first the sad part

Psycho Kitty escaped in Liberal, Kansas.  I pulled into the Mickey D's for something to eat and drink.  The bum right-knee is slow to unlock and that first step can be a crap shot after sitting for four hours so she took the opportunity to escape while I was stretching out the leg and seeing if I was going to be able to stand and walk.  I stooped to pick her up; she went off the deep-end, again, and took off running.

To begin the saga, when I tried to put her in the kennel the morning we left, she decided she wasn't interested and took a hunk out of the base of my left thumb.  (I'll probably have a scar.)  I did get her stuffed in the kennel and into the car.  The ride to Alamogordo, NM was not pleasant with her letting me know just how unhappy she was for most of the ride.  Have you ever spent eight hours listening to a cat bitch?

When I got to the motel, I got her all set up with her paraphernalia in the bathroom, so she would be easier to catch the next morning, and let her out of the kennel.  She ate cat treats from my hand, let me pick her up, love on her and acted like she was okay.

When I woke up the next morning I decided not to put her in the kennel and just carry her out to the car thinking maybe her biggest objection might just be the kennel. So I stepped into the bathroom gave her a quick love, put her down and reached for the kennel.

Psycho Cat FREAKED out!  I grabbed a towel and threw it over her so she would have a place to hide and to break eye contact.  I left the bathroom in hopes she would calm back down.  When she got quiet I went back in to get the rest of her stuff to put in the car.  She started in again even though she was still under the towel.  I waited about an hour but she was not having any of it.  I didn't feel like getting bit again and the only safe way for me to handle her was at the end of a capture pole.

So I called the Alamogordo Animal Control and had them come out.  It took thirty minutes to catch her and stuff her in the kennel.  His comments were: A. That is the most pissed-off cat he had ever handled. And B. I needed to get some serious amounts of Dramamine from a vet for her to be calm enough to travel.  If she had figured out how to get through the mesh windows of her kennel she would have tried eating both of us, that's how unhappy she was.  I held the kennel out at arms-length to get her back in the car and covered her up so she would have a dark place to hide.

It took a couple of hours before she got quiet and by the time I got to Tucumcari, NM I decided to let her out because she was calm.  She laid on top of her kennel, let me pet her, purred, drank from a cup of water I had for her (dipped her paw in and licked the water off).  I thought we had made peace with the situation.

All the time trying to figure out how-the-hell I was going to get her into a vet's office to get some Dramamine.  And how-the-hell was I going to hang-on to her and stuff a pill down her throat, anyway?  Or use a syringe with a liquid and get her to swallow it?  Maybe, if the Dramamine came in a gel I could rub it on her nose and she could lick it off like the 'Vaseline on the nose' trick.

So we got to Liberal, I was slow getting out of the car and shutting the door.  Sigh :(

Hope everyone is having a good day!

Judy