Paperwork and promises

“Guys! You won’t believe this!”

Blackie doesn’t read English, but cats are good mind readers, so she knew something was afoot that involved a change of scene and a long, long journey.

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Just as well Willow had never heard of aeroplanes or she might have become anxious.

Having discovered that affordable properties were available Upstate New York, the question was how to go about making a purchase without first selling the one I currently occupied. I mean, you can hardly move into rented quarters with 13 cats.

Picking up the phone, I made an appointment with my financial adviser at the bank and presented the matter to her. The property in New York would be substantially less than the large house in Washington, so the funds would be available, eventually. But how was I to arrange finances in the meantime?

It shouldn’t be a problem because the bank held my retirement account which could be collateral for a temporary loan. So I filed that paperwork, committed to a purchase and signed another whole set of documents.

Now I could make friends and family aware of my intentions. Predictably, they were a bit surprised.

Upstate New York? With those winters? Why? And how?

“What about the cats?”

Why not? Because I want to. They’ll go with me.

“How are you going to move 13 cats across the States?”

Just then, I had no idea, but I knew it could be, would be done.

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It was suggested that I try to re-home at least some of the cats, but the reason I had so many was because several were not actually adoptable for reasons of temperament or age and there was absolutely no way I would take any of them to a shelter.

If you bring an animal into your home, you accept responsibility for it and that was the commitment I had made to all those cats. No question.

Which is not to say that arranging it all wasn’t a rather daunting task.

Grant and I would fly from Seattle since driving was out of the question for me. We could each carry one cat into the cabin of the aircraft. It is possible, of course, to transport animals down below, in the hold, but having worked in airports and seen what can happen to animals that are shipped in that way, I would not consider it.

Without too much trouble, I found a company that could transport the 11 other cats by road. When I mentioned the number, the man I spoke to hesitated, put me on hold, then came back and said yes, that could be arranged – for a rather large fee which I had been expecting.

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Things were falling into place.

Moving into the big house a decade earlier, I’d finally had space to unpack all my possessions that had been kept for years in boxes. Items I’d inherited from my parents, dozens upon dozens of pictures.

So now, it had to be packed back up again after some serious weeding. I lost count of the trips we made with donations to charities and second hand book shops. And to UPS to collect more boxes and packing materials. The task seemed endless.

Packing up any house is arduous, but this one was on three levels which magnified the task.

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Surprisingly, the cats did not seem perturbed by our activities.

In fact, when I think back over the many times I have moved, my cats have never been noticeably bothered. Thankfully.

So, it was all going well, until….

Remember that small, temporary loan? Funny thing about that. Every time I asked the bank when the funds would be released, I got another excuse. In the end, I had to get pushy, which is so not my nature, but I had a deadline rushing toward me. When pressed, the loans manager said would come by the house next day with the paperwork.

Would I ever be done with paperwork?

The man showed up alright. To tell me that he had decided not to approve the loan.

Too risky, he’d decided after so many weeks of promises.

Luckily, I never count on promises, especially not from banks. My brother had agreed to lend me some money to help with costs and I’d also worked out a contingency plan, just in case. It was not a good one, but the only other option was to back out of the deal and we were way too far down the line.

Additionally, the people whose house I was buying had already had one sale fall though. They were an elderly couple who really didn’t need to be messed about.

So I was obliged to pull the needed funds from my retirement account which involved a heavy tax penalty. To say that I was annoyed is to put it mildly. Later, when the dust had settled, I wrote to complain and the bank had the effrontery to tell me that what I had done, borrowing money on one house to pay for another, was illegal. Which I could understand. However, I had been following the advice given to me by their representative and the collateral would have been the funds they held in said retirement account.

Receiving that communication, I was outraged. But in no position to pursue the matter and knowing it would be a waste of energy, I had to let it go. In due course, I paid an obscene amount of tax to a government that I despised. That is life.

I closed my accounts with that bank and purged them from my memory.

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There was never a question in my mind which two cats would travel with us by air. Willow had attached herself to me in a way that none of the others had and instinctively, I decided Muffin should accompany us on the flight.

Two days before our departure as instructed, I called to check in with the transport company that would be collecting the others. “How many cats are we picking up?” I was asked. When I told him, there was a long pause followed by the unwelcome comment that they couldn’t transport 11 cats.

Surprisingly, I didn’t faint or begin to scream. Remaining calm, I said that it had all been arranged and that everything was in motion and asked the man to please sort it out.

He promised to call me back and I spent 10 anxious minutes wondering how to cope with this development since for it I had no fallback plan.

It appears that the company had a pool of drivers they used and presumably one of them agreed to swing into action at short notice.

On the Saturday morning of our exodus, we waited for the transport, preparing to load up the 11 cats, hating that we were subjecting them to a two-day journey with strangers. Undoubtedly, it was the hardest part of the entire exercise.

Two vehicles turned up, one with a competent and organised two-person crew.

The other, I assume was the hastily arranged extra transport, in the care of two perfectly nice individuals who did not inspire great confidence. Grant looked close to meltdown and I half expected him to refuse to load the cats into their vehicle, but we got it all done with a minimum of fuss and off they all went. We would see them again in Cambridge two days hence, but it was awful waving them goodbye.

That night, Grant and I went off to SEATAC with Willow and Muffin to begin or own journey east. Using frequent flyer miles, I had obtained business class tickets in order to have additional under-seat space for the cats, as much as for Grant’s long legs. As we rolled for take-off, Muffin threw up for the first time.

A blessedly strong tail wind cut an hour off what is normally a six-hour flight, yet it was excruciating. Muffin being sick, Grant fretting, myself standing half the time because that was less painful than sitting. On arrival, we picked up a rental car to drive 5 hours north to our new house, purchased online.

Getting out of metropolitan New York in an unfamiliar car while jet-lagged and severely stressed, is a bit of a challenge,\ but with a surprising dearth of swearing, the man managed and we were soon in open countryside, laughing. Perhaps by then we were close to hysterics.

Poor Muffin. She had been sick several times and we realised subsequently that she suffered from motion sickness, but it was merciful that I’d chosen her to fly which at least spared her an extra 24 hours of torment. As cats do, she bounced back quickly.

Willow had been eerily silent through the entire journey. At the airport I’d had to take her in my arms to go through security. Because she never consented to being handled, I was terrified that she would fight me and attempt to flee. But she appeared to feel safer in my arms and did not struggle.

In Cambridge at last, the two of them moved into the house, sniffing in all the corners while we unpacked the few things we’d carried with us.

Next morning, to our immense relief the two transports turned up and we introduced the 11 others to their new consolidated home. It was the first time some of them had met, but the home was new to all, so there were no territorial disputes and it went well.

Which was most fortunate considering we had nowhere else to go!

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