Brandon and Daisy Visit The Carolinas, Part II: That Palm Tree Lifestyle

 When we last left our intrepid heroes...

I will preface this by saying that a few days before we made our trip, Hurricane Idalia almost ruined it. 

Idalia fired up in the Atlantic about a week before we were to leave Omaha, and in the span of a short few days it got big and powerful, and appeared that it would be taking aim almost directly for where my parents live on Oak Island.

This is not a new phenomenon for my parents or for the island itself -- there is a reason that almost every house down there is built on very sturdy stilts, especially the ones within a few miles from the beach. Now, mind you, my parents are on an island, so everything is within a few miles from the beach -- it's not a large island (19.9 square miles, according to Wikipedia). Additionally, the island's populace is about 97% rich old white people with sports cars or giant bro-dozer trucks. So, there's money there, and they protect their property. I lost count of how many douchey Mustangs, or white-haired old men in Mazda MX-5 Miatas I saw on the first day alone.

Anyway. On the Monday before we left, Idalia made a slight turn in the Atlantic and in doing so, it did not/would not directly hit my parents, only skirt the coast. What my parents did get was some hard rain, fairly high winds, and a tornado warning in the county -- which apparently tore the roof off the local animal shelter about two miles from their house (we didn't see this, we were only told later). My parents didn't lose power, because -- conveniently -- all of the power lines to the island are all underground. Probably because of scenarios like this. They were fine, and the storm passed and moved out to sea without major incident for them two full days before we arrived. When we got there, it was dark, so we wouldn't have been able to see damage anyhow in the night. When we were finally able to experience the island in the daylight over the course of the week, the only way we could tell that a storm had rolled through was some remnants of storm surge and a bit of flooding in the more "coastal" areas really close to the beach. We never actually saw the animal shelter, and for the most part, anyone who hadn't been there would never have known that a hurricane had just rolled through.

Sunday morning, we woke up and I went outside onto the front porch -- the house has two giant wooden decks, one on the front of the house and one on the back, and both are screened in to keep out bugs. And the first thing I noticed was palm trees. Everywhere. Palm trees that we couldn't see when we were driving down there in the night, and palm trees we didn't see in Raleigh (though I did notice, on the way back through Raleigh at the end of the week, that they had a few here and there as well). 

I will say that my parents were very happy we were there -- they've been trying to get us to come visit them in NC for many years. They've owned the house for eight years and change, so they had it when we last visited home in 2016, to WV, but they had not at that juncture made it their primary residence. Well, in the time since, they have, and my parents are likely selling the house in WV sooner rather than later (though they've been saying they were going to do that for years). I can't stress enough how wonderful the beach house is. For starters, it's gigantic -- it's likely larger than our own home here in Omaha and is laid out in a very logical manner. Doors on each end of the top floor that each lead out onto their respective decks, a kitchen/dining area on one side of the floor and a living room on the other, and linking them together on the sides, four bedrooms and two bathrooms -- one bathroom and two bedrooms on each side. To the left of the kitchen was the master bedroom and what used to be a kids' room, and on the right was my mother's storage room/closet and the "guest" room, which would serve as our bedroom while we were there. The master was quite large, and the other three bedrooms were fairly small.

Downstairs (read: under the actual house, under the stilts) there is a carport area for two cars, an outdoor shower (I mean, it is the beach), and an outdoor sort of storage area/basement area that my dad uses as a workbench/work-room as well as his recording studio. Behind the house is a beautiful, flat backyard with pine trees on each side of it. 

ALL of the furniture, appliances, and about 95% of the decor came with the house when they bought it. Including the beds, tables, couches, etc. In the "kids" room there are two sets of bunk beds, one on each side of the room, presumably because the house's last owners had kids or grandkids who would stay with them frequently. It's all still there; my parents had no reason to move it or get rid of it. Most of the stuff in the house appliance-wise is in full working order to this day, though some of it has its quirks -- the stove has a burner on it that doesn't really work properly, the washer and dryer are finicky (so said my mother, but I found them to work perfectly fine and lightning fast), the downstairs outdoor shower doesn't work well, etc. The house is about fifteen years old give or take, all new construction. 

My parents' street is lined with very similar houses on both sides, and it's the sort of neighborhood where everyone knows everyone else, and all parties are extremely social. That sort of environment is my personal definition of hell -- if I move to a beach house in a coastal neighborhood, ever, it's because I want to be left alone and to get away from society by moving to the beach. This is, of course, my eventual plan: to own a house by the sea, filled with cats, and with Daisy by my side -- and to have the rest of the world leave us the fuck alone. 

My parents no longer have cats. The last one died about two months ago, and even he lived in WV at the WV house. What my parents do have are two dogs and a stray parrot.

Yes, a parrot.

A little less than a decade ago in WV, when my parents first got their golden retriever, my Dad had her out in the yard when she ran off and came back with a live parrot in her mouth (she is a bird dog, after all). I'm glossing over some details here for brevity's sake, but it's an actual parrot. A small one, about the size of a robin, but a parrot. Nobody knew where the parrot had come from -- my parents' house in WV is in a very rural area several miles from the closest "town," twenty-ish miles from the closet major city (Morgantown) and about fifteen miles from the county seat "city" of Kingwood, where I went to high school. They're in the middle of nowhere, and my parents' dog found and caught, without killing it, a parrot in their back yard.

My dad put up flyers and online posts trying to find the owner and luckily, my parents had an old birdcage they'd gotten at an antique sale/auction at some point so that they could keep him safely in it. Nobody responded to the "lost parrot" ads/flyers, and it had a band on its leg that had a number on it. My dad tracked that number to last being registered in a pet store in Chicago.

Chicago is 547 miles away from my parents' house in WV. 

I'm sure I've likely told this story before in previous posts here, of course, but the sheer oddity of it bears repeating.

So ever since then, my parents have had a parrot. They know the breed of it and told me what it is at one point, but I can't remember. It's not like the giant tropical parrot, but a little green bird.

[EDIT]: I looked it up, and he's a green-cheeked conure, one of these:

The parrot talks sometimes, and I've heard it say words or phrases on occasion, but it mostly just squawks and screeches, and will not speak on command no matter how hard you try to get it to do so. He is also a bitey little bastard with a mean temperament, and yells every time he sees my dad (who does, of course, give him the most love and food).

I asked my mother if they ever thought to try to teach it anything interesting, like racial slurs (I will stress that this was a joke) and my mother was horrified at such a suggestion.

They never really gave the bird a name. My dad calls him "Bug." My mother calls him "Turd." So there you go. He doesn't really respond to either one anyway. He also passes out sometimes while still on his perch, laying down and looking dead like a canary in a coal mine, which is...a sight to see, to be sure. 

The average lifespan of green-cheeked conures is 10-25 years, with some pet conures living up to 30 years. They have no idea how old he was when the dog found him. He could die in another year or two or he could outlive both of my parents (realistically speaking, of course, not to be morbid). I will also state that I am not a fan of this bird because he's a loud little asshole, and every time I visit home I find myself telling him to shut the fuck up or just silently give him the finger if he starts going off when I walk through the room. 

My parents' dogs are far more tolerable than the bird.

Now, mind you, I grew up in the house in WV with dogs. There's not been a time since 1994 or so where either/both of my parents didn't have a dog -- the cats came much later, with most of them (at one time, they had three indoor-outdoor cats, and later halfway adopted a pack of five or six strays that were, to my knowledge, outdoor-only). When I moved to the midwest in 2006, my parents had a very elderly shepherd mix who was going blind and was mostly deaf, an eight-year-old shih-tzu who was supposed to be my dog but who quickly became my mother's, and an indoor-outdoor elderly cat who had shown up on our doorstep a few years before I moved out, in the middle of a snowstorm, so we took her in and made her ours. She also became my mother's cat over time -- and my mother used to hate cats.

There's a heated debate to this day who was the first person to let that cat into the house.

The shepherd would die about two years after I moved out, the shih-tzu died about ten years ago of old age, and the elderly cat would hang in there for years upon years afterwards before succumbing to old age herself -- our estimated guess was that she had to be at least twenty years old. In the interim times my parents would bring in two other stray cats -- one of them a big orange tom, and the other a seal-point Himalayan/Siamese male, as well as get two more dogs: the golden retriever and another shih-tzu. What I'm saying is that my parents, at one point, had three indoor-outdoor cats, two dogs, a parrot, and would later have a family of even more cats show up that they were also taking care of. That's a farm full of pets, folks. That's a lot of animals. 

