Back in El Paso/Vet Visit

Okay!

So! We're back in El Paso. We're exhausted. Last night's journey wasn't nearly as smooth as the night before.

We were gone for about two weeks, and on the road for four days, two days each way. In a total of four days, we've driven over three thousand miles. With three cats. Our poor babies.

Yesterday B started out driving because he wanted to drive us through Houston, thinking that the traffic would be awful. The traffic was pretty light, all things considered, so I missed out on getting to drive through Houston again. About an hour-ish out of Houston, we pulled over at a pretty awesome truck stop and switched places so I could drive.

Traffic around San Antonio was pretty much one giant gridlock. Took us about an hour and a half to two hours to get through what should've been a thirty-ish minute drive.
I then continued to drive us across most of Texas, until I was just too damn tired and we pulled over at a rest stop in Iraan Texas. (That's where I blipped the picture of Houston from last night.) I told B I needed to rest, so he took over, and ended up finishing the drive.

Oh, but that wasn't the end of it. Oh no.

See, we've put our three cats through absolute Hell these last two weeks. We didn't even know until practically last minute whether or not we'd be able to make the trip we made. We were waiting on a very shitty doctor to find out when I could ave my gallbladder removed. That fell through, so we decided with only a few days left that we were gonna go ahead and make the trip. (I still don't want to talk about what happened with the doctor. Just know that it was pretty terrible and I'm getting really sick and tired of trying to find competent medical care in this fucking backwards city.)

Usually when we're about to travel a long distance, we have much more warning ahead of time. Which means the cats know we're going. All of us are much more prepared than we were for this trip.

We've also never traveled such a long distance all at once like what we did this time.

So what happens last night with a little under four hundred miles to go? Poor Nova's back is hurting him because he's been cooped up in the car for so damn long. About a year and a half ago, Nova was injured while on an airplane. The injury flares up sometimes and will bother him for the rest of his life.

So he can't sit still any longer, it was hurting him too much. So before B and I ended up switching who was driving, we were forced to let Nova out of his carseat and to allow him to lie in our laps. It was the only way he would get any rest. Well, we'd given him his painkillers just before San Antonio, which should've lasted in his system for twelve hours, but it only lasted around four hours.

Now, back to having to let him loose. His back was so swollen when we let him loose, that we had to pull off the highway and have a little side adventure in a small town looking for an instant ice pack. When one couldn't be located, we got the next best thing and bought an ice cream at a gas station and used the package as an ice pack. It worked well and Nova was happy.

After a while, Nova decided he wanted to walk back and forth between the two of us. Luckily, I'm much smaller than B is, so Nova could fit between my torso and the steering wheel. So Nova sat on my lap off and on, staring out the window at oncoming traffic, as well as nuzzling me and nuzzling the steering wheel. (I was worried he'd end up honking the horn a few times while I was passing semi trucks.) So there I was, in the middle of nowhere, in pitch blackness, driving a car at 80mph through hills and sharp turns, with a giant cat on my lap and nuzzling me and the steering wheel.

I feel like a very seasoned driver after being able to accomplish that.

He went back and forth between me and B until B started driving. Then he had to stay on my lap, even though he wanted to go over to B a few times. But I'm the one that Nova spends most of his time with (since B works and I don't) and so he's a Jada's boy.

After a while, Nova becomes very squirrelly and tries to run all over the car. I prevent him from doing this, so he starts growling and snarling, something Nova pretty much never does unless in severe pain. I figure he probably has to go to the bathroom, but the place we pull over at is not the kind of place I feel safe letting him walk around. It was a lonely exit in the middle of nowhere surrounded by tall grass and I couldn't see if there were animals in the grass or not. I'm not gonna risk my Nova getting got by coyotes.

So we do the only thing we really can do at that time, which is to put Nova back in his carseat.

Not long after, the poo began.

Poor Nova had shat himself. Which caused him to freak out, trying to get away from it. We had to flip on our hazards and pull over on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere with other cars driving anywhere from 75mph to 100mph so we could clean Nova and his carseat up. Not gonna lie, I was crying a bit. Not because I had to deal with poo, but because it wasn't Nova's fault and he felt horrible about no longer being able to hold it in. I feel so bad about what we put our poor kitties through.

Our kitties were saints, everything considered.

After getting Nova and his carseat cleaned up, Nova felt much better and went back to sleep.

We got into El Paso around 2am MST, which is one hour behind CST, which is the time we've been going on for the last two weeks. (Well, we were both born and raised in CST, and I personally hate living outside of the timezone I was born into.) We stopped by B's work and picked up out truck and took both vehicles (the rental and the truck) home. We unpacked only the necessities before passing out and going to bed.

Today, about six hours after finally getting back, we had to finish unpacking the rental, clean it up, gas it up, then return it. I really love that Ford Fusion. (I don't even like Ford cars in general because they seem to have an affinity for transmission problems.) I'd grown quite attached to it. B says it's Stockholm syndrome from having to drive it for some long.

Then we had just enough time to get food, eat it, and take the cats to the vet, both Nova and Tuxie because we found a huge sore in Tuxie's mouth while trying to give Tuxie his antianxiety pill back in Winnie.

The vet took a while.

Came back to the house, been resting and trying to sleep since.

The picture I'm posting today is our vet bill for today. The total should tell you EXACTLY why we have Optimum Wellness Plans for all three cats. It's a once a month payment that you make for certain conveniences. It really pays for itself rather easily.

Mmkay. I keep falling asleep, so it's bed time again.