I’ve always hated cats; their cold, judging eyes, insistence in tongue cleaning, and the way they stay back, doing everything in their power to be just out of reach.
They think they’re better than you or something.
Assholes.
I think that a big part of that comes from not being around them my entire childhood. My mom hated cats, wanting nothing to do with them. Unlike dogs who willingly open themselves up to new friendships like kids in a first grade classroom, cats are more like bitchy teenage girls, ready to mock you at a moment’s notice.
It didn’t help anything that my first girlfriend, whose mom really didn’t like me, also had a cat that really didn’t like me. In short, I’ve never had success with pussies.
That changed for me in the winter of ’07 when my then-girlfriend-turned-fiancé-turned-wife-turned-ex-wife and I decided for Valentine’s Day that instead of trading chocolates and bodily fluids, we would be exchanging kittens… any maybe some bodily fluids.
She grew up with the little bastards, having cats that were indoor and prim and outdoor and feral. Before we met, she had taken in a stray that escaped one night, and returned after a weeklong boning spree only to give birth months later on her couch. She described to me the little mews of these hairballs in their first moments of life and assured me that any negative feelings I had towards felines would be wiped away when I had one of my own.
Fuck man, I wanted a dog, but we were young and poor and looking for as many things as possible that would bind us as a family.
We went to the no kill shelter and came back with the scrawniest, scrappiest, tawniest excuses for cats that I had ever seen. They were mostly black, skittish and spent the first couple of weeks making sure that cuddling was the absolute last thing on their list of things to do today.
And yes, I quickly fell in love with my girls.
Fast forward 5 years, and here I am, sitting on my bed in Brooklyn with the two little bitches crawling around me, and, surprisingly, causing allergic reactions, destroying my new leather chair and messing up the little sphere I’ve built for myself… and I couldn’t be happier.
That said, it was a cluster fuck to get them here, both logistically and emotionally.
When my wife and I split, I was planning on bringing them with me from Chicago to New York from the beginning, but a lack of communication with my soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law and a lack of space in my dad’s lighting-decaled-truck caused me to have to hold off on being a single father. The girls stayed in Chicago, and I ventured off.
Though I had every intention of keeping our separation short, the money to get them here just wasn’t available until recently. I received a decent bonus from work and put the wheels in motion to fly back to the Windy City, load up a rental and cruise cross country. This plan was fool proof as we all know that there is, in fact, no sleep until Brooklyn. Ricey, Judy, and I very much abide by that rule. Then I priced the entire thing out and realized that though smokes would be considerably cheaper during our odyssey, the rest would destroy any savings I have and with it any claim I have to be an adult.
I called my dad, “Al, they’re cats, put them in a box and ship them”.
Didn’t do that. What I did do was book plane tickets; two for me, one for my ladies.
Last Friday, after landing, getting settled and trying to figure out where my ex and I stood, we took them to the vet. Most animals hate this trip. Before we left, I had no idea how they would be, as we haven’t taken the girls to the vet.
Ever.
Look, they’re skittish, they never leave the apartment and we’re poor. Though we love the girls, unless there’s lots and lots of blood, a check up was never on our radar. We fought with them to get into the carrier, one she had gotten from a friend who swore she’d taken it on a plane before. I nervously sat with the carrier in my lap as dogs and cats and children paraded around the waiting room. I was convinced that at any moment the girls would freak out and hissing, screaming and clawing would crush all of my hopes of finally getting them back in my life full time.
And they did great. They were scared. I was scared. But they hung through shots and checks and getting a thermometer shoved up their asses like champs. I used that as my gage for how the flight would go. Before we left, the vet gave us some kitty Valium for the road. Half a pill for each to keep them calm enough to fly, but test them the day before you leave incase anything goes wrong.
On Sunday, I bought a tuna sub and let myself into my ex’s apartment. With some fishy coercion, I was able to get Ricey to eat her share. Judy, the princess, wasn’t interested. Ricey got fucked up real quick. I spent the rest of the afternoon shepherding her from stumbling off the bed.
We navigated our emotions about the upcoming finalization of our divorce and made it through the night. Morning was quick as we packed them up, making the decision that the drugs were too heavy, so we had to cut down the dosage. A quarter of a pill for each lady wrapped in fancy feast did the trick. We said our goodbyes and I headed to the airport, doing my best to soothe any mews in the cab. Getting to the ticket booth was easy and soon I found myself in the long, long line to get through security.
That’s when shit went down.
