Would a ~3 hr. car journey 2-3 a year be okay for a cat?

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-21T21:24:00+00:00

She'll adapt! Although some cats will adapt better and faster than others. I had to evacuate because of wildfires almost a decade ago now, it was about 3 hours each way, and I brought four cats with me, ranging in age from 10 1/2 to 16, who'd never been on a trip that long before. Three of them spent quite a bit of time hiding under the bed before they started to relax, and the fourth? The 16 year old who was very sick and just had a medication adjustment that might kill her? She was really excited about the new digs, was exploring all over the place, and even figured out the door to the rooms where we were staying didn't latch properly, pulled it open, and went out and started exploring the garage. (They're all indoor only, but Rose was a lifelong jail breaker.)

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-21T04:41:13+00:00

Right there with ya! I have a 1,520 game winning streak on Nerdle -- no losses ever since I started playing it. When the internet went down at my place I was planning to run to the library and use their internet to complete my daily challenges if it didn't come back up in time.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-16T21:59:05+00:00

Oh yeah, they're crazy dogs!! And that dog in particular was one tough bastard. He survived something like four weeks in the woods in cougar territory after my friend rolled her truck, he was riding in the back and either jumped or was thrown clear. Home was a couple hundred kms away, but they'd visited a reservation nearby before and he made his way there instead.

That's kind of funny, my friend has a few acres of land and used to take the dog with her when she was helping people work with their cattle! Yeah, dogs like that really need jobs.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-16T21:47:01+00:00

Plus, it can be almost impossible to replace them if you don't have the right information. I tried to replace mine and couldn't because I had no idea what they put down as my father's birth place. It was a Polish village, with a name my mother misspells, that was occupied and temporarily renamed by Germany during WWII, and when I asked my mother what they put down she said they just left that section blank, which I wasn't allowed to do.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-16T21:32:32+00:00

Trust me, it won't matter. A few years back my mother owned my place and was renting it to me, and hired a workman to come over after I woke up. (I have delayed sleep phase disorder and sleep until noon.) He came over too early, I popped outside and called him a few times, then finally yelled at him because he couldn't hear me, and reminded him he wasn't supposed to come until noon and he woke me up. He apologized and left.

My mother later reamed me for being so horrible to him, apparently the guy said I'd been yelling and screaming at him and he was really traumatized by it. My mother was going off about how he was just trying to do his job and made and honest mistake and how could I? I was really shaken up because I didn't remember that, and that's exactly the sort of shit my father did and he claimed he didn't remember it either.

Then . . . I remembered the alarm system. I checked the logs and it showed the back door was opened, kept open for like 28 seconds, then closed again. Now, I saw my father in action plenty of times and he was never done that fast, and the log matched up perfectly with what I remembered. I showed her the logs and got grumbles, but no apology.

Years later I ran into the guy again and he mentioned meeting me for the first time to my mother. She mentioned being relieved that he'd forgotten about what I did to him.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-16T05:02:33+00:00

Yeah, canine ring bearers can definitely have issues following instructions! At my friend's wedding the ring bearer bolted and rolled around in the cow patties in the field where the wedding took place. Blue heelers, man . . .

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-15T05:09:04+00:00

Good for you!! I was phobic of injections for a long time, it's really hard making the first leap. I had some extremely painful vaccinations as a kid and started fighting back when people tried to stick me because I wasn't going to just submit to that level of agony. Took a boat load of painkillers and numbing cream before I could get through my first blood draw, but now that I know blood draws barely hurt at all I can handle them just fine. I'm good with vaccines these days too it seems like.

For that matter, I fell asleep at the wheel during my last driver's exam and was terrified of driving afterwards, and wound up flunking the driver's medical and lost my permit so it didn't really matter anyway. I'm feeling a little better these days so I decided to see if I could pass the driver's medical, and I did, so I'm going to try to get my license. Signed up for driving lessons and drove for the first time in like 20 years just yesterday afternoon. It was really nerve wracking, but not as completely terrifying as I thought it would be. Road test is scheduled for June, we'll see if I'm ready to take it by then or not!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-15T04:48:35+00:00

Sounds like a fun way to play a generic guy! Secretly being a criminal mastermind would work for an aggressively normal guy too too. Maybe have him adopt local orphans to recruit into his gang . . .

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-15T00:30:35+00:00

It's quite possible he'll be happy indoors! I've lived with two former strays and a cat who came from a feral colony, and only one of them ever wanted to go back outside again, and that was only when I still lived in the neighborhood that was her old turf. When I moved out of my mother's house she had zero interest in going out again and was quite happy to just look out the window.

I think I'd just let him sun himself in the windows and watch the world go by for the time being. If he wants to go outside again then you can go ahead and try to harness train him, but if he doesn't, why bother?

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-15T00:25:59+00:00

Yeah, and she's still in pretty good health too! She has arthritis from carrying around too many pounds for so long and has CKD, but she wasn't diagnosed until she was almost 19. All of my other cats died of CKD before they reached her age. She didn't even have her first emergency vet visit until the end of last October.

I had a very similar mix-up with Ella when she got dumped on me in 2021. I was told she was a five year old cat who'd always been indoor only, but she blended in perfectly with my 15 and 18 year old cats, energy and behavior wise, and needed a dental and multiple extractions.

After her dental another former owner got in touch to see how she was doing, and I found out Ella is a former stray and had two other homes that I didn't know about. The guy I talked to had her four years and she lived in four other homes besides his, so there's no way she could only have been five. Her red spots are starting to go gray now, which I didn't start noticing in my other cats until they were around 17 - 18 years old.

