The Firewood 010: For the cat people
This week, I hit the road with Minerva. Here's what I've learned: Don't make any real plans, except for where you're staying for the night.
Hello, friends.
First of all, I want to wish all of you a Happy New Year and belated greetings for whatever holiday you happen to celebrate this time of the year. It’s been a weird season, with many of us unable to see loved ones and many others of us unable to see our friends or beloved local bartenders in our attempts to find some solace in what’s always a difficult time of the year. If you’re among the latter, I see you and I feel you and I raise a glass to you.
Well, in spite of repeated late-night panic attacks over “should I really do this?” I’ve departed the Northeast in the Jeep for parts unknown after a month at home with my family. I’ve been in western North Carolina this week, attempting to do some hiking but mostly just winding up at breweries. Tomorrow I turn west and take a route that mostly follows I-40. I think.
Oh, and here’s the fun part: I brought Minerva along. Minerva is a cat. There is not really any kind of a playbook for traveling long distances with a cat. So this has been an exercise in experimentation and communication, and I have had to learn, once again, how to live with a wild animal.
If you don’t have much time today but would like some Servicey Cat Content™, I recommend scrolling down to the last section of this for some tips about long-distance road travel with feline friends. I’ve learned a lot! (So far.)
(PS: Would you like Minerva to send you a postcard? Make a donation to her rescuers, and then fill out this form and she’ll write you something amusing.)
In Soviet Russia, cat domesticate you
The domestic cat, Felis catus, isn’t all that genetically different from its closest wild relative, the European wildcat — Felis silvestris. While it’s not always easy to believe that Shih-tzus and golden retrievers aren’t just the same species, but that they’re direct descendants of gray wolves, it’s pretty easy to see where cats come from. If you need a refresher, just watch one of the many viral videos of large wild cats getting really excited when they are handed a bag of catnip. This may be because it’s largely assumed that contrary to dogs, cats domesticated themselves by hanging out around humans and occasionally being useful in killing the occasional mouse. At some point, some of them realized that they were kind of adorable and could get free food and belly rubs if they were nice to the big, dumb hairless apes who couldn’t seem to control mouse infestations on their own. As National Geographic put it, “in true feline form, cats took their time deciding whether to jump into humans’ laps.”
Domestic cats also revert to wild living with a metaphorical snap of the fingers. In The World Without Us, an investigation into what would happen to the planet if humans suddenly disappeared, author Alan Weisman speculates that feral populations of the domestic cat would soon become a highly successful wild predator alongside the likes of foxes and raccoons.
The story of cats’ voluntary domestication is a macrocosm of Minerva’s own. You can read the full story on Girls And Their Cats, but Minerva was a young adult cat in a stray colony in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn who had every reason to turn out feral, but instead, she decided she was going to be friendly as hell and strive to live her best life. First, that meant free food from a local construction crew at lunchtime. Then, it meant a rescue by the Brooklyn Cat Cafe. Now, I buy scented dry shampoo for her and work it into her grooming schedule. So you get the point. But this was a cat who was smart enough to perceive that humans could help her, and determined to get a foothold in their world.
That said, a cross-country car trip was not what she bargained for. While Minerva has been obsessively social since she was adopted, she has also grown accustomed to the idea of having a home. When we lived in Brooklyn she’d instantly walk over to anyone who came to visit, sometimes bringing along a toy so that guests could play with her (which was clearly the reason why they’d come over in the first place). Moving out of my apartment, I felt a pang of guilt for uprooting this little animal from the only real home she’d ever known. Or maybe I was projecting, because I was nervous about giving up my own sense of home. I’d moved into that apartment as my first real “adult” living space, sans roommates and with an actual lease, and very much considered it home. Then COVID happened. I realized that I was paying enough in rent that I wouldn’t be well equipped for any kind of adverse economic circumstances, let alone the ability to some day take on a career path where passion rather than salary could be the primary consideration. I was yearning for expansion, for bigger spaces. “Home” became a pretty freaking weird concept.
“You two are a set.”
So — projecting, sure, maybe. But for a borderline wild animal who would be allegedly well-suited to thrive in the apocalypse, Minerva didn’t seem to like the disruption to her routine. We first went to my brother’s house in New Jersey for a few weeks so that I could safely spend the holidays with close family, and in between deciding the attic was haunted (it probably is) and frequently puking on the carpet because she ate too fast, it was pretty clear she was undergoing a process of…adjustment. And then we hit the road again.
