Take Three and Call Me in the Morning

I make fun of people who buy health insurance for their pets. I mean, pets are great, but they’re animals. Nothing supports an impending communist overthrow in America more than the idea that there are two classes of people in our society: one that can’t afford health care, and another that insures themselves and their dogs and cats. Besides, I think Ally would like to remain in the ranks of the uninsured. She hates the vet so much; any insurance that would result in more frequent trips would be odious to her.

I still remember the first time I took her to the vet. She had been mine for a month, and I was looking around for a way to save the $200 new cat checkup fee that the local vet charged. I found a shot clinic that would do a short exam and the complement of tests and shots for a fourth of the cost. One Saturday I borrowed a cardboard carrier from my mother-in-law, and at noon unceremoniously placed Ally in the box and loaded her in the front seat of the Mustang. She disliked the carrier immediately, but I’ll never forget the frenzy that came over her the moment I started the car. As I pulled out of the driveway, she let out a primal yell. The carrier started rocking back and forth, and I caught glimpses of her through the air holes: one round eye, a splayed paw with claws fully extended, a lip curled to reveal her long, predatory incisors. I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, kitty, but this is for your own good. It’s a raw deal, but you need to be healthy,” I crooned in a soothing voice.

Ally was not about to take my word for it. As I drove down Main Street, her upper and lower jaw emerged from two of the air holes and ripped away the cardboard between them. A pointed face poked out and glared at me, and then disappeared. A rigid, sinewy arm snaked out, grabbed the cardboard corner, and there was a great ripping sound as she tore off the top of the carrier. Just as I was about to take the freeway entrance, she leapt indignantly out of the carrier and sank her claws into my lap.

I hold the controversial opinion that animals should be confined during car travel. They enjoy the trip more if they can roam around, but an animal cannot be trusted to act responsibly in a difficult situation. It seems more humane to let them free, but if you slam on the brakes and they dive under the pedal for shelter, both owner and cat are at risk. I don’t think that humane behavior risks the lives of cat and owner. This notion was confirmed by Ally, who immediately started running laps around the seats of the car like a jungle warrior. As her tail whipped past my face for the third time, I pulled away from the freeway entrance, parked at the curb, and tried to subdue my frantic cat.

Try as I might, she would not sit back in the carrier long enough for us to go home. My efforts must have looked like I was beating her senseless, with my arms flailing out and writhing to catch her claws before they raked me to shreds. I was afraid someone would see and report me for animal cruelty. Finally, we compromised; she cowered on my lap, growling as I drove the five blocks home.

When Craig came home an hour later, he didn’t know what to think. Wife and cat were gone, and on the floor splayed a shredded cat carrier, wound around with layers of duct tape. Ally had resisted all efforts to modify the carrier, and so I called my mother-in-law. She drove us to the clinic while I held Ally motionless, a blanket wrapped tightly around her body so that only her outraged head was visible.

Three years later, I contemplated driving 2500 miles in the same fashion as we drove those first few blocks: me distracted, Ally wailing and struggling. It wasn’t a pleasant idea. Craig and I exhausted all forms of inquiry regarding alternate forms of transport for Ally. Flying her to Lexington was out; airlines didn’t transport animals when the hot summer weather could steam them like clams in the compartments. There were no train accommodations or pet transport services that we could locate. We had no choice but to drive her ourselves.

For weeks before our departure I scoured magazines and the internet for tips for safe cat travel. I noted suggestions to buy catnip toys, train the cat to walk on a leash, and put one of the owner’s garments in the carrier to make the cat feel secure. The only thing Craig wanted to know was how many drugs we could pump into the small, furry body so she would make the trip senseless and be revived when we reached our destination. About three days before we left, we began confining Ally so she wouldn’t go on a roam and miss our departure. The first two nights were disconcerting. Ally’s continuous, strident meows told me that she was not happy about being confined. “Not a problem—she’ll get tired after a few minutes and fall asleep,” I told Craig. She didn’t. “Oh, well. She’ll get hoarse and have to stop. It’s too bad, but it is for her own good,” I sermonized. She continued mewling all night, only stopping periodically to change her pitch and frequency. In the morning, I admitted defeat and told Craig that he was right. Ally wasn’t going to make the trip without some form of tranquilizer. Furthermore, Craig and I couldn’t listen to her syncopated wailings for 2500 miles with our ears and good natured personalities intact. I admitted defeat and made a 2 p.m. appointment for her to see the local vet.

