You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Oh,WordPress had NO idea what they were asking me with this prompt and, as a result, y'all have no idea what you're about to endure on this prompt, either. Put your feet up, grab a cuppa, a good sense of humor, and buckle up. You're coming with me on a nostalgic road trip across country with me, Hubby, and my then three-year-old cat, Callie.

Callie was the unwitting participant in this whole charade, but since I knew we'd be driving cross-country, I decided to train her to drink from a water bottle (think of a giant hamster water bottle) designed for a crate. This began months before our May departure, and by the time our trip rolled around, she was accustomed to her arrangement. I don't know if she ever liked the water bottle, but at least she knew how to use it.

Our wedding was on Saturday, May 17, 1997. We had one whole day to pack the car with things we needed for the excursion. I'd been to Sam's Club to stock up on cat food, snacks for the car, and a cooler big enough to hold goodies to make daytime meals. Our family road trips when I was a kid involved sandwiches made with cold cuts Mom had already packed, or her famous Eggplant Parm sandwiches. We always had a cooler stocked with cold drinks, lunchmeats, and fresh fruit. This was my normal, so I didn't see a reason to deviate from that for this trip.

I packed a couple of gallons of water for Callie so she wouldn't have to adjust to strange water on the trip. We had plenty of dry kibble for her. The litter box was actually an under-the-bed storage box; long and flat with a cover suitable for placing her carrier on top. This was Callie's home for the next ten days as we'd venture across the lower forty-eight. The cooler sat in the back seat next to her on one side, and my CD boom box on the other side. My 1992 Honda Civic had only a tape player and an AM/FM radio. Archaic, I know.

The day of our departure arrived. I went to the bank one last time to deposit some checks we'd gotten for our wedding and get some cash to start out. We had a few hundred dollars in Traveler's Cheques that I stashed under Callie's bed in her carrier. She was a friendly cat unless you were a total stranger to her; there wouldn't be a person insane enough to stick their hand into a carrier with a growling, hissing cat inside. Mom helped me to fill the cooler with ice she'd made for us, all of our cold snacks and four perfect eggplant sandwiches.

My dad left to run a quick errand before we said our goodbyes. For reasons I still don't know, Hubby and I didn't wait for him to return before we packed up and left. Maybe it was because I couldn't bear to leave, and I couldn't say goodbye, even though I knew (or hoped) I'd see him again. My dad was seventy-seven when I got married and left home. That one awful, terrible decision is my biggest regret to this day, and one that still haunts me. I can't imagine how crushed he was to come home and discover he'd missed saying "so long." Dad never said goodbye. He said it was far too permanent.

We hit the road after lunch with a cat that howled all the way for the first five hours of the trip. Callie didn't stop crying until we pulled off the road in Gainesville. It wasn't a good sign for how our trip would go. Maybe we should've turned around then, and I should've gone back home to stay. We found a place to sleep, unpacked the car and got Callie and her things in place. As soon as I opened the carrier, she hissed at me and ran under the bed, where she spent most of the night growling and hissing.

This was the first night of hell. Think I'm exaggerating? Keep reading.

The next morning, Callie was on the adjoining bed, all curled up and happy as a clam. She'd eaten and drunk water overnight, and had used her "facilities." We packed up, grabbed breakfast on the go, and hit the road that morning. First destination? New Orleans, approximately eight hours to the north and west of Gainesville, Florida.

As is usual for springtime in the South, we ran into rain. And by rain, I mean torrential downpours of water as we crossed Lake Pontchartrain on Interstate 10. The weather was so awful we had to pull off the road and wait for the squall to pass by. Remember, this was a time before smartphones and weather maps on demand. We had to rely on local radio stations to find out weather. If my memory serves, we might have even had a tornado watch (or worse, a warning) during that storm. I'd never been so happy to see the sun breaking through the clouds as I was that day.