The vet assured me that anytime she’d worked with people who were flying with animals, they were able to keep them in the carrier the whole time. This did not happen. I pleaded with the guard monitoring the carry-on’s that they would run if I tried to get them out; there are two of them after all and both ready to flee.
The only way to get on the plane is to carry them through. I tried to dig Judy out of the hard topped carrier to no avail.
I took a deep breath.
Fuck it.
As quickly as possible, I took apart the carrier and grabbed the girls like they were footballs and I was the Heisman. The monitor guard told me to run, he’d push the carrier through. They struggled, but I made it to the other side… only to find out I’d been flagged for a TSA screening.
“You’ll have to come over here sir”
“Can I put my cats away first?”
“Sir, I need you to come over here now”
The monitor guard pleaded on my behalf, “let him put his damn cats away!”
He said it was fine, and offered that he would check my carry on while I reconstructed the carrier around restless and slightly drugged felines. I forced a smile letting him know that these two girls and the newest Esquire are my luggage, so he was free to do so, but it might it might be tricky. Without a laptop bag for him to wrangle, he turned his focus to me, patting me down and wiping my hands.
After being assured that the airways are safe, I grabbed the carrier and bolted, making it to the gate only to be the last person to board. I made my way into the virtually full flight and was quickly greeted with screams from the stewardess.
“No! You will not come back here! I am DEATHLY allergic to cats and YOU will NOT get in the way of me servicing these fine people!”
Immediately I was the enemy of the entire plane.
I awkwardly turned around, my girls stirring, and tried to find a place to sit.
There was one spot.
A middle seat.
Of course.
I apologized profusely to the woman in the aisle seat and tried to sit. I apologized even more when the goddamn carrier that Aimee swore had been on the plane didn’t fit and I racked my brain thinking of what to do now. “Go to the ticket window, but I don’t know if you’re going to make it on this plane”. Thanks, Allergic-stewardess-lady-with-giant-hair.
I ran down the list of options as I made my way off the plane, thinking that I would call Aimee and have her come for the ladies, I would take a later flight and return to New York cat-less. That was the only way, right?
The ticket agent gave me two choices. They could sell me a carrier, but she wasn’t sure if she could get it in time for me to get on the plane, as it was just about to leave. Or I could wait for the 7:50 that would come with a 5 hour lay over in Baltimore.
“Can we try to get on this plane?”
As she ran to get the new carrier, I spent the last of my grocery money on a brand new cat sack… that is what it was, literally. She handed me a kind of hard-topped duffle bag with air holes. The desk staff watched as I struggled to get the girls from one container to another, choosing Ricey to move first. One hand was fighting with her, the other holding Judy in place. Needless to say, Ricey did not want to go into the bag; thank God Judy didn’t run when I took my hands off her.
Soon I returned to the plane, just in time to hear the same stewardess from before apologizing on my behalf for holding up the flight.
“He sure is dedicated to those cats”.
I forced another smile and crammed the ladies under the middle seat.
Okay, I didn’t cram them, I gently placed them in as comfortable a way as one can put two cats in a bag in the small space around your feet where laptops and snacks usually go. They were laying the bag head-to-butt, so through the air holes I could see Judy’s green eyes and Ricey’s brown one. Judy pleaded with me. I shushed her and draped a towel over the carrier, hoping for the best.
We took off, I’m sure they were freaked. We flew through some turbulence, I’m sure they were freaked. At one point I was convinced that they’d shat in the bag, I’m sure I was freaked. I decided the best bet was to put my head down and sleep, thinking that if they did have an accident someone would point it out and that’s when it would be worth it for me to slug it out with the girls in the plane bathroom.
Luckily, there was no shit to be had.
We landed, it was rough, and made it to the cab. We sat on the BQE while people gawked at an accident and I put my hand in the carrier trying to calm my kitties.
We made it home and they bolted, immediately hiding under the bed. I took stock of my room and made dishes of food and water for them, sliding it to them in their new cave. The only thing that was missing was litter: the last leg of my journey.
I ventured out into the warm Brooklyn day, making my way to Walgreens. I learned something that day at Walgreens, friends, it’s that those bitches don’t sell litter boxes. The trip to the pet store didn’t do me any better. Who was I to think that it they would be open during normal business hours on a Monday? I was wrong, that’s what I was.
A trip to the dollar store later and I was home. It’s been a week or so since I became Danny Tanner to some cats, and though I will get them an actual litter box at some point, I find it hilarious that they use a large roasting pan.
Grin and Bear it,
Corporate Al.
