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MENAGERIE
As you know, we've been camping with our dog, Tessie, for a couple of years
now (Notes Volume
5) and she's doing very well. Now we have decided to add another
critter to the mix - our cat. Her name is Maestro but we just call
her, "Cat." Clever, huh? Anyhow, arranging to have someone take
care of her during our trips was becoming problematic, especially since we
are planning longer trips now, so we decided to see how well she would do
camping with us. Now, until now this cat has only been in cars for
trips to the vet, so she was not what you would call an enthusiastic traveler.
We started by taking her on short trips around town then rewarding
her with her favorite food when we got home. Over a few months we gradually
increased the length of the rides as she became more relaxed in the truck.
We also started acclimating her to the trailer by taking her out to
it in the backyard for an hour or so then gradually increasing the
time she spent out there. One major concern was the question of where
to put her litter box, food, and water bowls. There is a storage
compartment with outside access under one of the benches of our dinette
. It can also be accessed from the inside by lifting the dinette cushion.
We installed a cat door in the base of the dinette
and put her litter box, food, and water in there
.
The litter box can be removed from the outside for cleaning. After
spending a couple of 12-hour days in the trailer in our back yard we decided
the cat was ready for her first camping trip.
The trip was to Nelson's Family Campground in East Hampton, CT to meet up
with our friends Kurt and Dawn for the weekend of May 5. As a matter
of fact, this is the campground where we first met Kurt and Dawn on our
second-ever camping trip with our new trailer. As usual, our sons were
thrilled to be together again and had a great time playing together. They
discovered that our new van made an excellent playroom
.
They even went swimming
,
a brave thing to do in CT in early May! As for the van, it towed the
trailer nicely, but I have to re-learn my backing skills. We need a
lot more real estate to back the TT into a site than we did with the Explorer.
The cat wasn't terrified, but she wasn't exactly thrilled, either. We
didn't see much of her for the first 24 hours. She chose to stay in
her "room" under the dinette. She ate her food, but didn't use the
litter box. The next afternoon I was able to coax her out and spent
some time petting her on the couch. I showed her how she could lie
on the back of the couch and look out the window
.
That seemed to do the trick. She relaxed and became her usual
self: lying on the couch, sitting on the dinette, lying on the bed, etc.
No more hiding in her room for the rest of the weekend. Tessie
seems happy to have the company
and our son enjoys having the cat sleep on his bed at night. The only
concern was an as-yet-undisturbed litter box. I thought she would either
wreck our bed or explode before agreeing to use it, but on Sunday - success.
What a relief - for us and for her!
It looks like our cat is going to be as good a camper as our dog. Of course, this means Tessie doesn't rule the trailer anymore...