When Daisy and I last visited home to WV in 2016, they had all three cats, the parrot, the two dogs and hadn't acquired the second cat family yet (I should ask questions about that, as I don't know where they went or what happened to them, only that they're not there anymore). In the time since, all three of those cats have died, with the last one being the big orange tomcat -- about a month before we flew down to NC. At that point my parents made the declaration that they were "done with cats." The last survivor who died shortly before our visit was exclusively a WV cat and never went down to NC (actually I don't think any of them ever went down there), and he was taken care of by the neighbors while my parents lived in the beach house. When my dad last went up there earlier this summer, he was in pretty bad shape and the vet said he was riddled with tumors, so my dad (sadly) knew he had to ease him into the next life via ye olde sleeping injection. It's an inevitability for my own cats that I know is eventually coming, likely, that I don't really want to think about any more than necessary.

So, in NC, my parents have the golden retriever, the shih-tzu, and the asshole parrot. And the dogs love us. The golden retriever -- the dog I always wanted as a child but never had -- is old now, weighs 129 pounds (and she's lost weight from the 150ish she used to be), is physically larger than my mother and looks like a bear. She wants constant attention and love from anyone and everyone, and is rambunctious and loud if she doesn't get it. The shih-tzu adores me, has more than a passing physical resemblance to the last shih-tzu they had, and is the sweetest little dog ever. He's a lap dog, he likes to play, he listens to commands, and he's a sweet little lovey boy. His personality is also almost a complete 180 from the last one, who was (like the bird) a little asshole. This dog is fun. He's a good dog. He remembered me and Daisy and he absolutely wanted all the love he could get from me/us, as well as wanted to play a lot.

These dogs follow my parents everywhere around the house, constantly. If one of the parents goes out onto one of the porches, they follow. If they go to the bathroom, they follow. If they're in bed or in the kitchen, so are the dogs. 

Well, not the golden retriever, as she's so giant she doesn't get into bed with the parents -- she has a pattern of sleeping like a rock on the floor of the parents' bathroom, and once she's out, she's out -- when I would wake up early most mornings to make coffee and go out onto the back porch to read and vape, she would occasionally glance up at me when I passed between rooms, register (you could almost see the wheels turning) who I was, and then ease back into sleep.

Side note, my parents must sleep really deep/hard, because it is not quiet to go in and out of the back door, nor is their Alexa (which controls a good chunk of the lighting around the house) quiet when you give her commands to turn on/off lights and fans. If I ever disturbed them, they never told me. 

Anyway.

That is how most of the time went during our trip. We'd get up in the mornings, have a light-ish breakfast, figure out what or if we were going to do anything for the day, go do it, come back home, chill with the parents and have dinner, and then go back to bed. Some days we didn't really go anywhere or do anything, other days we went out and did a bunch of things around the area. I'm not going to bore you with all of the miniscule details of our daily activities, but I will give a brief bullet point list of things we did:

• Went to the local farmer's market with the parents, where Daisy got some local art and shaved italian ice (which was wonderful), and I bought a funnel cake and ate it -- the first funnel cake I've had in close to twenty years.
• Did some grocery shopping and Walmarting around the area, where we found that the local Walmart was meh at best, and for all of the praise people give Publix, found that it's just a pretty average grocery store. Daisy did find a cute dress at the Walmart though, and everywhere down there sells Utz chips, so those are pluses. 

As an aside, Food Lion is a big chain in NC; I don't know if they're based in the Carolinas or what, but there were at least three of them between where we were in NC and SC while we were there. We didn't go to any of them (no need, really). 

• Visited the beach three times -- once with both parents, after the farmer's market (to an overlook dock; we didn't go down on the sand that time), and twice on our own. The morning we left, Daisy got up early and took the Spaceship Van to the beach by herself to get some sun and get into the water one last time before heading home. 
• One of those beach trips I got to see a giant lighthouse, though I didn't get to go up in it. Daisy took pictures.
• Went to two different beach/souvenir shops, the touristy shops, where (and I'm only a little ashamed to say this) I spent well over $400 on various items -- including many t-shirts/tank-tops, two pairs of sandals, a hoodie, a skull-and-crossbones beach towel, keychains made from actual bullets (one went to my dad, the other went to Daisy's), a floppy sun hat, a swimsuit top for Daisy, salt-water taffy, and I'm sure some other little things I'm forgetting. 
• Drove down to North Myrtle Beach one afternoon and went to the Alligator Adventure park, where I finally fulfilled my dream of seeing gators. Lots of gators. Hundreds, if not thousands, of gators:

Unfortunately, as cool as they were and as many design options as they had, the Alligator Adventure park did not have t-shirts in fat guy sizes, so I couldn't come back with one.

• Had dinner at the Mellow Mushroom pizza place in North Myrtle Beach, which Daisy and I both deemed as "meh, passable" but not great (but my parents loved the leftovers).
• We did not go to the mainline Myrtle Beach or visit the Grand Strand or any of that, though if we'd left the house earlier in the day there would likely have been the opportunity to do so. Even driving down to North Myrtle Beach from Oak Island was about a 80 minute trip, roughly. It's close, but not incredibly close.
• We got to experience the sheer luxury of my mother's Lexus not once, but multiple times as passengers.
• We found a new type of vegan sandwich meat (Unreal Deli) in the Publix, and as much as I love the company's peppered "turkey" and "roast beef" it has now given me the screaming shits like three times, so I've learned that it must be enjoyed in moderation at best. This did not stop us from bringing multiple packs of it home, where it has sat in the refrigerator downstairs since we got back and I have been eating through it very slowly.

The rest of the time we were there was mainly spent with the parents as leisurely as possible. My dad is retired, and has been for a while, so he is always around the house taking care of the house, and my mother and the dogs, as needed. My mother retired a few years ago, but eventually went back to work at the local community college down there -- a job that she says she really loves and enjoys. She had taken the week off work while we were there, so she was also around the house full time. 

Here's the thing about my parents, and it's multifaceted -- they deeply love both me and Daisy. They lovingly accepted Daisy into their lives when we got together and later married, and I mean, I'm their son, so they love me as well of course. My dad has always been a wonderful man, and I think in the 30+ years he and my mother have been together, I've only ever had one or two mild arguments with him, back in my teenage years (never as an adult). 

My mother and I, however, have had a much more tempestuous relationship over the years, which has gone from very sweet and loving at best to very bitter, critical, and angry at worst. I'd say it's not always been wine and roses but for my mother at least there is always wine, and therein lies the problem -- without going into too much unnecessary detail.

I do love my mother. I love my mother very much -- she raised me as a single parent for years, making many sacrifices along the way so that I could have as normal of a childhood as possible. She mostly succeeded at that, and where she didn't it wasn't necessarily her fault. That being said, and being completely honest about it, there are many things I do not love about my mother -- either through nature (read: genetically) or through nurture (read: my upbringing/formative years) -- that I recognize in myself even to this day. And while many of these traits I've tried to fight or downplay/overcome in one instance or another, this trip made it very clear to me -- as a fully grown adult man in his forties -- that I am absolutely my mother's son. 

"Every single one of my neuroses," I told Daisy when we were alone in the van driving somewhere, "and I do mean every single one of them, all come from that woman."

Try as I might, a lot of it I can't fight.

But.

Over the years I have become more immune and battle hardened to a lot of my mother's...shall we say... quirks. Yeah, let's go with that. It's likely the nicest way I can put it. So I have the equivalent of my "shields up" most of the time when we're around her. 

If only.

So, when my mother approaches both of us about our weight -- both together and then separately, multiple times throughout the trip, and even after it has been made very clear to her that I have lost more than 50 pounds since she last saw me, am taking care of my diabetes and staying active, and that the foods she sees me eat on vacation are just that, vacation foods and not my normal diet  and she keeps harping on it more and more...it's time to not be nice. 

This is just one of multiple things.

There was a solid chunk of time over the trip where I would just go into the bedroom and take a nap or go outside on the porch, or tell Daisy (occasionally) that we needed to go somewhere and do something, or either I needed to be unconscious or my mother needed to be, because I just couldn't deal with her at the time. I felt like I was fifteen again and living at home. I just couldn't do it. I felt like that picture of Ben Affleck.

That's right, you know the one.

