Travels with Dulce

A cat is not necessarily the ideal travel companion

Last spring, when Tres became ill, we were faced with a problem: Because he needed medication, and later, a special diet, we couldn’t just leave him home alone. So when the time came for the fall series regattas, we made arrangements to rent a place from Dino and we began bringing the cats with us for the regatta weekends.

For Tres, in particular, this worked well. He traveled fairly well, and he was always a touchy-feely cat who liked being close to his humans. Dulce, on the other hand, was another story. While she always enjoyed being at the destination, she spent most of the time in the car or truck vocalizing – I think it might be the feline equivalent of “One Hundred Bottles Of Beer” – especially when Pat is driving. She still sings, but not nearly as much, if Tadpole or I drive. We once got some tranquilizers from the vet, but we discovered Dulce is a “talkative drunk” – while sedated, she vocalizes even more!

After Tres died, we thought we would just leave Dulce at home on the weekends. But the first weekend that we left her home alone, we came home to find a very frantic feline. Without her buddy to keep her company, she had apparently been lonely, bored, frightened, or all of the above.

So we decided to bring her with us for the weekends, unless the weekend logistics made that impractical. She does seem to like that better, but for us humans it’s a mixed blessing. It’s nice to have her with us at our destination, but the never-ending chorus on the drive down is, to put it mildly, grating.

While on the way to the Butte this weekend, Pat and I were talking about ways to get Zorro to come up to Heron when we relocate Black Magic for summer sailing up in the mountains. One problem is that Heron is so far from El Paso that if Zorro is going to drive that far, he might as well go to San Diego. Another problem is that he can’t find somebody really reliable to take care of his cats if he’s gone more than a couple of days.

Then a really bizarre idea popped up in my head: Zorro taking his cats with him. Let’s see, that’s eleven adult cats and four kittens – and even if most of them don’t sing “One Hundred Bottles Of Beer,” it would take only a couple to make a whole lot of noise. And the upholstery in the Mercedes would never be the same.