It wasn’t always obvious that I should take Minerva with me on the cross-country drive. Finding pet-friendly accommodations requires quite a bit of advance planning, and even though the time of year eliminates one of the biggest concerns (the car getting hot even if you just leave your pet in there for a few minutes to run an errand) it’s still not always ideal to have a small animal traveling with you. Minerva could easily have stuck around at my brother’s house, but eventually I was persuaded. One close friend, who is a veterinary nurse, told me there’s just no way I could leave Minerva behind and that she would be on call if I ever needed health advice for the little panther. Another close friend, who has nothing to do with veterinary science, put it more bluntly: “You two are a set.”
One of the things I like to talk about as an unsung benefit of cat ownership is that if you’re going to do it right, you have to establish a sense of mindfulness and acceptance: You are welcoming an intelligent creature into your household and it is one with whom you will never really be able to share a language. You also never really will know if it can’t understand you or if it’s just choosing to not listen to you. And yet you have made a symbolic pact to love this animal and keep it safe. How are you going to go about that? What will you learn from it?
So it’s meant a slower drive, fewer stops at places where I’d have to leave her in the car, and the occasional dismantling of a Christmas tree at an Airbnb (with permission) in order to cat-proof the place. And about a week into our trip, I’m glad I made the choice to bring her along. In typical fashion she snuggles, purrs, and requests ear scratches aggressively, and she’s adjusting to a constant string of new places until we land somewhere semi-permanent. She seems calmer and more content. And maybe, as cliche as it sounds, as we wander our way to a new place to live (wherever it ends up being), “home” right now is each other.
Car travel with a cat: The user’s guide
There’s not much of a possible user’s guide for traveling with a cat, because you have to expect that everything you planned on will change. How things go isn’t really up to you, it’s up to the cat. Minerva, for example, hated litter box liners and took great care to destroy them. I’d had a system planned out for easy liner disposal and replacement but she made it clear she wasn’t into it. She did, however, do just fine with using a litter box in a moving car, which I hadn’t expected. So we’re adjusting to that. And there’s not a whole lot of “concrete” advice I can give you as a result, because cats are so intensely unique with their preferences that your cat will probably hate everything that Minerva likes.
(One thing, though: Have the cat leashed and secured every time you open a car door. Even the chillest cat could panic and run. And another thing? Consider a maximum of about five hours’ driving per day, less if you plan to keep the cat in a small carrier the whole time.)
But the really fun part is explaining to people that you’re traveling with a cat. Because nobody expects this. I’ve come to learn that if an Airbnb claims to be pet-friendly, you should check in with them to ask if it’s OK to bring a cat. Some don’t want pets that aren’t dogs, for reasons that range from allergies to concerns about furniture scratching to general dislike of cats. I encountered one host that told me, sure, I could bring Minerva but she’d have to stay in a crate in the garage the whole time except when I let her out to walk her. (Has this host ever met a cat?)
Conversely, I learned that many Airbnbs that profess to not be pet-friendly are totally fine with having a cat around. Overwhelmingly, the hosts who don’t want dogs on their property are concerned about things that don’t really apply to cats: barking that could annoy the neighbors, owners who don’t clean up after the dogs poop in the yard, difficulty policing the size of dogs when you don’t want a huge one around. Minerva has been welcomed by multiple Airbnb hosts who aren’t “pet-friendly” because they don’t permit dogs, and on a few occasions, I’ve been asked if there’s any chance she kills mice. (She does.) I worried I was acting entitled by asking hosts if I could bring a cat, but I dropped that self-consciousness by taking into account the flip side — if they say yes, they might get the revenue from a paying guest that they wouldn’t otherwise. The lesson: Always ask.
But as for what to stock in your car besides food and litter and a harness that can keep your cat secured? That’s all up to you (and your cat). There’s a lot of weird stuff out there that’s geared to cat people, and most of it is pretty over-the-top stupid in general but there’s always some cat that legitimately loves the hammock that attaches to the car window. So, you know, try and see what works.
I hope this was remotely helpful to a few of you. Now, it’s off to Texas via Oklahoma via Arkansas via ??? via Georgia so, well, catch you on the flip side.
Stay wild and HAPPY FREAKING NEW YEAR,
Caro
P.S.: We’re pretty obsessive about staying away from crowds, but we also are hardcore about supporting our favorite kinds of small businesses — BREWERIES! — as they go through this trying time. So far, we’ve hit up nine breweries in four states, both indies and former indies, and we’ve loved them all. Shoutout to Devil’s Backbone (VA), Great Oak (TN), Yee Haw (TN but went to the SC branch), Swamp Rabbit (SC), and then a bunch in NC: Black Mountain, Lookout, Oskar Blues (CO but with an NC outpost), Bhramari, and Turgua.
P.P.S.: Best vibes were at the two breweries in SC; best bar food was in TN because Great Oak shares space with Southern Craft BBQ and ohhhh man that chicken biscuit; most unique beer was the Thai basil and jalapeno ale at Turgua.
brilliantly distilled, as always. 😊
always enjoy your writing :)