A short story, but one that will forever stay in my mind, if not exactly my heart. During better financial times our little family rented a house for the summer at the edge of a lake about two hours north of New York City. For the next three months we would go up every weekend, leaving our three cats in our upper east side apartment for three full days. We always left enough food and water and they seemed to survive just fine, but then came August and along with it a two week vacation. We couldn't leave them that long so we got out the carrying cases and loaded up on cat food and litter.
Witter had been in a car before. We’d moved once and then of course there were vet visits and the trip home from the shelter. In all that time I’d never noticed her dislike of modern transportation, but that day driving those two hours from city to lake, from the moment we pulled out of our space to the moment we pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine, that cat would not stop yeowling. That’s not a word I use lightly and it doesn’t begin to describe the essence of it. It was like someone running the rough edge of a wood file over my exposed spinal cord.
On the day we were to return, we consulted a local vet regarding what to do about the problem. He gave her a quarter of a tablet of valium right there in the office. But just to make sure, before we left that afternoon we gave her the rest of it. She would sleep soundly, we thought. We thought wrong. Instead, so stoned she couldn’t stand, she managed to bawl like a dying cow all the way back to Manhattan.
Like I said, indefatigable.
