When we moved out of the RV and into the house last year, we built an RV pad for "Holly" (before money was so tight!). We'd been full-time in the RV for 11 years, and we (and the five cats at the time) were ready for more space. We have to get down to Florida for a job interview, and my parents are moving out of their home in Brunswick, GA to move into a retirement community (a condo) in Birmingham, AL.
We've figured it twenty ways from Sunday, and given that we don't have anyone we trust that would take care of the kitties for free while we're gone, we've decided to head down there with the RV instead of in the car.
We pulled everything but the kitchen, bed and cabinets out of the RV as we were in the process of cleaning and redoing her. We've emptied the RV completely, and she's going to (at least temporarily) become "the Kitty Coach."
We're taking a bunch of the cat trees out of the house and putting them back in the RV. Because we're just going for a short trip, they can have almost all of the cabinets (which they can reach via the cat trees). We've cut holes in the sides of the storage space under the bed so they can get in and out of there multiple ways. We've found locations for the two litter robots and we'll have one regular (large) litterbox. It's not enough for six - but as five of them managed with two litterboxes for so long, hopefully they can make do for the two weeks!
We're not going to push it, so it'll take three days of seven hours of driving to get down there (Brunswick). We've decided not to tow the car, so my parents are going to let us use one of theirs. It'll be a really long day, but to get down to Boca we'll take the car and do a one-day round trip.
We'll stay for 5 days - a week - depends on how long it takes to help sort through what they haven't done by the time we get down there. So the whole trip will take 12 days - 2 weeks. We've already got the Feliway and the Bach's stress remedy ready to go...
We've started telling the kitties every day what's going on, so hopefully that will help. And it looks like we'll be taking off next Thursday. We're not fooling ourselves - we know it will be stressful for them. But we've had so many health issues with so many of our kitties, we don't feel comfortable leaving them in the house with questionable care for that long, and we can't afford boarding. The higher cost of gasoline in the bus is still so much cheaper than boarding - which is stressful for them anyway. And my parents are unloading some furniture on us, and it is SO MUCH cheaper to drive it back ourselves rather than use shipping, movers, or renting a U-Haul. So .... maybe wish us luck!
We've figured it twenty ways from Sunday, and given that we don't have anyone we trust that would take care of the kitties for free while we're gone, we've decided to head down there with the RV instead of in the car.
We pulled everything but the kitchen, bed and cabinets out of the RV as we were in the process of cleaning and redoing her. We've emptied the RV completely, and she's going to (at least temporarily) become "the Kitty Coach."
We're not going to push it, so it'll take three days of seven hours of driving to get down there (Brunswick). We've decided not to tow the car, so my parents are going to let us use one of theirs. It'll be a really long day, but to get down to Boca we'll take the car and do a one-day round trip.
We'll stay for 5 days - a week - depends on how long it takes to help sort through what they haven't done by the time we get down there. So the whole trip will take 12 days - 2 weeks. We've already got the Feliway and the Bach's stress remedy ready to go...
We've started telling the kitties every day what's going on, so hopefully that will help. And it looks like we'll be taking off next Thursday. We're not fooling ourselves - we know it will be stressful for them. But we've had so many health issues with so many of our kitties, we don't feel comfortable leaving them in the house with questionable care for that long, and we can't afford boarding. The higher cost of gasoline in the bus is still so much cheaper than boarding - which is stressful for them anyway. And my parents are unloading some furniture on us, and it is SO MUCH cheaper to drive it back ourselves rather than use shipping, movers, or renting a U-Haul. So .... maybe wish us luck!