To be fair, it was not always like this during our trip. Even when it was, I know my mother's heart is in the right place and her words/actions come from a place of love. I get that, I acknowledged it with her. But I also told her in no uncertain terms that the critiques -- whatever they were about at any given time, whether it was my weight, Daisy's weight, or something else -- were to be stopped and dropped. Completely. And, to her credit, she complied.

In the more quiet times, when she and I were alone, she told me that she really liked my tattoos, and told me how much she missed me and loved me. She also told me how much she adored Daisy, and told Daisy on the side how patient and kind I was, how I was a good man just like my dad.

"Well, I mean, the man did practically raise me from age ten onward," I told Daisy. And he did. Much of my personality, my sense of humor, and my likes/dislikes can all be traced back to that man. 

He gave me who I am, and my mother gave me the neuroses I have. So, even trade? I guess?

In a long conversation alone with Daisy, she also gave her the rundown of our "family history," I suppose, involving letting Daisy hear my mother's side of the story of her marriage to my father, their divorce, my father's abandonment of me, her marriage to my abusive former stepfather and later divorce from him, to meeting my dad 30 years ago and basically starting her life over with him -- when she was half the age she is now (and was younger than I am now by a substantial amount).

Daisy went on to tell me that she'd told her I'd had a rough, traumatic childhood with a lot of pain and a lot of upheaval, with very little stability. And while this is somewhat true, it's mostly a dramatized version of the truth. Yeah, part of my younger years were pretty fucked up, but by the time I was in middle school (so, mid-90s at the latest) my life had stabilized and I was, well, pretty normal. Normal for me, anyway. I had to correct some minor info here and there from what she told Daisy, but most of the specifics were there. I also likely think my mother downplayed how hard her own life had been as well. 

But this was far from the most interesting conversation we had with my parents when we were there, because as they are now senior citizens and are, of course, not getting any younger, the inevitable conversation about their eventual deaths had to happen. My mother informed us that she wants to be cremated and her ashes scattered in the ocean (which, amusingly enough, is what I'd like to happen to me as well). She wants it to be done as quickly and cheaply as possible, without any real fanfare. I did not ask her if I get the Lexus -- it would have been in exceedingly poor taste and while amusing, likely only amusing to me. My mother did tell Daisy on the side that when she left this planet, I wouldn't have to worry about money -- which I find interesting because my parents are not exceedingly well off. It is what it is. It's not like I'm planning to retire on my inheritance or anything like that, because there really isn't one -- but I guess there's life insurance and the like? Okay, that makes sense. 

My mind wandered back to one time when my mother called me in the middle of the day a few years ago to ask/confirm my social security number with her, so I could be listed as the beneficiary of something or other. I confirmed it with her and she no doubt listed me on any number of different things afterwards, something I'll probably have to deal with in another decade or so (conservative estimate). 

As the week began to wind down, we were beginning to get more and more tired and in pain from all the activity. Daisy had been fighting off back and foot pain all week, and I'd gotten to the point where no matter how hard the bed was (and it was very firm/old in that room) I would pass out and be dead to the world for many hours at a time and then wake up sore and stiff until I moved around enough again for the day -- once more restarting/continuing the cycle. Add to this that every day we were there, our allergies were horrifying (we aren't exactly used to a southern beach climate with a lot of palm and pine trees) and the temperatures, every day, were in the mid-to-high 90s. 

On our last day there -- Thursday, the 7th -- we said our goodbyes and drove the Spaceship Van back up to Raleigh, where we once more ate at the Pure Vegan Cafe -- I was smart this time and ordered the breakfast burger for myself. I don't even remember what Daisy got, but I know she put half of it in her backpack and took it with her, because when we went through security at the airport that afternoon, she was randomly pulled aside for additional screening and the TSA guy there (who looked like he was seventeen) pulled it out, opened it up, made a face, and put it back in her bag.

We dropped off the Spaceship Van (and were sad to see it go), got on/off our flights without incident, and around midnight that night we were wheels down in Omaha and took an Uber back home. Our cats were delighted to see us -- Pete and Hank were very vocal about that, and we got ready for bed. 

It was at that point the most amusing thing happened of the whole vacation -- after we got home.

Daisy showered and went to bed first. I stayed up a bit and used my computer for a while, until Pete began wailing loudly and tried to break down my office door. I finally left the room and went into the bedroom, where Pete and Hank immediately joined us in bed. Then Sadie came up and happily got her spot. A few minutes later, we felt another whump on the bed, and Daisy turned on the light on her phone to find Maggie crawling up between us. Yes, Maggie, the geriatric downstairs cat who almost never goes upstairs (it's hard on her body, and she's slowly dying of kidney failure), missed us so much that she climbed the stairs, got up on the ottoman at the foot of the bed, and jumped up onto the bed with us to snuggle in between us.

So it was all four cats, plus us, in the bed that night. I think they missed us.

When we both awakened the next morning, Maggie was still in there with us, though she had moved to the floor next to Hank's cat tree, likely to keep an eye on us so we wouldn't leave again. 

And that's the story of our trip. I'd return to work the following Sunday night, and Daisy would return on the following Monday morning. We've slowly gotten back into the normal groove of things since then, though I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the Carolinas -- the climate, the atmosphere, being able to sit on the back porch at night and hear the ocean, and not really having any responsibilities or duties to have to worry about for the time we were there. I miss my parents too, of course. This is likely the last real trip we'll take this year, too, as it gets colder and we buckle down for the snow and ice of the coming winter months. 

I will, of course, miss the Spaceship Van too.

Brandon and Daisy Visit The Carolinas, Part I

We have gone to, and returned safely from, the Carolinas (mostly North Carolina), visiting my parents.

It was a very fun, if sometimes exhausting, trip. 

This is the story of that trip. There's not a large amount to tell, honestly, but I do have some things I'd like to cover and share here. Before I do, though, let's start with the basic bullet points:

• The cats were fine while we were away. Daisy's parents came over to the house every day (or nearly every day) to make sure they had food, water, clean litter, and love. From all accounts, Sadie hid every time they came over and Hank was so starved for love and affection that he wouldn't leave them alone. 
• I spent close to $400 on souvenirs, including t-shirts, a hoodie, a (purely utilitarian) sun hat, keychains, salt-water taffy, new sandals, tank tops, a skull-and-crossbones beach towel, and some other little odds and ends. 
• Between the two of us, we took hundreds of pictures (most of which have already been shared online at this point). 
• I saw and experienced incredible amounts of wildlife, both native/in the wild and in an animal sanctuary -- we'll get to this.
• We spent time in the ocean and collected more sand than you could possibly imagine in every crevice of our bodies as well as in all of our clothing/vehicles.
• We have become van people and may actually buy a van.
• We ate wonderful vegan food while we were visiting and Daisy even cooked some of her own for us/the parents.
• The parents' dogs adore us.

All of this and more, of course.

So let's start the story -- and that story begins on the Friday night before Labor Day, which was the first of the month. 

I mentioned here in passing, far earlier in these entries, that we'd bought and paid for this trip well in advance. I can't recall how far in advance, but it was either right before or right after our trip to Nova Scotia in May. That included the flights, the booking of the rental car, planning the actual itinerary, and making sure everything was bought and paid for -- locked in, PTO submitted for both of us as early as we possibly could do so, etc. We'd fly out very early on the morning of the 2nd, would arrive in NC by shortly after noon, pick up the rental car at the airport, stop in Raleigh (where we were flying into) for lunch, and be at my parents' place in Oak Island by nightfall -- or, at least, hopefully before the WVU football season opener vs. Penn State started, as it was an evening game and nationally televised. 

Hah. HAH. That is not how it happened.

The initial few hours of our travel were fine. I booked the Uber to pick us up and take us to the airport at something like 4am, 4:30, etc. Our flight to Atlanta was scheduled to lift off at 6:50. We figured that would give us enough time to get there, get through security, check our bags, and get to the gate -- and we were right. Daisy had checked us in online well before we left for the airport and had already paid for our checked baggage, so all we had to do was print out the tags from the kiosk, attach them, and let the desk workers do the rest. Our bags were both way underweight -- even with a giant box of probably 100+ comics for my dad inside my suitcase, it weighed only 28 pounds. After all, we were visiting my parents, who have a washer/dryer and we were only going to be there for five days and nights. It's still very much summer in the subtropics of the Carolinas -- you can pack light and dress light.