We were tired when we pulled off the road for the night at a nicer La Quinta just outside of New Orleans. When we checked in, I asked where to find the best Cajun food in the city. Maybe that gave us away as the nerdy tourists we were, and perhaps that was why they sent us down the worst road through the city. We wanted to stop in the French Quarter. Instead, we drove past it twice; once coming and once going the other way. I don't remember which road they sent us down on a wild goose chase. Whatever it was, it showcased the worst of the city. Drug deals in the open with no police to be found. Prostitutes walked the streets, openly soliciting johns as cars stopped at lights. We couldn't leave fast enough.

We ended up at Denny's just outside the hotel. That's where we found almost every police officer within a ten-mile radius. You can't make this stuff up.

The next morning, Hubby woke up sick as a dog, running a fever and a wicked sore throat. He insisted that he drive, however, because the trip helped him to focus on something other than being miserable. We packed up and headed out toward Oklahoma City to visit a couple of Hubby's friends on our way west. We made it as far as a one-light town called Dumas, Arkansas.

Now, I don't know what this little town has in it now, or how much it's grown in the time since we passed through. What I can tell you is that it had one motel with a pool that was greener than most folks' lawns, a Pizza Hut, and a Walmart. Because, of course, it had a Walmart. So much for the evening we'd planned to spend in the pool. Instead, we got a pizza from the Hut and brought it back to the room. Callie, our little trooper, never gave us another problem until much later on the trip. Hubby felt miserable, so we turned in early. How I didn't catch the crud from him was a miracle.

The next day we pulled in early to Oklahoma City. Hubby was still running a fever, but he felt a little better every day that passed. We checked in to our hotel and met his friends at a Cracker Barrel on the hotel property. It was a fun time, but we separated early; they went home, and Hubby and I went back to our room where Callie, my little angel, waited for us.

Our next eventual destination was the Grand Canyon, one of those places we'd agreed to stop when we planned the trip. So we left Oklahoma City heading west on Interstate 40. We'd been on the road a while; both of us needed to stretch, and we needed to let Callie roam a bit while we were stopped. I was checking our maps and TripTik (who remembers those?!) for the next rest area as we crossed into the Texas panhandle when I heard Hubby say, "Oh, shit!" I looked up... I was sorry I did, too.

The entire front of my 1992 Honda Civic was covered in runny, grassy horse poo. Oh, shit, indeed. The whole thing was hilarious until we had to stop and clean it off because it was drying fast. So rather than needing to chisel it off, we stopped at the first gas station we found. Rest room? Closed. We did what we could with the windshield and set out for the closest rest area. Luckily, the two guys who ran the RV dumping station took pity on me running back and forth to the ladies' room with a two-ounce sample bottle of Dawn dish soap and a thirty-two ounce souvenir cup I bought at Busch Gardens months before. Crappy business, that.

An hour later, the car was clean-ish. You can't make this stuff up.

The next leg of the trip is murky in my memory, but I know we stopped somewhere in New Mexico because I remember needing to drive us from the restaurant where we had dinner back to the hotel room. Hubby was probably sicker that night than he'd been the whole trip, so much so that we almost decided to spend the next day in town so he could rest.

The next morning, he felt better, finally on the mend. The Grand Canyon was next on the trip. I don't recall how long we drove before we got there, but I remember it being hot. Scorching hot, like triple digits hot. We paid $20 to enter the national park area and drove to a scenic overlook. We wanted to stay longer than fifteen minutes, but the heat was so terrible, and we didn't want to make Callie sick. Leaving her in the car was not an option, so we put the harness on her and carried her to the overlook's edge. People must have thought we were crazy with a cat in my arms. Luckily, she was too timid to fuss, and she even allowed us to have a photo snapped to commemorate her first (and only) trip to the Grand Canyon. This is what a newlywed couple looks like on their sixth day on a cross-country trip with an equally weary, cantankerous calico cat.

Charming, isn't it?

After we left the Canyon, we continued our drive across the desert in search of a cactus. It didn't matter the size or type. We just wanted to see one cactus. Was that really SO much to ask? During this stretch of road, somewhere between the Grand Canyon and our next stop, I looked over at the man driving my car and had the most horrifying thought... "Who the hell are you, and why are you driving MY car?!" Maybe I should've taken that unease as a sign of bigger, but not necessarily better, things to come...?

