to try and find a home for her. Of course the answer was no. I knew it would be.
I have called my son little bear for most of his life so it seemed natural that he called his new kitten Ursa, meaning bear. For a short period of time she was so small we referred to her as micro bear.
Kitten Ursa
At 15 pounds, she’s no longer tiny.
Ursa learning to appreciate the leash
I have to give our cats credit though. They handled the transformation of their new home for the first time fairly well, even when, on the return trip we hit a dip while turning a corner causing items to fly out of an upper cabinet. The result was a thundering crash and a few broken pieces of ceramic. Needless to say, I didn’t encourage the ones hiding to come out for quite awhile. What was I going to say? Don’t worry, everything’s fine. I couldn’t quite make that sound sincere.
This Thursday will be our second road trip with the RV (I’m so excited to see how this goes), only this one is going to be much, much longer…we’ll see if Rini turns The Desert Pub into Yowl’s Moving Castle again.
*For those not getting the pun there is a popular anime movie called Howl’s Moving Castle.
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