Now, mind you, I haven't been to either of the Carolinas in 30 years -- not for any length of time, anyway. I've flown through Charlotte's airport a few times over the past few years in other travels, and Charlotte is far from coastal Carolina weather/climate as they're quite far inland there. The last time I was down there, I went by car to Myrtle Beach with my mother and former stepfather in 1993. That was a fun enough trip, but it was very commercialized (staying in a beachfront hotel, doing touristy things, going to tourist-filled beaches, etc). I got the worst sunburn of my life on that trip, so if I ever get skin cancer in my later years I'll be able to blame it on Myrtle Beach in the 90s.

(Side note: I am wearing a Myrtle Beach t-shirt as I am writing this.)

There were fun parts to that trip, though. I remember making some friends at the hotel, finding a giant conch shell on the beach (my mother still owns this shell), eating a Bigfoot pizza from Pizza Hut, and staying inside after I got my sunburn watching Dinosaucers and Denver, The Last Dinosaur on the USA Cartoon Express.

It's funny the things you remember as an adult 30 years later.

Anyway, I knew this trip would not be like that one. For one, in those 30 years, Myrtle Beach has apparently gone crazy and become a lawless, gunfire-filled wasteland of a tourist-trap beach. I cannot independently verify this because Daisy and I only went as far as North Myrtle Beach, which is its own separate community (I'll get to this in a bit). I had mentioned to my parents that I wanted us to have a Myrtle Beach day while we were there, all four of us, as it's about an hour from their house. Neither of them wanted to do that -- too many people, too much crime, etc. Daisy and I made tentative plans to go down there for a few hours on one day we were there, but I told Daisy that if we didn't get to it, it was fine -- I wasn't visiting the area to see the sights, I was visiting to see my parents. 

For two, in those 30 years my mother met my "dad" after divorcing my former stepfather, had started a new life, bought three different homes (one on her own when it was just the two of us, and the other two, including the beach house, with my dad), had gone through numerous pets, jobs, and vehicles, and had retired to NC to live that beach life. And honestly, more power to my parents for being able to do that. Major props. It wasn't always easy and I remember times when money was quite tight, as well as many rough patches my parents went through together.

For three, I have become an adult -- and now an officially-middle-aged adult, at that -- over those 30 years. While there are still things that excite me about a beach vacation, souvenir shops and different foods/restaurants being but two of them, I am much more of a milder person at age 40 than I ever expected to be. Well, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure that I'd actually reach 40, so every day now is a blessing of sorts. As I've aged, I've learned to appreciate the simple things that money can't buy -- such as time with my aging parents and their dogs, time with my incredibly kind, patient, and loving wife, and just general rest/downtime when I can get it. We always think we're going to have more time than we do, and then when it comes down to it...we just don't. So, I try to savor and appreciate the little things in life that make us happy, that keep us going. That's what I wanted this trip to be, overall.

But, I'm getting far off track. 

So we got to the airport, got everything checked in, checked our luggage, and got to our gate. It was a fairly busy morning at the Omaha airport; we'd expected it to mostly be a ghost town, as it normally is for early morning flights, but it was not -- it was Labor Day weekend, of course, and people tend to travel over Labor Day as the last blast of the summer. Our flight was expected to be full. Not over-full, but still full. 

Boarding was supposed to begin around 6am. It did not. The plane was at the gate, everyone was there waiting to board the flight to Atlanta, and the doors remained closed. We sat there until about 6:40 or so before boarding started, and at that point it was already clear that we were going to be later than we expected getting into Atlanta.

We got into the plane, sat down and got situated, and the doors were closed. It was at that point where the pilot came over the intercom system and told us that the delay in boarding was because of a faulty engine part -- an air conditioner or something -- and that they luckily had a backup system and they had flown with one instead of two many times with no issue, so when we saw the mechanics outside the window working on the engine they were trying to disable the faulty system and we'd take off shortly.

We sat there at the gate for probably twenty more minutes before the pilot came on the intercom again and said that it could not be fixed at the moment, and the other unit had gone out too (or something), and that we'd need to get off the plane and take our stuff with us because -- while the flight had not yet been canceled -- we had a delay until at least 10am on our hands while they fixed the plane. The FAA had already been notified and they were working to get our connecting flights rescheduled for us in the background, for those of us who had connecting flights, and as soon as the work was finished, we'd re-board and get in the air towards Atlanta.

Okay, whatever. It was what it was. It caused some stress for me and Daisy, but shit happens. We begrudgingly grabbed our shit and got off the plane, and waited in the terminal at the gate for next steps. In the interim, Daisy had pulled out her phone and had found a replacement flight for us to take from Atlanta to Raleigh, because we would be missing the one we'd been set to board due to the delay. She waited to pull the trigger on booking it, though.

About half an hour after we were all shuffled off the plane, the pilot emerged from the jetway and let the staff at the counter know that work was complete, everything was fixed, and that they could start re-loading all of the luggage again and begin the boarding process. He did not tell this to the group of collected passengers -- we were just close enough to the front desk to hear everything he was saying to the desk crew. It was sometime around this point where Daisy pulled the trigger and booked the later flight in order to secure us spots on it. We'd be getting into Raleigh about two or three hours later than expected, but we'd get there -- and possibly still get to the parents' house before the WVU game started.

The boarding process began again from the beginning, which I thought was laughable because at this point, does it really matter what order/groups people were boarding on? Everyone would legit be going back to the exact same seats they'd left an hour previously. 

By shortly before 10am -- almost exactly three hours later than we were originally supposed to leave -- we were wheels up and in the air to Atlanta. In Atlanta we had to catch the subway (or whatever it is they call it, I have no idea) to our connecting flight's terminal, and then were able to get on the flight to Raleigh without incident. 

By the time we were on the ground in Raleigh, had picked up our luggage from the baggage claim, and made our way to the rental car place via shuttle, it was well after 2pm. We'd been traveling for about ten hours at that point, we were both running on two hours' sleep, and we still had a three-hour drive down to my parents' from Raleigh.

For those of you asking internally -- yes, we could have flown into Wilmington, NC -- which is a little less than an hour from my parents' house, and that was originally the plan. However, it doubled our plane ticket costs to fly into Wilmington vs. Raleigh, and we figured that putting the equivalent of an extra tank of gas into the rental car ($40 or so) and driving down from there would be far cheaper and easier than doubling our ticket costs, even if it were somewhat less convenient.

If I would've known the debacle that we'd have to deal with at the rental car place, I may have just gone fuck it, do it. 

So we get off the shuttle at the rental car area and...there is a line. There is a long line. It went out the door and around the front of the building, down the sidewalk next to the shuttle buses, and...it wasn't really moving.

Mind you, it's above 90 degrees, there's not a cloud in the sky, and it's humid AF. Daisy and I are both wearing all black -- I had on a pair of black shorts and a black High Spirits t-shirt, and Daisy had on a black tank and black shorts. And we were very hot and uncomfortable. 

The rental car place serviced three different rental car companies in one building -- Hertz, Dollar, and Budget (Enterprise and whatever others were on the other side of the lot). Our particular side of the building was Hertz and Dollar, in two separate lines. Dollar to the left of us, Hertz was to the right. 

Here I am, stuck in the middle with youuuu....

Ahem. Anyway.

It took half an hour or so in line before we were even inside the building (in air conditioning once more, thankfully) -- where we found that the line was going through those zig-zag style rope paths, and the line was about twice as long as we originally thought it was. We made friends with the people in line and graciously accepted bottles of water that the staff was bringing around to help all of the waiting customers cool down.

I wasn't concerned, really -- we'd booked our car months in advance, and had booked a full-size car at that. The rental agreement on Daisy's phone said "Chevy Malibu or similar." We'd had a Malibu on our trip to Nova Scotia last year and had really liked it -- it was a very capable car that got excellent gas mileage and we expected something similar. After all, the Malibu has been a staple of fleet/rental vehicles for over two decades now, and rental places buy them by the thousands. You can actually buy old rental cars directly from the rental companies really cheaply after they've been used for 2-3 years. 

After what seemed like forever (but was really about an hour or so), we finally got to the desk, where they went over Daisy's paperwork/reservation, and said something along the lines of "okay, you're good to go, cross the street out there to the 'gold' rental lot, pick a car, get in and drive off."

"Just...pick one?" we asked.

"Yep, doesn't matter which one, any in that lot are yours to choose from." 

This was surprising to us because we had never heard of this concept before. Just go pick a random car? Keys are in it? Hop in and drive off? Yep. That's exactly how they do it now.

So, Daisy and I wheeled our suitcases out to the "Gold" lot, to find...the exact same line we'd waited on inside, with all of the same people, and zero cars in the lot.

