Wednesday evening. A day and a half till Moving Day. We live among boxes. We have new subdivisions in our house, box walls within real walls. We are, you might say, boxed in.
Damian and I drove down to LAX this morning, into the bowels of the airport under the Century Freeway overpass, and dropped Cocoa off for his 10:30 am flight. Boy, did that feel strange, walking away, back to the car, leaving him behind in a carrier on a pallet in a cavernous hangar. If it weren't for the two big dogs in similar carriers heading for the same flight, I'd almost feel like we'd left him in a warehouse by mistake.
But no, everyone there in the tiny office space was very nice, very reassuring. (And no, I didn't act freaked out. No more than my cat, at any rate. Well, not a whole lot more.) They knew who I was the moment I walked in, they talked about how cats handle travel, and said it would be just fine.
I'm not generally neurotic, but it was hard, doing this, harder than I expected. After all, the last time I brought a cat somewhere in a carrier and left him there. I never saw him again. And even though I know it's not the same, my child brain self doesn't.
So we left our black cat with the loud purr there and went back to Hollywood, the Land of Boxes. On the way home, I described as accurately as I could conjure what would happen to Cocoa every step of the way. Damian knows most of it already – he'd been telling Cocoa at great length over the past week or so what was going to happen to him today. But he wanted to know anyway, I think so he could picture it all more clearly, with more detail filled in. And periodically through the day today, Damian would ask, "Where is Cocoa now? Is he on the plane yet? What state is the plane flying over?"
A while after the plane landed at Newark (and no, I wasn't worried. Well, maybe a little, but fretting isn't real worry, is it? It's just stretching the muscles in case they're needed later), I got a call from Kymm the Magnificent, a/k/a The Mighty Kymm, the volunteer (well, okay, I drafted her) cat wrangler du jour. Cocoa was on the ground. Cocoa was in her possession. Cocoa was sniffing her fingers through the carrier's wire front. Cocoa was in New Jersey.
It all went smoothly, I'm relieved to say. The only odd moment was when my land line phone decided to call Kymm's cell phone. I have no idea why. I wasn't anywhere nearby. In fact, I was on my cell phone at the time in the other room. I guess my phone got worried, wanted to check in. Thought I wasn't doing my duty by my cat. But it turned out Kymm was about to call me. She'd arrived at Dan's parents' house. The moment they opened his carrier, Cocoa sauntered right out and started checking out his new locale. That cat has sangfroid.
Really, this is a remarkably tumult-free story, not much of an adventure at all except for the fact that I'm sure it's a huge big wallop of a life change for my sleek feline boy. He took an airplane trip by himself. I wouldn't feel comfortable letting Damian do that yet, and he can talk.
So Cocoa is the first one to make the move. He's now an East Coast Cat. And I can move on to worrying about something else.
Posted by Tamar at August 31, 2005 08:45 PM | TrackBack