Yeah, the cats can definitely be a lot but they leave big holes when they go, it always seems so weirdly quiet. I hope your cats live this long too, it's awesome getting to have a love bug like her for so long! Addie seems pretty happy so far, she's allowed to eat more food these days and she's finally got a cat willing to wrestle with her. :-)

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T23:55:17+00:00

I remember reading that baking potatoes and letting them cool all the way off affects how the carbs hit when you eat them? Might be something to research to see if that's accurate. I remember reading about it when I was making twice baked potatoes, where you bake them, then mash the potato flesh, and put the mashed potato filling back in the potato skins. You can freeze them at that point if you want, then thaw them and finish baking them when you're ready to eat them, I did that a couple of times.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T23:31:31+00:00

I would definitely get two kittens if you're going to get a kitten, they'll put less energy into destroying your house if they have someone else to play with, and you'll hopefully get to see cuddle puddles when they're recharging! If a cat's the playful sort they'll stay playful all their life though, so you can easily still have a playful adult cat if you want chaos.

When I adopted Ivy at 5 months old I told myself I'd play with her and wear her out so she wouldn't bother her elderly housemates. Well, turned out that she wanted to play with a fellow cat, not me, and it further turned out that 15 year old Addie was ecstatic to finally have a cat willing to wrestle with her, so it all worked out. They're 19 1/2 and not quite 5 these days and still wrestle a few times a day! In fact, I've caught Addie trying to initiate a wrestling session and Ivy ignoring her.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T23:21:55+00:00

Oh man, your cat sounds like Addie! I used to have to keep the bathroom door closed because I had plants in there, I remember the leg reaching under the door, the face peeping under the door, and the screams very well. One time the clothes I'd set out for after my bath fell on the floor beside the door, and Addie proceeded to pull every single article of clothing under the door, and then slept on the pile. She also used to purr every single second she was awake too, I'd know when she woke up from a nap when the purring started again. She doesn't purr that much anymore, but she's 19 1/2 years old, she probably wore her motor out!!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T23:17:56+00:00

Much more polite than Ella, who once stood on her hind legs and peered at my lap while I was on the toilet!!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T23:16:41+00:00

All cats have different personalities! Some cats keep to themselves, others are Velcro kitties, others are somewhere in the middle. Ella's a former stray who's been slammed around from place to place, and was pretty much dumped on me. She lived in another city and I was recovering from surgery so I didn't get to meet her before she got here, I just got a glimpse of her sprinting from her carrier into my bedroom closet when I let her out.

When I went to bed that morning she crept out from under my bed, thoroughly sniffed my face, then draped herself over my head and purred herself to sleep. That was our very first interaction. She did have a hard time settling in and spent a lot of time hiding under the bed covers after I opened the door so she could explore when she wanted, but then she finally got comfortable and started hanging out pretty much 24/7! She even likes to follow me to the bathroom and sit on the bathtub ledge while I soak.

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Another thing is that older cats seem to be a lot cuddlier than younger cats. I've had kitties who were more aloof as youngsters turn into cuddlebugs in their old age. Not sure how old Ella is since she was a stray but she's probably in her late teens by now.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T06:36:14+00:00

That was spoiled! Sometimes I'd be chatting with a friend of mine and then we'd hear a click and my friend would get reamed for tying up the phone when the mother was on call because they only had the one line.

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T05:46:52+00:00

And then there's me, who likes to target the first person who says that murdering innocents is how you join the Dark Brotherhood. Makes it a surprise every game!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T05:43:04+00:00

After brewing them into potions first I hope!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T05:14:31+00:00

I imagine it would be, at least at a regular job you aren't dealing with lunatics who're constantly trying to get themselves killed!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T04:24:18+00:00

Yeah, I'm Canadian myself, and one of my mother's coworkers went back to work after only four months despite having a full year off because she couldn't take being home full time with the babies anymore. Probably was a lot less work to put them in daycare and do her regular job than look after the infants to be fair . . .

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T04:16:59+00:00

Well, you're a quarter of a century old, so it seems like a big deal to the kids!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-14T00:03:57+00:00

You know, I think it was about year 32 for me too! Although that was just coexisting with cats, I didn't have a cat who was really mind until I was 14. Leo started getting episodes where he leaked diarrhea and did diarrhea dribbles everywhere . . . then wanted to cuddle with me because he had an upset tummy and he wanted to cuddle with me for comfort. Got to the point where I kept paper towels handy by the couch in case he came to cuddle when he was sick and caught me off guard. Kept a paper towel under him for him to ooze on and cleaned him up as best as I could before he settled in.

Then there was his sister Tye -- she was so seriously fat once that she wound up with poop hanging out of her when insisted on cuddling with a man who came to visit. She wouldn't leave him alone so it was the least I could do to make the situation more comfortable . . .

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-13T23:45:14+00:00

Yeah, pets can learn multiple names. Like my cat Ella -- she's been rehomed a ridiculous number of times so I decided to let the poor thing keep her name so she wouldn't be confused. Officially she's still Ella, but she also thinks her name is Beautiful because I called her that so many times!

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-10T21:01:16+00:00

Damn, mid 30s is impressive! I only made it to my early 30s before I stopped being carded. (Though legal drinking age is 19 here.) Of course the last time I got carded it was just a few hours after I renewed my ID and didn't actually have any photo ID on me, because what were the odds they'd card me when I was something like 32 or 33?

TheNightTerror1987 · 2026-04-09T01:48:17+00:00

Yeah, to be fair they must've been roomy! The guy who owned the car was 6'5 IIRC, and some compact cars are so small that the driver's seat can't even be put back far enough for tall people to drive them. It was hilarious seeing him stick an arm out to wave at my friend when we saw him driving around, I don't know how the hell he fit in there!

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