Snowbirding, My iPhone 5, and the Coming Crazy Cat Trip
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As described before in this blog [see Related Posts below in “Doug Update: Health, Acting, Book Readings, and Snowbirding”], I’ve decided to snowbird in Wilton Manors, Florida (outside Ft. Lauderdale) for the first three months of 2013, my first experiment with a winter migration. Any such move, of course, is filled with planning and headaches, but new adventures await, as well as old friends, sunny climate, and—by golly I’m hoping—a chance at meeting Mr. Right (see same post for more on that fantasy). There’s much spinning around in my head each night as it hits the pillow.
As described before in this blog [see Related Posts below in “Doug Update: Health, Acting, Book Readings, and Snowbirding”], I’ve decided to snowbird in Wilton Manors, Florida (outside Ft. Lauderdale) for the first three months of 2013, my first experiment with a winter migration. Any such move, of course, is filled with planning and headaches, but new adventures await, as well as old friends, sunny climate, and—by golly I’m hoping—a chance at meeting Mr. Right (see same post for more on that fantasy). There’s much spinning around in my head each night as it hits the pillow.
I’ve just finished seven months of book readings for my
atheist thriller “Imaginary Friend,” and am about to do a radio show this
coming Sunday [9 a.m. CST, 950AM KTNF http://www.am950ktnf.com/
in Eden Prairie Minnesota] in which I will read selections from my novel and
talk about when it’s appropriate to “come out” as an atheist. The book sales have been going well
(particularly on Kindle), and I’ll have more about that on my next post. But I’ve contacted Floridian atheist groups,
so perhaps these book readings (and sales too of course) will continue in
southern Florida.
The move requires me to buy
a number of things I’ll need for that three months, particularly a TV, a
laptop, and a new cell phone (along with a whole household of goods: sheets,
pillows, clothing, dishes, etc).
But (deep sigh) yesterday I
purchased an iPhone 5, put all my contacts on it, and even learned how to
text. I worry this “smartphone” will “dumbdoug”
me as it has zillions of others, and I will become its helpless slave, babbling
into it constantly, ignoring real life around me. It’s not a happy prospect for a control
freak, and I’m stealing myself to try and maintain a non-robotic status. Pray for me.
The bigger difficulty is
getting my cats, Mama and Barney, to Florida.
My original plan was to drive to Florida, leaving them temporarily
behind until I had things set up for them in the Sunshine State, and then
having friends put them on a direct flight to Miami. But that plan changed when I took Mama to the
vet for her yearly rabies shot in early November. Normally Mama is in charge (or thinks she
is), but I was surprised to discover that at the vet’s she was trembling, and
clinging close to me—not at all the usual lioness that roams our home, commanding
all she comes across. I asked the vet
about my plan to drug the cats at the last moment and then fly them down,
and he said that was a bad idea (though often done in the past). Last minute drugging is bad for cats, and can
have major health consequences, not to mention the terror of the experience,
drugged or not. Hmm. Barney, my other cat, has a heart
murmur. Instead the vet suggested a slow
drugging process that means giving the cats an oral spray every day for eight
weeks before departing, slowly calming them way down, then weaning them off of
it once at the destination. The problem
with that is I will only be in Florida for three months, so the poor cats would
first be slowly drugged, then weaned, then re-drugged, the re-weaned, all in a
very short period, not at all a happy plan.
What to do?
I decided to take the cats
with me in the car. Let me repeat: I am
driving major distances with two cats who have never taken a car trip before. Yikes!
I said to myself that it
would be cruel to put them in individual cat carriers for the duration of the
trip, so now what? I called up my
handyman friend, a professional named Allan Holmes, and between us we’ve
devised a cat cage, complete with litter box, that will take up a goodly
portion of the back seat of my Prius. Barbara
Shipek [“The Woman Who Runs My Life”]
arranged for me to find hotels that will take cats in the rooms in my two
stop-over cities, and I’ve purchased disposable litter boxes for the trip. What could go wrong? Just to ask the question is to laugh uneasily.
If I were in my twenties I
could do the drive in two days (as I actually did in my twenties, see “Buying Moonshine in the Wilds of Tennessee”), but at my
advanced age it will take three days: Columbus to Charlotte, North Carolina,
Charlotte to Jacksonville, Florida, and from there to Ft. Lauderdale. The longest leg is the first one, and it
takes me right through the State of West Virginia, which is beautiful but
mountainous in the extreme. The rumor is
that West Virginia is the biggest state in the Union if you stomp it out flat.
And when am I making this trip through the West Virginia
mountains? In balmy summer? Oh, no! I am doing the first week of January! JANUARY! Picture the happy scene: Doug, two cats, a
Prius crammed with belongings, and the third book of “Game of Thrones” as an
audiobook to keep my mind occupied if it wanders from the cats puking in the
backseat or the car skidding near a precipice.
Stay tuned.
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Related
Posts:“Dog Meat,” December 27, 2009
"Parakeets and Me," February 5, 2010
“Bears,” February 23, 2010
“The Woman Who Runs My Life,” May 5, 2010
"Mama, Biopsies, and My iPad," May 19, 2010
“Buying Moonshine in the Wilds of Tennessee,” July 23, 2010
"Teaching English to Cats," August 6, 2010
"The Purring Heart," November 23, 2010
"The Dogs In My Life," April 18, 2011
"My Parents and Dummy," May 13, 2011
"Two Cat Stories: Mama and Barney in the Wild," July 9, 2011
"Zoo Stories," August 30, 2011
“Mama Cat Saves My Life,” October 23, 2011
"Stepping on Cats," February 8, 2012
“Long Lost Cousin at Flamingo Crossing,” March 31, 2012
“Doug Update: Health, Acting, Book Readings, and
Snowbirding,” September 9, 2012
"Barney Cat and the Big Mammal Nightmare," January 7, 2013
"Barney Cat and the Big Mammal Nightmare," January 7, 2013
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