Westward

a mini zine about driving X-country with two cats

Hi! It’s been a long time—I got myself to California, got an ear infection, got Covid, and then my computer required repairs. I owe you many updates! But first, how we got here:

Day 0

The plan was (ha ha, yes, “plan,” I know) to drive to Akron, pick up a Chrysler Pacifica, and leave the next day for California, van camping along the way with our cats Falcor and Hexie, soon to be reunited with J, who has been working in LA for the last few months.

I had so much packing and cleaning and bill forwarding and goodbye-saying to do that I just stopped being able to really sleep about a week before we left. And even though I had so much on my plate that my to-do list took up an entire page in my notebook, I would also sometimes get caught in these two-hour fugue states of playing solitaire while watching Big Love.

The whole reason for driving to Akron was because you simply can’t rent a van anywhere in the Pittsburgh area. It is summer, the season of vans. The era of trips. You can’t just up and find a van anywhere. But I had found the nearest available van and planned exquisitely. I had researched the Pacifica’s dimensions and found a half-size camping mattress that would fit, found a car kennel that would fit, ordered the right window shades, etc. etc. blah blah.

I’m sure you saw the punch line coming several paragraphs ago: No vans in Akron. They gave me a Toyota Highlander instead, which is … not a van. And something I could have definitely rented around the corner from my house. But what are you going to do when there are no vans? (Aside from calling Budget and getting them to knock a few hundred bucks off of the cost, which I know is prime white lady skill set, but c’est la vie.)

The good thing about going so far out of the way on such a foolish errand is that I got to visit with my mom, who was about to take off for her annual weeklong visit with her high school friends, the kind of very nice ladies who meticulously plan outfits for group photos (don’t know if this is another white lady skill set or just a sorororal one, but I really love talking with my mom about the quandary of whether to buy a pair of white shorts just for the group photo).

Day 1: Pittsburgh to Omaha, NE (912 miles)

More plans: I had devised a way of keeping the cats relatively comfortable and safely restrained in the car: I got escape-proof harnesses and mini leashes that buckled into the seatbelts. I had spent weeks testing the harnesses to be sure they were adequately fitted, giving them lots of treats to lessen the anxiety, etc etc.

Not even two blocks away from the house, they had both slipped out of their harnesses and were cartwheeling around the car, loose cats ejecting clouds of stress fur, crying, briefly curling up on my lap, and we were just going over the Veterans Bridge. It began to rain.

I considered pulling over and containing them immediately, but I didn’t want to open the car door and risk them getting out, so I decided to drive as long as I could and give them a chance to settle down. Hexie crawled into the carrier on the front seat and I zipped it shut; Falcor, a true soldier, read the situation and went to sleep. Eventually, as I learned, I could get them to do just about anything as long as I had a tube of Churu treat paste to bribe them.

My kingdom for a slurp

This established the pattern I would follow for the whole trip: I basically did 4-hour chunks, no shorter—because every time we stopped, Hexie would wake up and cry some more.

I made several insane decisions in planning this trip—mainly because I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible for the kitties. I think that’s why it seemed best to drive for 14 hours the first day? When I lived in Iowa City, I frequently did the drive back to Western PA, always in one day. When I lived in Iowa City, among my friends it was a regular thing to drive a long way just to get, like, pupusas, and I’m pretty sure we went all the way out to Council Bluffs on one of those errands; I was just combining those two things into a single day. And it’s good for morale to do the longest drive on the first day. And the Midwest was familiar terrain—might as well offset the longest day to take advantage of that relative ease of traversing the known.

All of which I suppose makes sense. Until you’re doing it.

In the initial van-based plan for this trip, I would camp in the van with the cats, thus sparing them the stress of being moved to and from a hotel room. But it turned out to be a lucky break that I had to scrap that plan, because I could not imagine doing another long drive after the first one without the luxury of being able to sleep in a massive bed.

Luckily, my room was on the first floor and quite close to the parking lot, so it didn’t take much to move Hexie and Falcor from the car or put them back in it later. (And, although I didn’t know it at the time, it was extremely lucky that I didn’t have to walk past the check-in desk with them—more about that later.)

I forget what happened. I think nothing happened? I ate a bean burrito, which was the first hot food I had eaten all day. I was amazed at how quickly the cats relaxed into their new (temporary) home.

Day 2: Omaha to Grand Junction, CO (779 miles)

Things started off pretty OK—the hotel had decent coffee and a breakfast buffet with a massive, gleaming bowl of blackberries. I took an absurd amount—possibly $15 worth—of blackberries. The highways in Nebraska are wide and nicely banked, reassuring in some barely noticeable way.

But Hexie was not reassured. One day of long travel was bearable because I think, after a few hours, she realized the futility of complaint. I was hoping that the second day, she would realize even quicker that we were about to do the same thing. But, sadly, no. I think I stopped three or four times within the first hour just to make sure she was OK, give her a chance to use the litter box, make sure she drank water, and of course, give her delicious Churu.

I had driven all the way across Nebraska once before, when I went to Salt Lake City to see my bestie for their birthday (the one time I’ve seen a tornado in person). But partway through the day I dropped off of 80 and into Colorado, through the Rockies, which I had never seen. This was the whole reason I had chosen this route over the one I had done before (Indianapolis-St. Louis-Tulsa-Amarillo), to drive through the Rockies, which J had said was one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in America. And it definitely was! But I had what felt like crumpled up shopping bags in my lungs and ears that wouldn’t pop when I ascended or descended a mountain. It was definitely beautiful, but I experienced it through a haze.

