minstrlmummr | The Moving Trilogy, Part One: Jamiekitty's Journey

The day

booksrbust came up from Delaware, I was   :::blush::: not finished packing up, so I was unworthily rooting for the traffic jams for which Staten Island is justly famous.      About an hour before I expected it, my phone rang and I heard the dread words "We're coming off the bridge into Brooklyn!!"      I lurched for the appropriate bus,   jaywalking in a (mostly) unusual manner.      As soon as I sat down, the bus began to crawl like an asthmatic snail through a glue trap.     It took all my remaining fortitude not to leap out of the bus to push it from behind.      I shut my eyes and tried to induce some relaxation (heh).    Twenty minutes and four blocks later, I had finally reached the front gate of my happy place (which sort of looks like Pennsic only with a roof and a floor built by SOMEONE ELSE).    However, when Bearded Funny Tudor Guy opened his mouth again, he made a noise like a ringing telephone and then his arms weren't around me any more.

(The reason Jamie's not in this part of the story is that she was taking a nap on the shelf of my closet.)

Mom (who couldn't understand WHY I sounded so irate) announced that they were near the new apartment and where was I?   (I almost said "NOT MY HAPPY PLACE")    I apologized for being on the bus and suggested a couple of places where they could get lunch.      When I was five minutes away (and three blocks--the bus caught a tail wind), I suggested they start to look for parking.      When they asked me which way to turn at an intersection, I said "Turn left--if you turn right you'll be in the water."       My sister said,    "What do you mean?     From here, the water is ON my left."    While I was warning them about the ocean a block away, I had forgotten the bay one block the other way.

Oops.

Once we made contact and unloaded the donor furniture, sis drove me to the old place and proceeded to...TARDIS my belongings into her van.      Much to the amusement of one of my neighbors, who at one point turned to his (?) son and said, "I  LOVE THIS GIRL!"     I think she was hoping to use the move to make up for missing her Jazzercise class   8)

She had brought a carrier for Jamie, and I got Jamie into it with the least amount of resistance of any kitty carrier EVER.     We boarded the van and started back to the seaside.

Then the meow-moaning started.

Jamie doesn't talk much unless she wants her 'gooshy fud', but she REALLY hates travelling, and she has a special wail she saves just for those occasions.     It sort of sounds like the distilled-agony noise a cat often makes just before being sick.      She makes it every thirty to sixty seconds.      And when we stopped for water, my sister informed me that after I left the van, Jamie was quiet the whole time I was gone, so evidently the performance was JES FO  ME!.

About halfway through the trip Jamie wreaked her ultimate.      She had...I can't even call it an accident.    She had an Apocolypse.      An...eye-watering, miasma-spewing, mutation-inducing, room-clearing Apocolypse.    It was amusing for the first four seconds, then my sister looked at me (I don't know why, I didn't do it...) and said,    "I'm pulling over."    We grabbed frantically for impromptu HAZMAT supplies and I...contained the Apocolypse.    (I'm a nurse.    This is my gift...this is my curse...)    We drove slowly down the street in search of a toxic disposal site (I'm sure NYC Sanitation has endured worse) with me holding the Apocolypse out the window.     A wake of glowing fumes followed the car.     As we passed a section of Forest Park, trees, flowers and lampposts began to droop and melt like Dali's watches (I never knew Dali had a cat...).

After dropping the Apocolypse into a waste container (which snickered at us and called me a wimp),   I made my sister pull over so I could ~~amputate~~   ~~boil~~   wash my hands.

Jamie was relatively quiet for the rest of the trip.

They left for Delaware after dinner, and the next day my sister told me that Jamie had settled into her new home.
Under their bed.     With no intention of coming out.    EVER.   When they told me they'd put her food dish under there with her I questioned the wisdom of this, but I realized later that this probably protected the cat food from the (half black Lab, half-border collie) ~~horse~~ ~~tank~~ dog.

When I checked in later in the week, they told me she'd relaxed enough to start napping inside my sister's armoire (she found the sweater pile) and sitting on the window sill, listening to a lecture about Autumn from my nephew.

Hopefully when I come in for Thanksgiving, she'll have forgiven me enough to snuggle a bit   8)