Road trip with a cat Day 1. Moving to California part 2

Chowder is our cat's name, he is one of our traveling companions, on our cross country move to California. He is a 19 year old, tabby pattern, American short hair cat.I have had him since 1993. Chowder has never been on any type of road trip over 2 hours before. On my previous attempts at car travel with him, he meowed loudly for most of the ride. Now he was in our mini clubman for however many days it would take us to travel to Carlsbad California.  As our darling family pet, he is totally spoiled despite being a loud annoying cat. Since he is very vocal as older cats tend to be, so I decided to talk to the vet about him.

In preparation for travel, we spoke regarding the options for him. The vet did not recommend flying for him. He is too old for the storage section of the plane. We did not like the idea of flying due to the terror he would be in for 6 hours plus the standbys and delays of flying.  The vet said that if we decided to fly him across country, he could not be sedated while in flight due to the airline guidelines.  In that case he would have to go inside the plane with the passengers, UN-sedated and in the cat carrier. When flying, I have seen people air travel with small dogs. That worked because the dogs were used to travel. The dogs would be pretty quiet and not bother anyone in flight. I did not expect that Chowder would be a calm passenger in an airplane. We went back to the road option and medication.

We had to deal with the challenge of a cat in the car for the trip across country. Based on the vet's suggestion she gave us some Xanax for Chowder. The prescription bottle said for us to give him a 1/2 a pill. Rise and I, we figured it works on humans...give him a smaller dose he may just chill out the whole time. We were WRONG. The dosage was too much. He almost instantly became disoriented and too soft in his muscle tone by the first dosage. He wandered around the car like a meowing wet noodle.

Chowder is here being restrained by Rise. He needed to be prevented from checking out the space under the accelerator pedal. He did like to sit calmly on Rise's lap for a while, then he would go check out the rest of the car.

 
On our voyage our 4 year old daughter Mayari loved having Chowder sleep on her. This is something he would never do at home.  The motivation for him was that he wanted her blanket and the sunshine spot she was sitting in. The two of them were acting like siblings at times, fighting for pillows and blankets.

Chowder did yowl most of the way to Niagara Falls. I can't say ALL of the way there, but I do feel it was a lot of the way there. Because of the Xanax we gave him he was not acting normally, and just when we thought he was getting comfortable he peed on my laptop. We had already gotten off to a late start, then we did have a stop to clean cat urine off my laptop bag. This laptop bag also included important paperwork, now soaked in cat urine. It was a strange experience emptying out the bag in the rest stop bathroom. I needed to minimize the damage quickly and get back on the road. Since this was our first experience we did stop often on the first day. We were traveling to California with our 4 1/2 year old girl and a 19 year old cat that had neither been on a long road trip before. In fact I had never driven as far as we were planning on going.

While we were at the road stops it was ironic to me that the strangers who were surprised to see a cat thought he was traveling so well. The way the drugs worked,Chowder really did not care where he was. His mental state could have been fear and loathing in upstate New York, I could not tell. However awkward cats at rest stops are they will try to charm you.  It was actually very comforting how friendly people are when they meet animals.

On the positive side, we are on a great adventure and, Chowder had figured out how to use the cat box in the back of the car. His adaptability had helped ease my mind a little. I was dreading stopping to clean off again if he was going pee or poo in the car again. At least he was on track to use the cat box. The cat box was tucked away under the trunk cover with the second passenger seat tipped down to allow him access to the trunk area.

Here he is abnormally sedate, riding on my shoulders. A man at a rest stop said to his child "look at the cat man, son." This was making me feel like a whack job. Whatever, yes I love cats so much I take them traveling through upper state New York. Yes I was the Fracking Cat man that day. Someday you will be the cat man.

We were hoping to get to Ohio on the first day. That was way too ambitious, so we ended up in Niagara Falls.

Niagara is a spectacular sight go see it. We were recommended by a friend to try a great Indian Restaurant close by, which was delicious. We found a Motel and crashed for the night. We were hungry and tired, also a little alarmed by how many abandoned homes we saw in Niagara falls. The weeds were a bit high everywhere outside of the designated tourist areas.