At some point during the day, I had to concede that I was sick. I had placed a full-size letterbox on the floor by the passenger seat so the cats could use it whenever we stopped, but I think breathing in the dust kind of fucked me up. (As did the tremendous amount of cat hair which Hexie had shed all over everything.) By the third day I realized that wearing an N95 mask while I drove would take care of this, but it was probably too late. By the time I got to California and had a disorienting and painful blockage in both ears, the urgent care doctor would tell me I had a double ear infection.

In Grand Junction, it was so hot that I didn’t dare leave the cats in the car while I checked into the hotel. I brought them, screaming, to the front desk of yet another DoubleTree while a not particularly nice manager gave me a wary look. It turned out, as she explained, that the DoubleTree only allows dogs, and whatever travel-aggregator website I had used to book the room only called it a pet friendly hotel without specifying. (The cats were not making a great case for themselves at this point. Even Falcor, the stoic, had resorted to pitiful, scratchy cries.)

I think I must have been giving off some true desperation vibes because the manager ended up letting me stay. She even gave me a warm chocolate chip cookie.

tub guhl

Amazingly, there was vegan pho to be had in Grand Junction, and I ordered it for delivery, took a bath, watched Law & Order: SVU for the first time in years. Somewhat ominously, these medicines did little for me.

Day 3: Grand Junction to Rimforest, CA (737 miles)

One thing I love about driving west—and maybe about the west in general—is how sparse civilization becomes. It dwindles until there’s a Shell station every 150 miles or so, and like, that’s it. At a certain point, you start to see these big ominous gates on the highway, which in the high plains they use to close the road when it’s impassable. Or you see signs advising you of what to do in the case of a sandstorm. Or someone in a white biohazard jumpsuit walking on the highway next to a restricted access area in White Sands, N.M. Or you see the internal temperature gauge climb up to 117 degrees after you drive through Las Vegas. Things become stark. The number of mistakes you’d have to make to end up in a lethal situation is like, two. Instead of back east, where honestly, even if you fucked something up really bad, there would probably be a Wendy’s right around the corner, and they would probably give you a glass of water or whatever.

In Las Vegas, I saw lots of billboards for injuredinahotel.com.

I don’t know why I find this quality of the west thrilling, but I do—usually. It turns out that a certain amount of philosophical insulatedness is necessary for me to enjoy the stark beauty. And having a crying kitten kind of puts the kibosh on all that. Because it’s not solitude if you’re concerned about the wellbeing of another creature. There’s no good reason to stop for a basket of weird-ass curly fries from an other-dimensional burger shack. It becomes a thing of function rather than an experience.

I realize that at this point, all of my cross-country drives have taken on an increasing level of difficulty. Drive 3,000 miles in three days? OK, but now do it with a band’s worth of drums and brass instruments you have to ferry into and out of the hotel room every night. OK, but now do it in the winter and camp instead of staying in hotels. OK, OK, but now, do it with a cat. OK, now two cats! I pride myself on being tough. In a lot of ways, I’m an incredibly sensitive person. And I can also be tough as hell. (Because guess what? If you’re sensitive, you kind of have to figure out how to be.) But I did learn something on this drive: You don’t always have to do everything the hardest way. Next time, Hexie is definitely getting some kind of kitty knock-out pill. And no fucking way are we driving more than 9 hours. And I’ll be caravanning with J, so we can take turns piloting the cats, and always have someone with them at gas stations while the other person runs in to pee.

There is something really satisfying—but also strange—about driving up to a location you have only previously visited via airplane. As if parts of the world are discontinuous until you connect them with the thread of a car’s path through every single state, every bizarre gas station, every surprising purple evening loveliness (Nebraska, I didn’t know you could). And who isn’t at least partially used to thinking of California as a backlot of some kind, with all this color and texture and “realness” on one side and plain plywood on the other? So I’m driving on I-15 and it’s just the same same same Costco bridal store Valero Sears thing we do in America, until suddenly I’m seeing the turnoff for Silverwood Lake, the westernmost (and most beautiful, imo) lake in the San Bernardino National Forest. And then I’m on the familiar winding road which states “tractor trailers are NOT advised.” And then I arrive at our A-frame, and J is there listening to Neil Young as always, and the journey is over. Whereupon we get dinner at Lake Arrowhead in a restaurant where some guy is playing a solo guitar set of deep-cut 90s alternative hits, and he has the whole grunge voice and delivery down so perfect that we’re convinced he was a member of a one-hit-wonder band, and then we see a Led Zeppelin cover band called Let’s Zep Again playing in the bandshell made famous (to us) in that season 2 episode of Vanderpump Rules where Tom’s band plays a gig in Lake Arrowhead and Stassi’s mom takes the gang out for margs. And somehow, instead of getting there in the bracketed and somewhat metaphorical fashion that air travel allows, I have traveled thoroughly through time as well as space.

All’s well that ends well

There is, of course, so much more to say! But I wanted to write all of this down before I forgot it entirely.

The moral of this story

Don’t be a hero
Take your time
Don’t breathe in kitty litter ffs
Medicate yr children
Saying “fuck it” is surrender

Tchüss!