The first day on the road, we weren't really on the road during the day. I ran errands most of the day and Mark slept most of the day, this being nothing unusual for either of us. The computer backup did not seem to be working. I finally decided it was silly to try and do something neither of us was familiar with for the first time on the day before a 3,000 mile trip. Burning a CD of my favorite road music didn't work out either, by the way, although I still hope to get around to it.
I did get to the bank and got everything (mostly) packed and sent off a final box through UPS, spending way too much money on it.
We got on the road around 6 p.m. and by pushing ourselves to stay awake, got to New Orleans around 3 a.m. Local Time. (470 miles, y'all)
The main reason we kept going was because we had reservations in a local hotel that were already paid for. Otherwise, we might have skipped it. Otherwise, we might never have gotten on the road Friday at all.
We had bought harnesses and leashes for the cats so we could keep hold of them without lugging the bulky carrier around. They took to this idea right off, like a fish to a cactus. Friday afternoon, I put the leashes and harnesses on them (after searching the apartment for the cats who, unexpectedly taken from their natural habitat, my ex's house, at 4 that morning, were hiding themselves from the unknown enemy) and dragged them haplessly through the apartment. Toby was camouflaging himself in a dark pile of shoes in the back of one closet; Bebe was under a low shelf in the closet in the altar room, as far from everything as possible. Both cats rifles up the throw rugs as they refused to walk when the leashes were put on. I hooked the leashes to the doorknob. Toby continued to pull backwards with all his strength, remaining securely attached. Bebe darted around in all directions until she slipped the leash, then calmly lay down on the couch next to the door.
Nobody liked the first bit in the car. Both cats meowed, Toby from atop the heap of luggage, as high and far back as possible, Bebe from the front seat, where she alternated in mine and Mark's lap.
Everyone should go to New Orleans at least once. You cannot go to New Orleans without doing something or having something happen to you that you would never imagine in other circumstances.
Saturday morning, at 3 a.m. in the Garden District, there was a sign on the door saying we should call the night manager for late check in. We did so, and she showed me up the stairs and across a bit of the roof to a little room at the back of the hotel. It reminded me of the Crow's Nest in Oregon a bit, and the hotel I stayed in at Paris a bit.
Then she gave us a garage door opener and we drove around the block to this ramshackle building and opened the door. The place looked like an old storage building and there was a dead gypsy van in one space, the rest of it was empty, not counting a couple of flashlights and a bit of garbage. There was a sign spray-painted by the door that asked residents to please remember to close the garage door on their way out.
We got the cats out of the car and decided to just get some sleep and get the luggage in the morning. We tried to get the cats to walk but they would not. Bebe was doing ok being kind of jerked along on her leash, but Toby lay on the sidewalk and was dragged for several yards (by me) before I had to stop and burst out laughing at the thought of dragging a cat through the streets of New Orleans at 3:30 in the morning. New Orleans does that to you.
A white cat, unleashed, walked past our little parade and I told Toby he should be embarrassed to make such a show in front of strangers. Finally I had to pick him up. When we got to the room, both cats hid under the bed and refused to move for the next several hours.
The next morning, if you can call it that, Mark refused to be roused, saying it wasn't fair to pay for a hotel room and only spend a few hours in it. I said, "Ok, if you want to pay for the extra night," so we left the cats in the room and went out into the Quarter, which was marvelously uneventful except for getting lost as usual and wandering up and down the streets, which is hardly an unpleasant thing, except for the outrageous blisters my shoes were causing.
The next day, it was just heck getting out of the hotel room on time, and Mark wanted to go back to the Quarter for Lost Bread, which is like French Toast with Bananas. And we went back to one of our favorite restaurants, whose name I can never remember ... it is one block from Lafitte's (not on Bourbon, on the cross street), if you want to find it, yellow walls with a pink sign in front.
We discussed what to do with the cats and finally decided to leash them to a nearby pipe, which could be seen out of the windows. The waitress gave us a dish of ice water for them and they seemed ok. Bebe found a hole in the fence into the courtyard and was hiding from the people and traffic.
We ate our breakfast and came back to get the cats, only to find that Bebe had slipped her harness and was no where to be seen. Figuring Bebe would just hide and wait for someone to get her, we enlisted the help of the staff of the restaurant and a flashlight and looked under the restaurant and all the buildings surrounding the courtyard.
She was nowhere to be found.
After a couple of hours, we were both covered in sooty dirt and hot and tired, and found that the car had a flat tire. But, that gave me an excuse, while at the local hardware store buying fix-a-flat, to purchase a piece of poster board and markers and make signs advertising the lost cat and Mark's phone number.
The fix-a-flat worked fine, but we haven't heard from Bebe, unless you count a dream Mark had two nights ago. Toby cried a lot the first couple of days, but seems to have decided its all part of the same traumatic upheaval now.
I've decided to give it a month before I stop thinking about her as my cat.
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