After that first unforgettable vet experience three years ago, I had invested in a rubber carrier that provided the dual advantages of keeping Ally in and letting her see out. Once she could perceive large dogs in line at the shot clinic, she usually wised up and behaved perfectly, demurring to strangers while curled up delicately on her paws. I thought spending fifty bucks on a carrier that Ally would use for an hour a year was tantamount to her joining the ranks of the pampered pet. I wasn’t one of those barbaric miscreants who would expect my kitty to be shipped in cardboard like a UPS package. Oh, no. I grabbed Ally’s paws securely and forced her into the carrier. She turned around and glared at me through the front grate. Well, I would’ve stepped in myself if you had only asked me nicely, she sniffed.

Yeah, right.

It takes a special kind of person to be a vet. My cat’s childhood vet was a gangly, comical man who joked around with us while he conducted his examinations. He would tell my brother and me an anecdote about a dog he saw last week while deftly jamming the needle in the other side of Mittens’s body. We noticed the way that Mittens’s eyes would bulge comically every once in a while, but otherwise we weren’t traumatized at the thought of our kitty getting poked with needles. I assumed that all vets were tactful, sympathetic, and affable. I imagined that Ally and I would engender much sympathy as we walked in, me sleepless and casted, dragging Ally’s carrier in a halting circular motion because of my uneven gait.


As soon as our name was called, two large-knuckled hands snatched the carrier. I murmured gratefulness while a strong, husky woman peered in at my kitty and frowned disapprovingly.

“Why don’t we see her regularly?” barked a deep voice accusingly.

“She gets seen elsewhere, usually,” I muttered vaguely. Your rates. She gets the same shots for half the price, without the added indignity of you jamming a thermometer up her…

“Well, then why aren’t you taking her there now?” she raised an eyebrow, palpating Ally’s stomach with her meaty hands.

“Um, they’re not open.”

“And you are driving her WHERE in this thing?” she asked, indicating her carrier.

“Kentucky. I…”

The vet gave a snort of derision. “Those Southern states have a lot of soil parasites. She should be seen IMMEDIATELY upon arrival so the vet can suggest a proper treatment course.”

“Okay,” I replied meekly. I’m not going to the moon with her. Lexington is still in America, you know. I am sure that there are plenty of cats there that haven’t succumbed to the evils of giant parasites. What are you going to tell me next? Don’t give her any mint julep?

“And that,” she snorted at the carrier, “is totally out of the question. How would you like to be confined for fifteen hours a day in a space so small you can’t stand up?” she looked up from wielding the dreaded thermometer to narrow her eyes at me.

“Hmmm…” I mused. You mean like the cabin of a car? At this point, the lack of sleep and the forlorn look on Ally’s face was too much for me. I knew exactly what I was going to put both of us through, and I had to do it. The only alternative was to leave her here, destroying Ally’s faith in humanity and reducing me to the level of her previous owner who abandoned her when a move got too stressful.

The vet, who I could easily imagine tramping down the lines of cattle feed lots administering shots of bovine growth hormone, looked up at me and softened. “I’ll prescribe something to keep her calm. Just fill the prescription, get her a bigger carrier, and the trip should go all right,” she said, handing me a script.

“Xanax. Isn’t that…”

“Yes, it’s an anti-anxiety medication most commonly given to people, but it’s recently been cleared for animal consumption. Give her a pill morning and night and it will give her a much more phlegmatic perspective on this whole thing.” From the look in the vet’s eyes, she thought the cat wasn’t the only one who could use a tranquilizer. I clumped out of the vet’s office, Ally’s mood in no way improved by the encounter.

