I was also hauling a huge suitcase—it had my clothes and jackets and the cats’ blankets, toys, and their leashes. I put my books, notebooks, pens and colored pencils, computer, and journals in my carry-on suitcase, along with cat food and bowls for their water.
My car-service driver, who called herself Shiner, thought I was mad as a hatter, but I didn’t care. Yes, the cats were whining—they are extremely emotional and vocal and don’t like change—and it was deafening in the car on the way to the airport. They were scream-meowing. I felt bad for their distress, but I couldn’t leave them for seven weeks with a cat sitter. They would be lonely.
At the airport, Shiner helped me get the cats and suitcases out of the car, then wished me good luck and scream-meowed goodbye to the cats. They meowed back.
I found a suitcase cart, or whatever those thingies are called, and piled the suitcases and the four cat carriers on it and pushed it into the airport. The cats did not let up on their screeching. In fact, they got louder.
People seemed to think this was, at first, alarming, as in,who is screaming?Then they thought it was very funny. I would have told the cats to shush, but they wouldn’t have listened.
I stood in line to drop off my bags, and the meowing amplified. It was like a cat chorus where all the cats were tone deaf.
Three children in front of me thought the cats were hilarious and meowed back. Children are smart and understand the importance of animals. I saw some people with their phones out, filming the protesting cats.
One of the check-in agents looked harried, as if she wanted to quit because the woman in front of me was a demanding, entitled wretch and was giving her a bad time. She had missed her flight because she’d arrived at the airport thirty minutes late. Perhaps she had expected the pilot to hold the entire flight for her?
In order to shorten the ordeal for the hapless customer service rep, I took the cat cages off the cart and placed them directly behind the complaining, whining customer.
She whipped around to see what all the racket was, surprised to be surrounded by screaming cats.
“My cats get frazzled when people are rude and condescending,” I said. “It makes them scream. Hi, kitty, kitty.”
The woman said, all fluttery and irritated, “Well, I never!” and she cut her blubbering short and wobbled on.
“Thank you,” the rep said to me.
“No problem.” I hate flying. My cats hate it, too—I know this. How do planes stay in the air? Recently, a door flew off a plane in midair. The door landed about forty-five minutes away from Honeysuckle Pink in someone’s backyard.
Shouldn’t everyone be guaranteed the right to arrive at one’s destination with all airplane doors in place? Would a door fly off today? Would I be sitting by that door? Would I be sucked outsomewhere over the Rocky Mountains? How long would it take for me to die?
I don’t like heights. I would not like being outside of a plane when it’s flying.
My hands shook. My knees shook, too.
I was the last one to board the plane—deliberately. The less time in the flying gray tube, the better. I had bought two extra full seats just for my cats in their carriers.
The cats were still not happy, and the high-pitched wailing continued. Two businessmen helped me with the cat carriers. I made sure I sat in the aisle seat.
After we took off and leveled out, and before I could have a panic attack while wondering what I would do if the ceiling of the plane ripped off, I opened Sir Scott’s cat carrier so I could put a hand in to calm him down. The little rascal leaped out of his carrier and tore down the aisle.
“Shoot,” I muttered. I flipped up my tray table after I put my snacks, my serenity rocks, my good-luck heart charms, my headphones that played soothing ocean music, and my journal on the seat next to me. I had been working on a list titled “Bad Things That Could Happen on a Plane.”
I hustled down the aisle. People were laughing at Sir Scott. “Don’t pet him,” I announced. “He has intimacy issues and will bite.”
Hands pulled away rapidly.
Sir Scott darted under people’s seats, back into the aisle, then ran down a full row to the other side of the plane, screeching.
The flight attendants were not pleased, and I had to get on my knees to grab Sir Scott. He tried to wriggle away. “Stop it, Sir Scott. Your manners are appalling.”
I held him out in front of me with both hands, his body elongated. He continued his loud complaints. People had theirphones out. Excellent. I would be on YouTube as the Crazy Cat Lady on the Plane.
I sighed as I dumped Sir Scott back into his pink carrier. He hissed at me, and I hissed back.
“How are you feeling, Mom?” She was in bed on the second floor of her white house smack in the middle of ten country acres. The Swan Mountains stood practically in her backyard. She has said many times, “I should make the Swan Mountains pay me rent.” She lives about ten minutes from Lady Whiskey’s. I grew up in this hundred-year-old farmhouse with a banana-yellow door. Mom bought it years before I was born with the profits from Lady Whiskey’s. It was “a cursed haunted house, filled with ghosts, bad vibes, dust, mice, rats, and a raccoon,” she told me.
She opened the creaky windows, told the ghosts and animals to leave, lit vanilla candles, and played Mexican music to “bring in a soothing aura.” She’d cleaned it top to bottom and moved in, though it would be described, at best, asramshackle.
“After working in the bar all night with clanking beer steins, off-tune singing, honky-tonk tunes on full blast, and yelling men and fighting women, I wanted to be out in the country where the only noise I’d hear was the birds,” she’d said.
