Animals
So far in our decisions, I don’t think there were many things that would anger anyone but now I come to one of the hardest decisions we had to make. What to do with our pets? A little background on us to set the stage. I grew up on a farm with multiple dogs all the time and a few barn cats at times. We didn’t feed the cats. They were basically feral and lived off the rats and mice that are an ever present reality of farm life. My wife grew up with no pets at all in the city. Since getting married we’ve had dogs of all sorts and usually two at a time with short durations of 1 or 3. Since moving out to the country on 5 acres and thinking that it would be “forever”, we took in a very young kitten someone had abandoned out in the desert and then a second that a nice lady had rescued that had identical coloring to our first. Neither of them were the kind of cat who would come when you called them and both would bolt out any open door and as I said, they wouldn’t come when called unless it was feeding time. We also had 2 indoor dogs and a pair of chickens for eggs.
Once the decision was made to go full time, we had to make the best choices we could for the animals as well. The chickens were pretty easy since our daughter and her family have up to 30 at a time and we could give them to her for her egg production. The dogs were an easy solution as well since they often go for rides with us out to the lake and other places and are leash trained and comfortable in our rig. The cats were the problem. My greatest concern was that if we tried to take them, they would have to be in a kennel while we were traveling for hours at a time, because if not, they would certainly bolt every time we opened the truck door and, since they don’t come when called, they had a good chance of being killed, lost or causing us to lose half a day’s travel while we hunted for them. Also, how do we give them rest breaks? Even once we were settled somewhere, every time we opened the RV door, we feared they would bolt and we’d often be in unfamiliar places to them and around traffic and other pets who may not be cat friendly.
It seemed the best option for them would be to find a nice family to take them in and give them the stability they deserved. It was hard to let them go, but we found a nice family to take them in. I am basically a dog-person, but I was very fond of those two cats. I realize that many people travel with cats and many people make a different decision on this subject and that’s perfectly fine. I don’t claim that our decisions are right for everyone, and we can certainly debate this until the proverbial cows come home. We did what we thought was best for them and only time will tell if we were correct.
