Can’t we all just get along?

Some of you may have wondered where our cat “Boris” is during this adventure. Is she dead? Did we give her away? Is she with a relative? No, no and no. She’s with us and doing quite well, thank you. When traveling in the car, we set up a cat motel on the floor of the back seat of the car where she has her bed and food on one side and litter box on the other side. All the comforts of home, as it were. At night, we bring her into the motel rooms where she goes through about an hour of trepidation and orientation before finally deciding that all is ok. So far I’ve only had to pull her kicking and screaming out from under a bed once. Fortunately though, there hasn’t been too much of that since we have spent the overwhelming majority of our time since leaving California staying with three relatives, in Texas, Alabama and now Florida. However, here in Florida, we’ve had a bit of a “situation” to deal with. Joan and Phil have a dog… a little poodle derivative of some sort… named Joli. Now Joli is a nice dog... but still, a dog. So, many a question was raised about how we were going to make this visit work without having to build a miniature Berlin Wall between them. I offered to keep Boris in our room all the time, never letting her downstairs to be around Joli. We even offered to put Boris in a kennel. But Joan, bless her heart, wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted that we could work something out. Well, as it turns out, the animals were more cool about the situation that us humans were. After a couple of minutes of facing off at each other across our outstretched arms during which Joli grrrred once and Boris hissed once, each critter then turned around and walked away and peace has reigned in the house ever since. Now I’m not saying that they are best buddies but at least they aren’t wrapped up in a cloud of flying fur and flailing fangs all the time. Each seems to have accepted the other… which is somewhat amazing as regards Joli because this is, after all, her turf. More photo’s in the gallery.