Well, I'll correct myself here. There weren't zero cars. There were zero actual gasoline-powered cars. There were two full rows of fully electric vehicles, including Teslas, just sitting there. Nobody wanted one because, I assume, they had no experience with them and/or were driving long distances and didn't know where they'd be able to charge them. 

After talking to the people who'd been in line in front of us, again, we found that the cars that we were supposed to be choosing from had all been very recently returned and their entire staff was out cleaning/washing them one by one and filling them with gas. They'd be bringing them back as they were available, one by one, as soon as they could. 

There were about thirty people in line -- some couples with children, some couples, some just single folks looking to get the car they'd already paid to rent. And all of them were pissed. 

It was around this point where Daisy began to laugh from frustration and exhaustion. I don't know if you have ever been in a scenario where you're so frustrated and tired that you have a brief psychotic break, but we were about at that point. We graciously accepted more bottles of water from the kind soul who had followed us all out to the lot in order to help try to keep us cool. However, some of the other rental customers were not being kind to this lady and were taking their frustrations out on her -- including a very gay businessman who was going full Karen on anyone who worked for the company within earshot, and who was on the phone trying to reach the corporate president as well. Like settle down, bro. It is what it is.

To be fair, some of the people in the line behind us did come out, hop into a Tesla or whatever, and drove off in their electric rental car. Those people either had experience with electric vehicles or didn't have far to go, I imagine. The rest of us formed up into a queue based on where we were in the line inside, and once cars started coming back to the lot, no matter what it was, the next people up got it.

This line outside lasted at least another hour, maybe ninety minutes. During this time cars would come in one by one. We were in the middle of the line, roughly. Some of the cars that came back were promising -- little Kia/Honda SUVs, some Subarus (Outback wagons and Foresters), Nissan Altimas, etc. I didn't see a single Malibu or anything like it -- well, I guess the Altimas were close enough there. One couple even got a new Prius when they were next up in line. 

Finally, we were up next, and the vehicle that would be ours pulled up....it was a minivan.

A 2023 Chrysler Pacifica, arctic white, with a full tank of gas and still dripping wet from the car wash.

Right behind it pulled in a few other vehicles all at the same time -- a nondescript sedan of some sort, a small SUV, and what looked to be a Chrysler 300. Daisy was less than thrilled.

"I don't really want a van," she said under her breath. "I want one of those." But there were other people in line who were already moving toward the other vehicles like sharks in blood-filled waters.

"Fuck it," I said, as I slid open the side door and hoisted in my suitcase, "more cargo room, put your shit in the van."

I must admit that my patience for all of this bullshit was really worn thin at this point.

So we got inside the van and...it was like a spaceship. Cabin room for days. Incredibly comfortable seats. Intelligently designed and engineered craftsmanship in and out. Amazing visibility. Easy-to-use basic control panels. Adjustable everything. Whisper-quiet. Handled like a dream. Fantastic acceleration and brakes. In less than twenty minutes of driving it, we were falling in love. With a van. A minivan. We never would've guessed how much we would love that vehicle. We were stunned. 

By this time it was nearing 6pm and the sun was already noticeably starting to go down. We still had three hours of driving to go and at least one stop to make (for food). We'd originally planned to get some groceries on the way to my parents' in order to save a trip in the coming days, but we wouldn't get to do that now. Our goal was to stop at a vegan restaurant we'd looked up in Raleigh and then just get to the parents' house as quickly as possible. My parents were already worried because we were taking so long and had been delayed in our travels multiple times, and my dad had already offered to just get us a hotel in Raleigh for the night so we wouldn't have to drive at night -- which, apparently in NC, is more dangerous than other places? I don't know. But we were on the road and told them that we'd get there when we got there, not to hold dinner for us or whatever, and that it would likely be some time before we were able to roll into town. 

I will say at this point that I've never been through Raleigh before -- not as a stopover between flights or in the city proper. Aside from an airport, this had been the first time I'd set foot in the Carolinas in three decades, so everything there was interesting and new to me. The city of Raleigh is fairly...nondescript? I don't want to put it down or anything because it is very much a city with high-rises and commercial areas and residential/shopping areas -- but it reminded me of a lot more southern version of Omaha. This in itself is not a bad thing, even though it felt like I was stepping into a similar, more southern parallel universe.

Well, Raleigh must have a thriving vegan community, because there was no shortage of vegan restaurants in the area. A quick Google search a few weeks before we left pulled up no less than five or six dedicated vegan places, and we'd found a couple of those we wanted to try while we were traveling through the area. The first, and closest one, was called -- simply -- Pure Vegan Cafe. It was a minority-female-owned business (which I didn't find out until we'd made our second trip there, but more on that later) and the menu looked quite promising.

(Yes, that's me sitting in front of their neon sign, and yes, that's what I look like now. That beard is white, y'all.)

Keep in mind that at this point it's starting to get dark and we were starving. Aside from a small bag of Five Guys fries we'd gotten in the Atlanta airport while we waited for our second flight, Daisy and I hadn't eaten much of anything for about sixteen hours or so. Despite this, we were in good spirits as the hardest part of our journey was done.

I ordered a buffalo "chicken" sandwich and a side of mac and "cheese." I put those in quotes because, obviously, vegan restaurant.

Daisy ordered what was called the breakfast burger -- which was a "burger" with fried onion, chipotle "mayo," "egg," "bacon," and "cheese" on it.

Daisy was the clear winner here. While my buffalo chicken sandwich was good and we both shared it, we also shared Daisy's breakfast burger, which was -- and I cannot stress this enough -- fucking amazing. We are certain (or at least I am, at this point) that the burger patty was an Impossible Burger, simply because no other vegan burger I've ever had has had "meat" that real. Daisy quickly declared it the best burger she'd ever had in her life, and honestly...I myself am pretty close to saying the same thing. 

Yeah.

You can see their entire menu/website here if you're so inclined. 

With food in our stomachs, we hit the road in our Spaceship Van and the GPS plotted us a roughly three-hour drive to Oak Island, mostly via interstate.

For those of you as unfamiliar with North Carolina as we were/are, the state appears to be...mostly laid out in a reasonable system of interstates just as much as any other state is, as long as you're traveling to normal places during the daytime where you can see where you are and what you're doing. When you're driving at night down these highways (which have fairly narrow lanes, honestly) and there are no streetlights marking anything, it's a drive into what appears to be an abyss of trees and forested areas alongside what just happens to be a major freeway.

When your GPS tells you to go down what I would call "back roads" to shave time off your trip, it gets even worse. 

"So your parents," Daisy said as we drove down one forested back road after another, "moved out of West Virginia and then picked the most West-Virginia-like place to get to and live in that wasn't West Virginia?"

"Looks like it," I said, "except on the other side of it is an ocean."

This is quite accurate. Oak Island is indeed an island -- it is connected to the mainland by bridges and nothing else. It is a beautiful -- and I mean beautiful -- area during the day, but at night it is terrifying to find, approach, and cross the bridge onto the island, and you'll find yourself saying aloud, as I did, "we're three miles from their house and we haven't crossed onto the island yet, where the fuck is it?" And then bam, big bridge, and you're there. 

Oak Island is a community of about 4,000 permanent residents (of which my parents are now part). During the summer months/tourist season, according to my dad, that population can increase almost tenfold. We were arriving during Labor Day weekend, the last big tourism holiday of the year, and when we pulled into town (roughly around 11:30pm or so) it was a ghost town. It was the eerie type of environment you see in horror movies. We saw maybe 2-3 other cars out and about, and it was muggy, swampy, and humid in the air enough to fog our windows and have a little of that low-lying fog on the ground in places. Everything was in shadow and darkness to the point where you never knew if there was an alligator lurking in the ditch or bushes next to you or if it would be a guy with a hook for a hand instead.

We pulled onto my parents' street and got lost because all of the houses look the same. I called my dad from the cell and said "we're literally in the street and it says we're here, but we can't find you."

"Oh, you're in the white van? We see you."

He directed us to the right driveway.

And so we were there. The parents had waited up for us, and we stayed up with them for about two hours just trying to decompress and shake off the travel before everyone went to bed. We had made it, our journey was over. And, to be fair, this was the most difficult part of the trip. Everything else would roll smoothly.

Well, smoothly enough.

But that's a tale for part II.

