The Traveling Cat

When I was growing up, my father was in the Army so we moved around quite a bit. When I became an adult, not only did I like to travel to see different places, but I also moved a lot because of jobs or other opportunities. Since Selah lived with me, she had no choice but to move with me or to travel with me when I went home to visit my family. Selah was a great traveler and mover except for one thing. She would get motion sickness. The day I picked her out was right after work and I lived about 45 minutes away. So I put her on the floor of the car on the passenger side. Not far into the ride, I heard this little cry and soon the poor kitten had purged from both ends. I had no idea that this would become routine with her. I learned to travel with plastic bags, paper towels and extra newspapers and ALWAYS put her in a carrier. I had heard about a woman who was traveling through the area where my family lived. She was not from the area and was traveling with her two cats. She was in an accident and the cats ran away from the car. Complete strangers in the area combed the area for her cats and thankfully found them. After I read that, I always made sure Selah was in the carrier. The other thing about being in the carrier was that any where between 10-45 minutes into the trip (which could be as simple as a visit to the vet or 9 hours to Pennsylvania) there would always be the moment when you knew what was coming. Selah had this distinct meow. You would hear her start to meow in this fashion and you knew the purging was about to begin. When I traveled from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, there was one rest stop that we consistently stopped at about 45 minutes into the trip. It was like clockwork! She wasn't always the quietest traveler either. It seemed the older she got the more she would meow during a trip. When I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina, I don't think she stopped meowing the entire trip.

Although traveling in the car involved a little upheaval for her, moving did not. She quickly adjusted to her new surrounding and it was never traumatic for her. She started her life out with me in Fayetteville, North Carolina where she lived with me for 4 years. At that point I moved to Romania to work in an orphanage and with a local church. Leaving my friends and family were hard. But the hardest part was leaving Selah. You can talk and correspond with family, but you can't with your animals. At that point she moved to Pennsylvania and lived with my mom for 2 years. It was a great time for her as she got to spend a lot of time outside. She loved chasing grasshoppers. When I returned to the states, I picked her up and we moved back to Fayetteville into an apartment for awhile and then into a house. We stayed there for a year and then moved to Boston. In Boston we lived in a company provided apartment, the second floor of a two family dwelling, (both of these in the same suburb) a side by side duplex in Newton, Ma and then another side by side duplex in Brighton, MA. Our total time in Boston was 6 years and then we moved to the Triad area in North Carolina. We first lived in an apartment and then 6 months later moved into our current home, where she lived for 7 years.
Maxx joined us after 10 years together in Boston and Joey joined us 2 years after living in North Carolina. I really think our current home is the one she liked the best and I am glad this is where she was at the end of her life. I can't help but look at the woods in the back yard and think of her last travels down to the creek and back. Even at the end, she was still a traveling cat!