Anyway, we reached the California border on Interstate 40 and our first "customs" checkpoint on the entire trip. "Are you carrying citrus from Florida?" Um, no. It's not in season down there (Duh!!) "Is that your cat?" No, we just picked her up along the side of the road in Amarillo... Seriously? We had to show her medical papers because without them, she'd have been stuck in quarantine for a week. It's a good thing we listened to the person who insisted we bring health and vaccination records for Miss Callie.

California didn't exactly give us a warm, fuzzy welcome, but we were exhausted. We stopped for the night in a town called Needles, which was where we, ironically, saw our first and only cactus. We saw the hotel had a pool (this one was clean, at least) and a spa, so after dinner, we went swimming and took a nice, relaxing dip in the hot spa. And that was my first huge mistake, and a lesson hard learned.

When you're on birth control, almost anything will give you a raging infection.

The next morning, I was miserable. Hubby ran to the store for some medicine while I packed Callie into her carrier, picked up and secured her toys, food, water, and litter box. When he returned, we were all ready to hit the road. Our next planned stop was San Francisco to meet a friend. But we were getting travel burnout; Hubby was still sick, I was in itchy, burning agony (IYKYK Ladies), and the last thing I wanted to do was go into San Francisco when we were both under the weather. We found a cute, quaint little restaurant that specialized in split pea soup. It was definitely not American in theme and decor, but the food was incredible. That was our second to last night on the road.

The next stop brought us into Oregon, and believe me when I tell you that a wall of rain greeted us almost like a car wash, and it didn't stop raining for days after we made our final destination. Anyway, I looked in our AAA accommodation book for southern Oregon and found a hotel that took pets in a town called Phoenix. I told Hubby I wasn't going to tell the hotel we had her; the book stated they accepted pets with a fee, and trying to save a few dollars, I purposely neglected to disclose Callie. We checked in, got our room key, and drove around the back to where our room was located. And that's where I saw the sign on the room door that stated that pets were absolutely prohibited in the guest rooms. Apparently, there was a campground behind the hotel, and THAT'S where pets were allowed. You can probably guess what happened next...

I smuggled Callie into the room under my hoodie.

We got her set up, but this room had a window in it. Callie was a notorious window-sitter. Well, with a direct prohibition, we couldn't let her sit in the window, but we were hungry. The plan was to put her in the bathroom for a few hours while we went to dinner. I placed my boombox in the bathroom, found a local station and we closed her in. But Callie, God bless her, had other plans. She yowled so loudly I thought my Dad back in Florida could hear her. That obviously wasn't working. Time for Plan B; finding a pizza place that would deliver to a hotel room. Thanks, Callie.

The next morning began our last day on the road. We could see the finish line from where we were. The problem that morning was, Callie hadn't used her litter box, even after a substantial breakfast. See, that's the problem with a cat. You can't tell them to "go potty" on command like you can train a dog to do. We pondered what to do, and decided to pack up and go anyway. The first rest area we found, we'd stop and let her stretch, use her "facilities", and maybe give her a treat or two.

As cats are wont to do, she had other plans.

About ten minutes into our trip, Callie started meowing, pacing inside her carrier, and became more restless as the miles ticked off. A rest area was coming up, about 10 minutes from the mile marker. I assured Callie we'd be stopping soon.

Did anyone ever tell me it's nigh impossible to bargain with a cat having a five alarm potty emergency? No. No, they didn't.

Not two minutes later, I see something white out of the corner of my eye; Callie's paw. That little stinker was tapping Hubby on the shoulder with a good deal of urgency, as though she was saying, "Hey Dad, I gotta pee!"

I swear, you can't make this stuff up.

Originally posted: https://randomthoughtspurposefullife.com/2025/07/05/you-cant-make-this-stuff-up/

©2025 Wendy Londona All rights reserved