Hank The Tank, Addendum

Per the vet, Hank is perfectly healthy, and went from 3.2 pounds to 5.3 in the span of a month. The vet says he's on track to be a giant cat in the 10-12 pound range, maybe bigger. He got his shots, including his rabies vaccination, and Daisy registered him today. 

He is currently Daisy's work companion as she works from home, and is living his best life.

Hank The Tank, Part III: The Goblin

 All of the previous being said, Daisy has been in the mindset that it may not be a terrible idea to get a playmate for Hank -- another kitten he can spar with so that he leaves Pete alone.

While I was open on Hank, I am almost vehemently against this idea.

For one, for Pete it's not necessarily that Hank is going after him that's causing his anxiety, though that's part of it -- the largest part of it is that Pete is very territorial and more cats mean less territory for him and less of him being the center of attention. You want to make sure a cat will spray/mark everywhere? Reducing the territory he can claim as his own will dramatically increase those chances.

Mind you, it's not like the house is any bigger or smaller than before. He still has free reign of it. But more cats equal less space for him and more space they're gaining in territory from him as they set up their own domains. Hank does not appear to be territorial at all, as he was fostered and is used to being around many other cats -- but who's to say that another cat wouldn't be, and wouldn't come into the house, see four other cats, and immediately get as territorial as possible? It's all psychological. And Pete is too old for this shit, like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon. 

Actually, as an aside, I always imagined Pete's inner monologue to be in Samuel L. Jackson's voice, but you get the idea. 

Adding to this is the timeframe problem -- we have a very short window of time to get Hank himself fully acclimated and used to the house (and the others to get fully used to him being around) before we are literally getting on a plane and leaving for a week to visit my parents in North Carolina. Those are hard-and-set dates and that trip was bought and paid for long before Hank was even an idea for us, let alone an actuality. I haven't seen my parents in six years, and for three years in a row we've had to postpone or otherwise cancel trips to see them due to Covid, monetary, or time issues. I'm certainly not going to cancel this one when it's finally been set in stone, the PTO has already been used for it, and when I've been looking forward to it for so long.

Also -- I just don't want another cat right now. I am very happy with Hank and our old farts. Maybe in a year or three when the old farts start dying off will I be open to more cats in the household, but for now, I really don't want even more stress and responsibility. We lucked out with Hank -- his personality is a great match for this household. Who's to say that another cat would be? What if Pete or the girls would go hard on attacking another cat? What if another cat had no interest in the boys but instead wanted to terrorize the girls? I absolutely don't want to risk that. I don't want the equivalent of the L.A. riots in my living room or bedroom every day. 

To those ends, however, I've also had to be slightly open to the idea to help appease Daisy. When we got Hank, the humane society said they were doing a "buy one, get one free" deal to where, anytime in the next 30 days, if we wanted to get him a playmate we could go in and do so, for free. While I don't think Hank really needs a playmate (more on this below), Daisy expressed her openness and want to keep looking just in case.

That 30 days expires August 15, by the way. 

Anyway. 

Over the course of the past few weeks with Hank, we've looked at a few cats that were sweet, but didn't have that same soul connection Hank did. There was one, however, that did have that hit with Daisy -- and we went back to see her that night again and she was already gone/adopted. Since then there have been almost no kittens to speak of on the website on a daily basis. Most of them, as soon as they're posted (even if there are no pictures of them), they're gone same-day. Again, I'm very glad that the humane society has such a great turnaround for cats -- people clamoring for kittens to give them good homes. It warms my heart, honestly. It gives me a little more hope for humanity.

Daisy and I made an agreement that once the 30-day window passed, we'd pretty much be done for the time being for looking for another cat for a while, at least until after we're back from visiting my parents and possibly indefinitely until one of the old farts dies. 

As for the past 30 days, however? Our first full month with Hank? Well, we've learned a lot.

Hank has many nicknames, because he won't fully respond to his name yet. He's still very young. Sometimes he halfway acknowledges it or we think he does, only to find that he's distracted by something else. That'll come in time. It probably doesn't help that we call him all sorts of things, such as:

• Little man
• Little dude
• Sweet boy
• Sweet baby
• The child
• The boy
• The smallest son
• Hankerman
• Hankerchief
• Hanky
• Hanky-panky
• Hanky-boy
• And, finally, the goblin.

He is known as the goblin primarily because, well, he acts like a little goblin sometimes. Have you ever seen Gremlins, where all of the little mogwais are getting into shit and being little buttholes because they want to be fed after midnight? Well, that's Hank about 30% of the time. That number used to be about 60%, but as he's gotten older and has gotten used to the house, he has calmed down significantly. The other 30% of goblining has now been focused on us, Pete, and Sadie. 

Maggie remains largely indifferent and does not give a single shit that he exists most of the time, as is her personality.

I mentioned that when we first started to give Hank the run of the house and when he and Pete first started interacting on a regular basis, he was bound and determined to be friends with Pete no matter what. And, really, even at his old age, Pete needed a playmate. After so many years of play-wrestling and then outright dominating the girls, who wouldn't really fight back, when they started to, he lost interest. Then he got old, and while he and Sadie/Maggie have the occasional spat, most of the time they're all lovey and cuddly with one another (at least to a vast extent; Sadie will not cuddle with Maggie and hasn't in many years, and I don't exactly know why). 

Well, after having the run of the house for the past three weeks or so, Hank will now climb up on Pete to cuddle with him. Sometimes there's some aggression from Hank when he does, like he'll play-pounce on Pete or bite his neck or what have you (which, surprisingly, Pete mostly ignores) and sometimes they'll spar/bat at each other a bit, but I can very much see that they're settling into a pattern of companionship and love. It is very clear that Pete loves this little boy and puts off Big Dad Energy™ when they're together, and Hank adores Pete. Hank will purposely cuddle up to Pete and lay with him, and when he settles down, Pete will wrap his paws around him and wash his face and ears, and will pull him close. Yes, there is video of this. Hank loves it and will purr the entire time, eyes closed. Maybe it's a dominance thing, maybe it's an I-love-you thing, maybe it's both. But about 95% of the time, they're now completely at ease with one another.

This makes me very happy, of course. Pete now has a little teddy bear of his own and he finally gets to have a dad-like role in the household.

Pete, by the way, is fine. He got some checkup work done last week at the vet, and he is not currently in kidney failure. He is also remarkably healthy for his age. The vets said he should likely be on the same kidney food that Maggie is already on though, as the older he gets the more likely he will develop kidney issues in the future. This is fine, because he already likes to eat/steal that food. Sadie should likely be on it too, honestly. Hank has zero interest in it. He's smelled it a few times and walks away without even trying it. 

We still give Pete his anxiety medicine on most days. I don't think Daisy gives it to him every day unless he's outwardly anxious every day. I think that's also helping him adjust to Hank wanting to be a little goblin cuddle buddy. 

When it comes to the girls, Hank is testing the waters more and more. He tries to play and spar with Sadie, and she has no interest in that whatsoever. Sometimes she'll growl or hiss at him, but most of the time she just ignores him or looks at him with the cat equivalent of the "are you an idiot?" look. I expected him to want to lay and cuddle with Maggie, but when he gets too close to her and tries to smell or lick her, especially when he's goblining about the house, she will hiss/cry at him and he'll get spooked and run away. Lately, he's really enjoyed sleeping in the cat bed on the couch that any/all of them occupy on any daily basis, but Maggie really loves. Maggie has gotten visibly miffed at him when she wants to lay in that bed and finds Hank passed out in it. This is, thankfully, about as territorial as Maggie gets. 

Our house is a 3-bedroom house. We have our master bedroom, and then Daisy and I both have our offices. Daisy's office is much larger than my own (I took the smaller one on purpose because the washer/dryer are in it) and hers is also used as a storage room. We keep it closed off now, as there is far too much for Hank to get into and destroy within it if he so chose. Well, Sadie loved that room -- she would go sleep/hide under the bed in there, there's a litter pan in there that only she really ever used, and it was sort of a sanctuary for her. Now that it's closed off so that Hank can't get in, she is somewhat distraught that one of her personal spots in the house isn't just free and open anymore. She will tell us when she wants in, and we'll let her in and close the door behind her. An hour or two later, she'll knock/pound on the door to let us know she wants back out, and she'll come back out. Yesterday, she spent multiple hours in there because she wanted to, and only knocked to get let back out shortly before I started work last night. This in/out sort of arrangement has mostly appeased her. 

