Taking Gizmo to Our (Future) Home

4th Trip Day 1

Gizmo's First Trip

Now that you know (read previous blog post), the background of Gizmo, you know we were determined to keep her, and with her, we headed to Oklahoma. But our 4th trip had a different plan than usual. Therefore, we needed to drop off a car at the airport. On Monday, we woke up early, packed up food, snacks and drinks, filled our bellies with breakfast and hit the road by 6:30 am. We headed to our international airport because after we made it to Oklahoma, the plan was for Bill was going to fly back home, and I would stay out in Oklahoma and take care of getting a trailer to put on my sister’s property, possibly getting a shed for the cats, and get ready to move. We both jumped into our own cars, and followed each other. At the airport, I split off and headed to the long term parking lot, where Bill will be able to pick up the car when he returns by plane. I walked back to the terminal, and Will drove to the terminal and picked me up. Then we headed to Oklahoma.

We headed down the I-5 freeway, which is a long and straight road. We confirmed with each other that we were going to switch driving chores every two hours. Driving to Oklahoma is a long road, and having a time limit to your driving shift is really easy to handle stiffness and road maze (a term I thought of that when you are driving on a long road, your mind starts to relax, your eyes stare, and your senses deaden, easily allowing you to fall asleep at the wheel), bringing a dangerous situation into reality. Our usual ‘shut down for the night’ town of Tehachapi has been quite adverse for us on our last couple of trips, mainly the near constant train whistles and sounds. Therefore, today, we are going to see if we can drive further. The concern was, there are no other towns that we would want to stay at for the night, until Needles, a small town near the border of Arizona, but never-the-less, that will be our goal today.

Forecasted to be a very warm day, we would be driving through the desert at high afternoon heat, Gizmo stayed inside the air conditioned cab the entire trip. We had Gizmo in a wired kennel, large enough for a pillow and a small litter pan. We made sure the sun didn’t come through the window and often covered the kennel strategically with a towel to keep her in shade. Gizmo did great all day. She didn’t holler, meow or whine at all the whole day. Occasionally she would stand up and stretch, change positions and lay back down. When we talked to her, she definitely would listen and respond with an ear twitch, or slow eye blink or a yawn and stretch.

We called a head to make a reservation in Needles, because we knew that we would make it there. By 5:30pm, we pulled into BW in Needles. We received our key, we took Gizmo inside the hotel room, (we of course paid the pet fee), fed and settled her in. After an hour or so, I let her out of the kennel. Just as anyone would expect from a cat, she inspected the entire room for about an hour. After which she jumped up on the bed and wanted attention. What a great travel partner. She slept through the night in her kennel, never complaining. What a great start to this trip.

Oh, by the way: There was a train track located right behind the hotel, and yes we heard it most of the night.