Car Trip Cat

   If you know us at all, you know that the Wards often get a late start.  And we knew, after many, many, many trips up the I-45, I-35 corridor that we are never prepared to leave the house when we want to be.  But this trip truly beats all when instead of leaving at the wished for 10am or the "figures" 12pm time frame, we didn't get ourselves on Houston highways until 2pm.  This included about three "wait, we need to stop by here before we go!" stops and lunch.  If you do the math, with a 2pm start time, we didn't arrive at stop 1 - Oklahoma until almost 11:30pm.  And unbelievably, not one child fell asleep the whole way.  We had 9 1/2 hours of music, movies, games, some whining and stops.  Way too many stops.
    But the whammy of it all is that we brought our cat, Boo Radley with us.  And yes I see the eye-roll and the, "are you kidding me?" expression because I get that same expression from Kenny.  But since he loves me, he lets me win and I get to bring Radley every time.  He's a seasoned traveler, and usually handled it with ease.  Except for this time.  With an hour to go, Radley's bladder did not hold out and without having to share too much, I will tell you that today was spent at the car wash, paying for a professional shampoo to get that smell out.  If you read the last post, hopefully you will see the irony of this.
      But despite my dislike of smelly things and the fact that we now have baking soda under our seat, I stand by my vote to bring cats on car trips.  There is something exciting (yes, I used that word) about rushing the kids out the van door while we keep Radley from escaping and there is something tender about each kid begging Radley to come sit on their lap, though lap sitting he usually reserves for me or Kenny in the front seat.  I agree that dogs are easier to travel with, with the leash and the grassy rest stops and all, and cats are a challenge.  But I love the challenge. 
     Radley's an old cat and he's seen a lot of highway drives so I'll give him this one infraction.  But if it happens again on the longer 18 to 19 hour drive home from Nebraska, he may be riding on the roof.  Or I may lose my vote for the next trip.