We'll eventually get the room organized enough to where we can leave it open again full-time, and to where Hank can't get somewhere we couldn't get him out of or eat/destroy something he shouldn't, but until then it's off limits, even when Daisy works from home in there a few days a week.

In the overnights, Hank either sleeps mostly upstairs with Daisy, or will spend the entire night downstairs with me while I work. Aside from the first day or two he did this, when he was hyper the entire night and kept attacking Pete, and I had to catch his ass and toss him on the bed with Daisy while she slept and shut the door behind me, he's been perfectly fine. He knows, mostly, not to bother the other cats when they're sleeping, and will just curl up with them or next to them. Some nights he'll be up and down, usually pretty chill. Some nights I'll come upstairs in the morning to find him in the cat tree, or curled up tight with Daisy. Some days I'll wake up in the afternoon and he'll be sleeping with me, and other days I'll wake up and he's nowhere to be found until I go downstairs and see him passed out in the cat bed or on the couch. Hank keeps his options open. 

He has yet to break anything, get into anything he shouldn't, or tear anything up while we've been asleep, either in the daytime when I sleep or the night time/weekends when we both sleep. When we leave the house for any length of time (like if we go visit Daisy's parents, run errands, or go grocery shopping) he remains calm and usually just goes to sleep somewhere. 

When we sit down and eat dinner/watch TV, he doesn't really bother us or beg for food or be a bastard because he knows we're preoccupied. He generally will sit with us or go back upstairs to his cat tree.

However, he does get hangry -- as in, if his food bowl is empty, he will be a little terror until it is refilled. We discovered that this is a pattern this past weekend. He does not tell us outright to fill it -- like he won't try to lead us to it by crying or mewing at us and getting under our feet, like the other cats will -- he'll just be a bastard until I go get the food and fill the bowl for him. Then he'll come running and he will eat. He likes it when I watch him eat, or put my hand on his side or back while he eats -- he'll purr really hard, as if I am the food-giver, the life-bringer, the protector. He sometimes gets upset if I'm touching him while he eats and I stop and walk away, so I always try to be the food-soother. 

He will use every litter pan in the house but gets really upset when he catches Sadie or Pete using "his," the one we keep in our bedroom for him. Yesterday he actually got in the pan with Sadie while she was using it. I expected Sadie to flip out, but she honestly didn't care. 

I can't really describe how much love Hank has brought into the house. I just adore his little orange ass. He's brought so much love, peace, and overall amusement into our lives. He's also growing rapidly. His next vet appointment is tomorrow evening, where he'll get his rabies shot and anything else he needs so that we can fully register him, and I expect that he will have almost doubled in weight as he's almost doubled in size since we got him. 

Hank The Tank, Part II: He's a Menace

 It was not lost on us, not even from the beginning, that bringing home another cat would be a huge time-suck of responsibility and mediation. We did not know how the other cats would react to a new kitten. I was worried about Sadie the most, as she's standoffish and skittish on her best days and in my mind, would be the least likely to want a little goblin tearing ass around the house and taking my attention away from her. Pete, I thought, would love him as he'd have a little orange cuddlebuddy, and Maggie I figured would be mostly indifferent to the entire scenario, or would be scared by him and would try to run and hide anywhere and everywhere her fat old ass could.

I was mostly wrong on all three counts. But we'll get to that.

Once we were away from the humane society and he was indeed ours, we immediately drove over to the parents' to show them our new baby. The parents had just returned from Nova Scotia a few nights before, and it was the first time I'd seen them since their return. However, as we literally had a cat in a box, we couldn't stay long -- just long enough for introductions so that they could see the little orange-and-white thing that was understandably a bit shaken up by the whole ordeal of being in a cage a short while ago, then getting love from two kind people he recognized, before being put into a dark box with breathing holes and driven across town. 

We also had to stop and get his special kitten food, some toys, and a litter pan and some litter for him before we could go home. While we had a spare, unused pan somewhere in storage in this house, we didn't know where, and didn't want to tear apart rooms and closets to find it. We also were setting up our bedroom as the base of Cat Operations™ where he would be sequestered away from the other cats, at least until we could get him to the vet and certify that he was healthy and didn't have any parasites or sicknesses that could affect our old farts. He'd be safe and protected in our bedroom; we'd set up the litter pan, his food and water, and his toys in there and we'd cat-proof the room the best we could, so that there wouldn't be anything he could get into or destroy. 

First, however, we had to settle on a name. Daisy was not fond of "Otis," the name the humane society had given him, but at face value I didn't mind it that much and told her I didn't mind keeping it, really, if we couldn't come up with anything else. We cycled through a bunch of ideas again; I really wanted to name him after a comic book character or a Star Trek character. So, for a while, I wanted to call him Worf, or Logan, or Riker, or Clark, or Quark, or something of that ilk. Daisy shot down all of them but Kirk, which is coincidentally my own middle name (there's an entire story behind that that I'll probably eventually share here) but I didn't really feel that he was a Kirk. Names have power and meaning, and he was going to have whatever name we gave him for his entire life, hopefully many years. It wasn't just something we could give him on a whim. 

There was a time though where I was pushing hard for non-human names like Poutine and Waffle.

No food names, Daisy declared.

Anyway. 

We brought him home and sat the box down in the middle of the living room with all three of the old farts. We didn't want them to interact too much with him, but we did want them to see, know, and comprehend that we'd brought another life into the house. He didn't want to jump out of the box on his own (again, he was tiny and I'm not sure at the time he could have done so anyway), so we took him out and placed him on the floor in the center of the living room.

Pete eyed him with suspicion, and when he moved, Pete hissed and ran away. 

Sadie came up to him first, sniffed him and the air around him, then hissed and ran off herself. 

We took him over to Maggie, who was lounging on the couch and couldn't be bothered to move, to let her see him. Her response was exactly what I predicted -- she looked at him as if he was a new toy she had no interest in, and then realized very quickly oh, that thing is alive. She also hissed at him. 

Poor little boy.

But, the old farts had passed the first test -- they knew he existed and they didn't try to attack him and seemed more concerned that they would be attacked. I didn't get the sense that they saw him as an intruder, just someone new and slightly frightening because he was new. To be fair, the little boy did not go after any of them either, he was more of the demeanor of saying hi and trying to make friends. 

We set him up in the room upstairs and made sure the old farts got extra love and reassurances. Pete and Sadie immediately set up camp right outside the now-closed bedroom door, as they knew that there was a creature in there.

Maggie did not, and to this day does not, give a single shit about this new cat. 

As we both played with him, locked in the room, and gave him all the love, we continued to go through names. Daisy really wanted to name him after her father -- who, I will stress, is still alive, so it's not like it's a tribute or an "in memoriam" thing, which I shot down hard because I'm sorry, that's just fucking weird. We cycled through some more ideas while we played with this very active and rambunctious little boy, before Daisy looked at me.

"Hank?" she said, sighing, but also looking at the way this cat acted and how he played.

"Hank," I said, nodding. "This cat has Hank energy. This cat has big Hank energy."

And so, Hank the Tank was born. Well, christened, anyway. The "The Tank" moniker even fit as well, because of his giant feet. 

He is the sweetest boy.

We kept him in the room for the first few days. Daisy ordered some more toys for him off Amazon and a giant cat tree from Target (which took her three and a half hours to build while I was working a few nights later). She set up his cat pan in the corner of the room behind our giant mirror, so that he would have some privacy. I ordered two more bags of his food off Amazon, as he has a voracious appetite (well, he is a growing boy, after all). 

Over the course of a few days, we learned a lot of things about this little cat.

He is an aggressive kisser. He will stick his entire nose into your mouth. He will rub his face all over your face. He will lick your lips and face and will stick his tongue up your nostril. Repeatedly. 

He has tried, on multiple occasions, to breastfeed from Daisy.

He is healthy, parasite free, no illnesses and no ill effects from his Ivermectin overdose. Moreover, no problems healing from his neutering and no lasting effects from being picked up off the streets or being separated from his mother so early. 

He was 3.5 pounds at his vet visit, and by the time we go back in another week and a half to get his shots and get him fully registered, we expect that he'll be up another pound or more. He is growing very quickly.

The vet said that he thinks the shelter/foster family who had him was mistaken, as due to his teeth growth he looked more like he was 10 or 11 weeks old, not the 8 or 9 we were told. That would put his date of birth right around May 1, which is what I've set it at for birthday celebrations for him in the future. 

He violently farts when he's hyper or agitated. They stink. Daisy has discouraged me from calling him "Hank the Stank" or "Hank the Rank."