“One prescription for Ally, please,” I told the local pharmacist. The cat’s name was printed on a pill bottle, along with our last name. “Hah, hah, the cat’s got travel anxiety, poor thing. Needs a little something to help her through,” I said, my voice flippantly cheerful. I certainly didn’t want him to think I was the one taking happy drugs! I went home, crushed a tablet into a spoonful of tuna, and offered it to Ally, who dutifully licked it up.

“We don’t have room for a flat of tuna cans in the car, kitty. Tomorrow, you’re doing it the normal way,” I hinted darkly.

That night, in my parents’ house, I listened to Ally’s shrieks, trying to detect a hint of calmness in her manner. Maybe a few doses really increases the effect, I thought.

The next morning, I held her securely between my knees, used one hand to wedge her jaws open, and dropped the pill into the back of her throat, closing her mouth and massaging her neck like I was told to. That wasn’t so hard, was it, kitty? I remonstrated, although I would be livid if anyone did the same to me. I didn’t swallow pills well until I was fifteen, and my mom plied me sweetly with pills in applesauce, never hogtying me down and forcing a finger down my throat. After I let Ally hop away,I looked down to see a familiar, circular white object stuck to my left knee. I sighed and went to find her. She ran away from me so assiduously that she skittered across my parents’ tile floor and hit the wall. We fastened her, finally properly dosed, into the new, larger carrier I had bought the day before.

I’m not sure that Ally took a breath in the first 206 miles of the trip. She warmed up with scales until we reached the highway, and then ran through her entire repertoire of sounds that convey negative emotions. We were past Fresno before she started taking ten minute breaks, and almost out of California when she finally fell asleep.

“Maybe the medicine is finally working,” I told Craig. Hearing this, she sat up and started another yowl.

Feeling frazzled, we pulled into Flagstaff, Arizona after 10 p.m. and searched for our pet-friendly hotel. In the elevator, a nice old man commented on how tired we all looked.

“The cat’s never been more than ten miles away from home before,” I said, and then told him where home was going to be. He whistled.

Inside the hotel room, Ally was definitely acting like she was under the influence. When I opened the door of her carrier, she levitated straight out of it, turning four somersaults across the bed, leaping to a chair, rolling off and trying to take refuge under the bed. She bounced off the guard and was still, panting like she had just run a marathon. She shook her head as if startled, and then jumped up on Craig’s lap, sliding off his knee and landing confusedly on the floor on the other side of him. She pulled herself onto the bed again, and then immediately started batting the roses on the printed bedspread like they were jumping up to hit her.

I flopped down on the cigarette-burned sheets. “I’m beat!” I announced. “Thank goodness she got all of that aggression out of her system. She should be really quiet tonight! I’ll just put her back in the carrier so she’ll feel more secure.”

Set up in the bathroom with her litter box and food, Ally’s wail increased to a frenzy that I thought the neighbors could surely hear. I passed the first night in terror, waiting for a knock on the door asking us to quiet down. We couldn’t help it; we had no control over our pitiable animal traveling companion.

At three in the morning, I dressed, gathered Ally’s carrier, and woke up Craig. “Ally and I are going for a drive,” I whispered.

“What?” Craig was incredulous.

“We are going out for a drive. Parents often do this to settle their hysterical children, and I am sick of hearing her howl at me. Every time I move a muscle in bed, she gets louder,” I burbled inchoately.

Craig eyed me warily. I was wearing the crumpled jeans that I had taken off the night before, and a tank top that was inside out. “You are not leaving with the cat!” he mandated. “We are in a strange city in a questionable area of town, and you are not driving around with the cat in the middle of the night singing Rock-a-bye Baby! Just stick her back in the bathroom and go to sleep.” He ordered. I sniffed and placed her carrier back in the bathroom, draping a towel over the top like it was a parrot’s cage. Amazingly, she stopped. I went to sleep fully dressed, my arm around my husband.

“Do you think I could just take the anxiety meds tomorrow and let Ally do without?” I wondered aloud.