Cat-Schlepping While Pregnant: A Difficult Combination

March 21, 2019 Solana Joy

Trucking around London with my BFF, just after finding out I was pregnant. A very real ‘gap’ was already starting to open up between our old adventure and a new one.

My last post here was in July. I was packing up for Aífe and I to go on a big schlep to England, via the Netherlands, so that I could participate in a conference on animal ethics and to enjoy a big, summer schlepping adventure with my best friend. I was pretty excited, and intended to blog about our journey in great detail. And now it has been eight months without a word. What happened?

What happened is that exactly two weeks after that last post, I discovered I was pregnant. Which means I was already pregnant when I set off on the big schlep with my heavy suitcase and kitty in tow. I didn’t know that though. My husband and I had been trying to conceive for a few months, but we’d had no luck in my previous cycles, and there was absolutely no sign that anything was different about this one. After a few months of getting down over the negative results, I’d decided to stop worrying myself, to stop thinking about getting pregnant, and focus on the adventure at hand.

So while I was completely exhausted from the moment we set off on our trip, I assumed my fatigue was easily explained by an intense schedule, a lack of sleep, an excess of baggage, and carrying a twelve pound cat around all day in an unexpected and unrelenting heat wave. Those were valid reasons to be tired. But in our last days in England, it finally dawned on me to take a test, and I discovered that there was another reason for my unrelenting weariness; I’d been carrying a stowaway the whole time. A stowaway not much bigger than a poppy seed, yet already triggering an astonishing cascade of changes throughout my whole body… and about to trigger a lot of changes throughout my life.

I am now over thirty-eight weeks pregnant. My due date is April Fool’s Day, but all the books and apps I look at tell me to be ready to go into labor at any second. And so, now that the end is nigh, I’d like to share my experience of trying to combine pregnancy and cat-schlepping.

Long story short: they don’t mix very well at all.

Summer Schlep 2018: Packing for cats

July 16, 2018 Solana Joy

We are going on holiday, my kitty and I. Or on a mission, you might say. A big ol’ schlep, that’s for sure.

I wasn’t certain whether or not to bring her. At first, I had a clear vision of her and I exploring London in sunshine and rad-ness. But over the weeks, wary of actually throwing down my credit card and committing to an actual itinerary, I started wavering. I questioned my motives, her safety, the money. Would it all be for the best? Was I just making everyone’s life difficult? I agonized indecisively for so long that all of my travel options, with or without her, starting to disappear, or rise in price beyond decency.

But she’s coming alright. I haven’t spent three summers in a row rewriting my damn cat-schlepping book to just crap out now. And depending on how the Brexit shit-show plays out over the next eight months, the PETS travel scheme that lets Aífe into the UK with an EU pet passport may no longer be an option. So we’re going while the going’s good. I think she’ll enjoy a lot of it. Not all of it, but neither will I. That’s not how adventure works. No uncertainty, no adventure.

Pets aren’t allowed onto flights into the UK, unless they are sent by outrageously expensive cargo services that aren’t reliably safe. I can’t carry Aífe onto a plane to London, as I would to Berlin or Portland. Islands, huh? So in a couple days, we’ll be riding the rails to Rotterdam, Netherlands; riding the waves to Harwich, UK, and then on another train journey into London. A couple days to explore my favorite metropolis, then up to Oxford for the animal ethics conference, then back to London for several days of exploring, then the long trek home to Berlin again. We’re not doing the 184 Thames River Walk I blogged about in spring, because a) that would be really expensive, b) I’ve got knee problems c) I’ve needed to focus on getting ready for Oxford, and d) just getting to the UK and back is quite a quest in itself. I’m tired just thinking about it – partly because I’ve been too excited to sleep.

So let’s talk packing. How do you pack for a two week, multipurpose schlep with a cat?

Summer Cat Quest Across England. Your Advice Needed!

May 15, 2018 Solana Joy

Summer hiking fun in Oregon, 2017. Best face ever.

Last spring, I became aware of a very cool entity called the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. When I saw they had a call out for papers for their Summer School this coming July, I decided to throw my hat in the ring. I haven’t been remotely involved in academia since turning in my dissertation at the LSE in 2010, and am not part of any institution, so I figured it was a long shot. However, I am excited to say that they got back saying that they loved my proposal, and hoped I would be able to come give a presentation in July!

Needless to say, I’m flipping thrilled. Worried that I’m out of my league and going to shame myself in front of a room of seasoned professionals, but thrilled.

After much deliberation, I’ve decided that if I’m going to travel all the way to Oxford, it would be silly not to tag on some other adventures in the area. And if I’m going to go on adventures, I of course ought to bring along my #1 adventuring companion, aka my cat, Aífe.

I’ve thought about where we might go. There are loads of famously gorgeous places I would like to see in the UK (many of which have glorious Instagram accounts). However, my trip over there hinges on Oxford, so it probably makes sense to look for something in that area. And there happens to be one quest I know I would like to tackle there: The Thames Path. It’s a National Trail that runs 184 miles from the edge of the Cotswolds and through Oxford to Greenwich in London (you know, the place where Time began).