He is a cuddler. There are times when he wants to be picked up and held, and he will let you know because he is vocal about it. 

He is vocal in general and is always happy to see us. When we come into a room and he's in there, if he is awake he will come trotting over to us, mewing and running between/rubbing on our legs. He wants love, he wants to love and be loved. He wants acknowledgement and to be the focus of your attention.

He does not like loud noises -- of any sort. Doors opening and closing scare him. The TV scares him. The vacuum terrifies him. We've had some pretty nasty storms off and on as of late, and thunder makes him jump. He will cuddle up tight with Daisy (and Pete, but more on this later) when it storms. 

He adores the giant cat tree that Daisy purchased and built for him:

And finally, all he wants to do is play and make friends.

This has gone about as well as you'd expect, at least with Pete.

Over the course of about a week, once we'd been given the clean bill of health from the vet, we began taking Hank out of the room for short periods to let him explore the house. In the beginning, this was five or ten-minute stretches so that he could wander about, the other cats could see him and interact with him if they so chose (mostly, it was just hissing from the girls). This was slowly stretched out to an hour or so, or two hours, where we'd monitor him as he explored and monitor the older cats as they interacted with him and began to realize that he wasn't going anywhere. 

We had friends over to the house on two separate occasions, who oohed and aahed over him, which also got him accustomed to other people and other smells. 

Whenever the door to the bedroom was open, Pete and Sadie would bust in -- Pete would get his normal spot on the bed very quickly, and Sadie would usually run under it to her own spot, even when they knew Hank was in there. When we would try to get them out for the night so we could lock up Hank, they first left the room willingly, then begrudgingly, and then eventually they refused to leave because they'd once more recaptured control of the bedroom.

Or so they thought.

Hank has claimed the bedroom as his base of Cat Operations™ -- as I mentioned before. Upon his giant cat tree, which the other cats are too old and tired to climb up on or disturb -- he is lord of all he surveys. So, even once we gave him basically free reign of the house 24/7 (which took several weeks of gradual exploration time and introductions to the other cats he shared the house with), most of the time we'd find him upstairs in the bedroom asleep on the bed or on his tree (like the photo above). 

Maggie, as I said, does not give a single shit that Hank is in the house. When they had some of their first interactions, she chuffed at him in a "leave me alone" sort of way, and for the most part, Hank has abided by her wishes and doesn't bother her. He is curious about her, and she will watch him play, but neither of them disturbs the other.

Sadie was apprehensive for the first few days, but gathered enough courage to approach him when he wasn't being hyper -- they smelled each other, tried to lick each other, and then gave each other an "okay, you're cool" look before walking away from one another. Ever since then Hank and Sadie have been friends. He can tear ass around the house and run back and forth past her playing with his toys, or just generally being a hyper kitten, and she will either pay zero attention or she'll just watch him with idle curiosity. When he pounces on her back or side when she's laying down, or if she's walking to or from another room and he runs up to her, she'll occasionally hiss briefly if he startles her, but most of the time she's just like "c'mon man, I'm old." He will also cuddle with her or lay closely with her when she sleeps with me during the day. I could've cried when they became friends, because I was so worried about Sadie. I think it also helps that I always love on her and reassure her that he's just a baby, he's not a threat, when he's around and being hyper. I think that calmness from me really put her at ease. 

I have also verbally told her many times that she is loved and she is not being replaced, and I think to some extent that really helps too. 

Hank, however, is bound and determined that he and Pete will be friends, goddammit and that they will play together whether Pete likes it or not. 

Pete, so far, has been mostly unenthusiastic about this. 

I will take an aside here and state that Pete is a very loving, very peaceful cat most of the time. He is also fiercely territorial, claims Daisy as his love and true mother, and he is super jealous and protective of not only her, but me to an extent as well. If I'm paying attention to Sadie or Maggie, he gets jealous. If Daisy and I are trying to cuddle together in bed on the weekends, he always tries to get in the middle of us so he can be part of it too, or so he can become the center of attention. He also has no time or tolerance for foolishness or rambunctiousness, and he just wants to live in peace, eat his food, sleep 18 hours a day and get love from us when he wants it.

Now throw a young, hyper kitten into that mix who wants to wrestle and play with him all the time, because he recognizes Pete as another male. 

How do you think that went?

I'm not gonna lie, it was a pretty rough two weeks or so. 

Pete, who I expected to be ecstatic that he'd have a cuddle buddy with whom he could snuggle, gently play with, and love like his own son...immediately got massive anxiety and would run from Hank, crying/yowling and spraying/marking around the house -- including on Daisy's slippers and eventually peeing on her directly when he was particularly anxious.

Oh hell naw, not gonna happen on my watch.

We began to soothe Pete as much as possible, give him treats, love on him as much as we could....and immediately took him to the vet to make sure he wasn't having any UTI-like problems as well as to get him back on his anxiety medication we had to put him on when we bought this house. He's fine, he doesn't have any UTI, he's just anxious. And the medication helps him a lot. It gets him high (well, as much as "kitty Xanax" can) and he goes to sleep. As far as I know, he hasn't marked or sprayed anywhere for a week, and Hank is back to just being a hyper little nuisance to him again. Pete does have a follow up appointment later this week to have bloodwork done and get his vaccinations, as the vet said he'd lost a couple of pounds since his last visit (to where, who knows -- as to us he looks like he's slowly getting fatter) and as he's very old, they want to see if he's in the beginning stages of kidney failure too, like Maggie. 

But Hank. Oh, Hank.

Since Hank is so determined to get Pete to be his friend, he follows Pete around the house when he's hyper, nipping at his tail or attacking his legs. Sometimes he pounces on Pete and bites his neck. Sometimes he jumps on Pete's old hips, which hurts him, and Pete yelps and goes after him. But the general scenario is that they will lay on the bed together, facing each other, and Hank will bat at Pete's face. Pete will bat back and they'll lightly spar, but it's very clear that Pete is becoming irritated, as he'll begin whacking his tail hard on the bed. Hank sees the whacking tail and is like "Oooh, something to attack!" and begins going after the tail. It's about this point where Pete gets pissed off enough to get up and leave the room (or otherwise run away) and Hank then chases him. Sometimes Hank gives up, sometimes he doesn't and keeps going hard -- he's still a baby, he doesn't know any better. He just wants to play, and isn't getting the message from Pete.

We've had to separate them a few times and then give Pete extra love, some treats, and comfort to calm him back down again. It also doesn't help that Pete actually likes Hank most of the time, and always wants to be in the room with him or supervise him in some capacity -- so when Hank wanders off, Pete will follow him.

You can't reason with old cats. I've told Pete that if he wants Hank to leave him alone, the easiest way to do that is to not aggressively thwack his tail in Hank's presence and to not fucking follow him from room to room, but it's not like Pete understands that. 

To be fair, Hank loves Pete and wants to be around him all the time. In their quieter hours, he will sleep with Pete on the bed or couch, and we do have video of Pete holding Hank like a teddy bear and licking his head. 

But, Hank is young. Hank is aggressive. Hank is full of energy. Hank has little concern for boundaries or even the concept of them.

"This cat is a menace," I told my parents when I called them a few weeks ago and told them some of the stories about his interactions with Pete. "But he's a very cute one."

Hank has had full run of the house for about two weeks now, and while he is hyper and a curious little goblin (that's what we call him: "the goblin"), he is not destructive, he doesn't really get into things, he always uses the litter pan correctly (and all of the other pans too), and -- most importantly -- he doesn't run up walls, climb curtains, get into cabinets, get into food, shred the furniture, attack the old ladies, or anything else like that. Yes, he is a hyper kitten and he does hyper kitten things. But, he is a night-and-day difference compared to raising Pete, who I had to basically lay on top of to get him to stop being hyper and go to sleep when it was time to sleep.

Hank, on the other hand, is like "Oh, it's time to sleep now? Okay, let me get comfortable then."

He has the most wonderful personality and love language I've ever seen in a cat. I've frequently been awakened by him, sweetly, by him licking my beard/mustache and him sticking his nose up my nose, or his tongue up my nostril, when he cuddles with me. When we eat dinner, if he's not hyper, he frequently lays down between my feet or crawls under the couch blanket with Daisy. He loves looking out the window. He loves spending time with us and the other cats. I told Daisy he's the best decision we made since getting married. 

"Uh, the house?" she said. "We bought this house too, since we've been married."

I had to think about it for a minute.