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Lola's Trip to the Grand Canyon |
by Sarah Reck
My cat, Lola, gets moving anxiety. The first time I moved after adopting her, the moment the boxes materialized, she became Miss Affection. It was a struggle to keep her off my lap and out of my face. Every meow said please don't leave me. It was easy to constantly trip over her with the way she followed me around. I didn't know how to convince her she was going, too.
The trip across country was going to take five days, depending on drive time, weather, and any other unforeseeable happenings. I was pretty nervous about having a cat in the car. What do you do when you want to eat or stop at a rest area? Not only that, but how do you get a cat to eat in the car, or force her to go to the bathroom at rest areas and not in her carrier? And Lola has the bad habit of pawing at her water and I could just imagine the mess that would make.
Thing is, Lola was fine. She slept at the foot of my bed in our hotels. She meowed along to music in the car. She wandered around and sat in my lap while I drove. Lola even visited the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the Grand Canyon.
I was pretty insistent on seeing the Grand Canyon that first day since it wasn't on the itinerary the first time across. So Mom made reservations for the two of us at a lodge at the rim and also for Lola at the Grand Canyon Kennel.
Naturally, given her high-strung days surrounded by moving boxes, I was already concerned with the idea of her staying in a kennel after the first night of all-day driving.
Since we arrived at our hotel after hours, we had to wait for someone to meet us to let Lola into the kennel. The drive there was what I'd imagine as the opening sequence to a horror movie with me in the starring role.
We drove for at least a mile down an unlit, winding road frosted with snow. Following sparse signs with a carving of an animal on them, we made a half-dozen turns into nothingness, crisscrossing railroad tracks. I hoped we were heading away from the Grand Canyon rim so that a mistake wouldn't end with a sudden drop.
The kennel, when we finally arrived, was little more than an outbuilding with one porch light and a locked door. Across the gravel road was what looked like a power generator. There was no one around. Lola meowed from her carrier. With no one around, no way to see the facilities, and the realization that the kennel would be vacant overnight, I started bawling.
Does this make me a major dork? Of course it does. But I guess it also make me a pretty good parent. So before the security guard even arrived to take Lola to her cage, I turned the car around and got out of there. Mom cancelled our reservations and made new ones off state park property. According to her, the receptionist understood completely and refunded the money, which leads me to believe this sort of things happens all the time. Though I'd bet it happens with five-year-olds and beloved family dogs, not twenty-five-year-old single girls with cats.
This meant a change of plan. We weren't leaving Lola in the kennel while we meandered about the Grand Canyon rim anymore.
Sometimes I take the things I read on the Internet very seriously. For example, before the trip I read that you should never leave a cat unattended in the car. If it's hot outside, the cat will bake within minutes, and if it's cold, she'll turn into a Popsicle.
Imagine what I thought about leaving Lola in the car and walking up to the rim. Not a good idea. Since we didn't have a home base anymore, we planned to drive from viewpoint to viewpoint along the way. I sacrificed time with my mom the first couple stops so one of us could stay with Lola while the other saw the canyon. Eventually, I gave up completely and decided a few minutes alone in the car wasn't going to fry my kitty or turn the car into a litterbox.
Mom wanted me to close my eyes as we parked at the first Grand Canyon lookout, but the idea was nixed because I was driving and pulling a Thelma-and-Louise over the rim wasn't quite the idea we were going for. There wasn't much to see between the trees anyway, so nothing really spoiled me as I parked the car.
I understand why my mom wanted to savor the surprise; the Grand Canyon is incredible. It's the stuff poetry is made of. It's God's canvas. It's breathtaking. It's every other cliché in the book. I cannot possibly describe it accurately enough. Suffice it to say, you need to see it to believe it.
Though my favorite description of the Grand Canyon came a few months later, when a pastor at a youth retreat said she's heard of atheists who, after seeing the Grand Canyon, claim that, without a doubt, God must exist if the Grand Canyon exists.
Lola might not agree with my awe of the Grand Canyon. In fact, the Grand Canyon traumatized Lola because I insisted on removing her from the safe comfort of her carrier in the car and carrying her to the rim.
In January, life at the Grand Canyon is pretty dead. Most of the time we stopped, we were alone at the edge of the earth. But of course the time I chose to snap a photo of Lola and me at the edge, a foursome of boisterous German men accompanied us. One of them climbed over the squat stone wall and posed in the two feet of space between life and death.
Lola shook in my arms, but I was insistent. I wanted a photo to remember this moment. I wanted a cell phone picture to send to Facebook and Twitter and to my father 2,500 miles away. Lola wanted nothing to do with the Grand Canyon, the snow, or the harness and leash I attached to her. I'd rather have her bungee jumping than freefalling if she managed to get away from me.
But as I stood there, my cat secure in my arms, the mosaicked Grand Canyon our background, I didn't care how much of a dork my desire to have my cat with me at the Grand Canyon would make me look.
Sarah Reck is the Managing Editor of Litter Box Magazine.
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