If you’re familiar with our adventures, you’ll know that they’ve got everything: trees! flowers! birds! ice cream! bunnies! bicycles! trains! mountains! castles! boats! planes! rivers! hikes! seasickness! books! naps! art! dentistry! graveyards! cheese! This adventure would be pretty much all of those things rolled into one massive pilgrimage of radness (though hopefully we can give seasickness and dentistry a miss).

The thing is, there’s a few quandaries that need solving if I’m going to make it work. And I only have a couple months to either get a plan sorted, or scrap it. And meanwhile, I have to get together a presentation good enough to impress a room full of experts and lawyers in flipping Oxford. So I’d really appreciate your two cents in figuring this out. If you’re interested, please read on.

Creatures of Love: A Mother's Day special for all the ladies with the fur-babies

May 11, 2017 Solana Joy

I don't know about yours, but my fur-baby is a tiny tiger. (photo by Chrononauts Photography)

Gum, spit, piss, bird shit, dog shit, broken glass, cigarette butts, the occasional splash of vomit, and garbage of all sorts – I keep my eyes peeled for the everyday detritus of the sidewalk. I try to also keep an eye on what’s ahead and behind: dogs that come sprinting out of nowhere, kids that come shrieking and cycling and bouncing balls, motorbikes and bicycles and trucks that come careening through intersections and over the curb.

I didn’t used to give too much thought to any of the stink and strangers of cities. In ballet flats and combat boots, I schlepped myself through scummy scenes of San Francisco, Portland, Dublin, London, Berlin, Galway, and Los Angeles. Always with headphones, sometimes quite drunk, mostly in a bubble of my own.

That was before. When I moved through life alone.

Now I walk with a little one. The light of my life. Who is easily startled by some of these things we encounter, and steps obliviously right into the others. Who, when we go home for the evening, will roll happily on my pillows, lick her toes, and then lick my face.

We toddle our way along slowly, stopping often, sometimes out of wariness, others out of curiosity. Sometimes we watch strangers walk by in wide-eyed silence, and other times we cackle abuse at the birds in the trees.

I should probably mention that my little one is a cat.

#11: A Long Ass Way to Tipperary

February 23, 2017 Solana Joy

I just moved from Germany to Ireland with my cat. I had thought it would be a lot easier than when I moved to Germany from Oregon with my cat. But, actually, it was quicker, and in some ways easier, to cross 5177 miles from Portland to Berlin than it was to get the 1189 miles from Berlin to Dublin. This is because I was able to fly from the US to Germany with my cat on board, but couldn’t find any airline that would take pets on flights into Ireland or the UK. Even Lufthansa, with whom I have flown trans-Atlantic with my cat, twice, and who has a whole ‘we’re pet friendly’ page on their website, does not book pets on flights into Ireland or the UK. I spoke with the Irish Department of Agriculture, and no, they don’t have any prohibition about pets entering the country. The flights just won’t take them.

Long story short, I was left with a choice:

Pay a freight company to take my cat and ship her for me. One recommended company gave me a quote for nearly €800! When the flight I was planning to book for myself was only €57!
Spend three days but only about €300 taking trains and ferries across Europe with my cat.

I went with the second option. Partly because it was far less expensive, partly because it sounded like an interesting adventure, and partly because I really didn’t like the idea of letting strangers put my cat in a box and take her away from me and overseas. And I’m glad that I did go this route: even though I was weeping by the end of it.

#10: A Year of Island-Schlepping, Literary Promise, and Bureaucratic Mystery

December 15, 2016 Solana Joy

All the important packing is pretty much done already. Yay!

Almost immediately after I’d launched my Kickstarter on November 15, my husband was offered a really great teaching job. In Ireland. Starting in two months. Julian was actually in Ireland for work when he found out, while I was en route to Portland for Thanksgiving. Suddenly, we had less than two months to pack up our lives in Germany, clear out of our flat, find accommodation in Ireland, get ready for the holidays, deal with insurance and utilities and doctors appointments and landlords, make arrangements for my husband’s daughter to visit us, and try to stay on top of our actual work.

Oh, and most importantly: figure out how to get a cat to Ireland.

This has turned out to be a weirdly difficult thing to manage...

#7: Writing & Schlepping

August 5, 2016 Solana Joy

Writing is the thing I do the most, and it’s probably the thing that I’m best at. Which is not a boast about how great my writing is, but a testament to how terrible I am at other things. Even so, writing is hard for me. For two chief reasons:

Writing is hard. Period. To pull things from the ether, and from your life, and say exactly what you mean about them in an interesting way is notoriously challenging. I think just about every writer I’ve ever heard or read on the subject, with the exception of Stephen King, struggles to confront a blank page.
Writing is generally a stationary, solitary business. It requires sitting, in a chair, with little besides your own thoughts for company or diversion. What does that sound like? Oh yes – time out. Choosing to be a writer is basically consenting to spend most of the rest of your life sitting in timeout (Pro tip – make sure to hide some biscuits in your pocket).

There is one thing that makes this hermit’s life tolerable, and indeed delightful. And it isn’t any combination of booze or muse. It’s my cat.

Writers are well-known for being eccentric, anti-social weirdos. Many of the notorious ones have been drunks and or smack-heads, with poor social skills and/or suicidal tendencies. What is not as often brought up is that, more than any of these things, they are also prone to be cat-freaks. If you Google ‘writers & cats’, you will find no shortage of images of famous writers with cats: