The things we do for our pets - or - EWWW!

You can blame this on Crabby over at Cranky Fitness. She is the one that reminded me of this episode, in fact this is the second time. I have to blog it just to get it over with.

My avatar is in fact my very beautiful Himalayan cat Sibu and he is called a Lynx Seal Point. He is more correctly an "it" and is also the biggest scaredy-cat in the world!

When he was a kitten, I trained him to harness and to walk on a leash because I knew that I would be taking him in the vehicle with me and camping with friends. I even made him a seat belt like the one I had for my dog, because I didn't want a 10 lb projectile if I had to stop suddenly, or a cat in my lap helping me to steer. My friends also have a cat, he is a Siamese and travels & camps very well. Now normally they are both on the same cat food, but Kalon being a bit older than Sibu, his human changed him over to adult blend a few years ago and forgot to mention it to me before we went away together on one of our weekend trips.

That's Kalon about to get his tail whacked.

Sibu doesn't like to eat when we travel, he will wait until we get where we are going, then chow down. He also won't drink water and so his poor little nose drys out. Aside from this after the truck hits the hwy he will usually settle down and stop howling. Travel rules are: the cats must be sitting in laps or on the blanket on the seat of the truck, they are not allowed to wander as they will. There are enough of us that the seat belt is not necessary. Especially Sibu, he would get himself stuck under one of the rows of seats and we would never get him out! I hate to admit it by he is not a very bright boy sometimes, his fear overrides his tiny little brain. He once slipped his harness and crawled under my feet as I was driving - alone - on the hwy! Not a good place for a cat.

Needless to say, after a long day in the truck (when I say truck I mean Chev Suburban) he was pretty hungry, or at least you would think so. I think he knew the food was different and didn't want to eat, he also didn't want to drink, but that is because he is spoiled. Well, I figured, he'll get over it and sure enough, sometime in the middle of the night he snuck out & scattered food all over the floor. He does this just to let me know he has been at the bowl I think. The next day, we do some touring around and by the time we got back to the motel, he was resigned to being with my friends and started to behave himself. The next day we headed back home.

We never get home until about 10.00 p.m. with these friends, so it is dark, we are about two hours away from home and he wants to go to the back and use the litter box. He knows better than to do this while the truck is moving, but he was really very determined that he had to go and go now. Off he goes and eventually he comes back to sit on my lap. Thanks very much! He has a very delicate stomach, did I mention this? No? Well, it is a good thing that I happened to have some baby wipe type things in my purse, because damn I needed them. Of course I couldn't see what I was doing, but I could sure smell it.

I would just about have him clean when off to the back he goes again! Poor little guy! Eventually we found a gas station and pulled in so the light was on my side of the truck and I could see what I was doing. My friend found some nail scissors in her kit bag which helped a great deal and we were able to get rid of most of the mess in the back.

Right now I can't think of anything worse than trying to trim a cat's butt & leg hair in the back seat of a truck, in the dark, with nail scissors - curved nail scissors!



Well, I have to go trim butt now, we are going on a day trip tomorrow bright and early. Yes, amazingly the same friends, they still let me tag along.

Happy Easter all!