Hello Santa Fe -- TLC Moves Cats and (Eventually) Programs West

Three months ago if you had asked me if it was possible for us to move cross-country with our dozen cats, I would have laughed hysterically. “You must be crazy”, I would have said. “There is no way to do it.” And, how often do we receive phone calls from people who are moving and believe they have to give up their cats? It’s one of the most common reasons pets are given to shelters. Yet, here we are, freshly moved into our new home with all our cats in tow. No, it wasn’t easy, but we did it. The move from Ann Arbor to Santa Fe took just 8 weeks to effect.

First we had to break the mindset that it was impossible to move with so many cats. We did this by breaking the move into the many steps we needed to get from one home to the other. With a work list in hand, we took care of as many steps as we could -- as soon as we could. This way, as we approached the actual “move date”, most of our work would be long done and we could focus on the monumental (psychologically at least) part of corralling 12 cats (4 are feral and not touchable) and making the 1,500 mile drive to Santa Fe. And, as we completed each step on our work list, the overall project became simpler -- turning an impossible goal into an achievable reality.

Our most perplexing problem was deciding how to move the cats. After weighing the different options of transporting them we concluded there was no good way to do it, so we chose the best of many bad options: driving them there. Our car wasn’t big enough for all of us, so we traded it in on a Ford cargo van. We filled its interior with 3 large cages and put 4 cats in each cage – carefully grouping them with their best buddies. We chose cages over carriers because the cats are close to each other and we hoped that snuggling with their friends would lower their anxiety levels. And, by housing them in cages we could provide each group with a litter box, food and water to make the drive more comfortable.

On moving day, as the movers carried out our belongings we started loading up the cats. We wanted to get as early a start as we could once we were free to leave. First we loaded the 8 companion cats – giving them a chance to adjust to being in the cages before we got on the road. Once they were all boarded, we turned our attention to our feral cats -- Emmy, Cleo, Joyce and Larry. We opened a can of Friskies Tuna & Chicken and laced it with a sedative called Acepromazine. They were a little suspect – wondering why their house had suddenly been emptied out and the other cats had vanished – but they couldn’t resist the fish odor and ate the food as we had hoped. We waited an hour – the time it takes for the sedative to work – and then tried to catch them in carriers. Unfortunately the sedative seemed to have little effect on them, so we took out a cat net we purchased just in case. We hoped the net would level the playing field by preventing the cats from running.

Cleo was quickly trapped and we learned why nets are a bad way to catch a cat. She was wound up inside the net and we had to very carefully untangle her while trying to keep her in the carrier so she wouldn’t get loose. We succeeded and delivered her to the van to wait for her friends. We had an easier time grabbing Larry, Joyce and Emmy – wearing leather gloves and catching them in a super-thick quilt. In less than half an hour, we had caught all 4 feral cats and were ready to hit the road – sighing a big sigh of relief over finishing the least controlled part of our move.

Thankfully, the cats were on their best behavior – only two were obviously distressed: Simon and Charlie. Both cried most of the first day, but even they settled down and accepted the ride after that. In spite of the cats’ cooperation, the drive proved every bit as horrible as I had imagined.

Although my husband Ed and I are seasoned road travelers, this trip was more challenging than any we had taken before. With the cats in the van, we couldn’t check into a hotel along the way when we were tired but had to rely on napping at rest stops. And the late fall weather worked against us too – it was dark after only a few hours on the highway – raining nonstop the entire first night. When we stopped for a quick Waffle House breakfast we realized we had been on the road 17 hours, yet were not even half way there. Very depressing!

Fortunately the daylight and sunny skies made the second day’s drive go much quicker than the first. By 6 PM we were in New Mexico heading west to Santa Fe thinking we were home free. But, as it turned dark and we started our northern approach to Santa Fe on Route 285 – a 2-lane mountain road we had never driven on before. Because it’s sparsely populated and lacked commercial areas, the road was really dark – and out of nowhere we found ourselves in a dramatic mountain snowstorm. The road soon turned whiter than our knuckles and we weren’t sure whether to continue– not knowing if the road would start to curve or climb – or go back to a lower altitude out of the snow. We forged ahead and as quickly as the snow started it stopped and we made the rest of the way in the dark but on dry roads.

Before we knew it we were at our new house. We unpacked the cats to explore their new home while we spent the night at a local hotel – getting a much-earned night of sleep. Although the moving process took 8 weeks, the actual drive took just a little more than a day -- and now that we're settled in our new home -- it was well worth it!