Xena hasn’t loved every part of our journey, but she’s done really well in general, which has been a big blessing.
First, a bit of, ah, recap, I guess? We’ve talked about it before but it’s been a minute. So the fast version is this: we left Florida with our two cats, Susie and Xena, bringing them to Cassie’s sister in Virginia, who very generously volunteered to watch the cats for us during our initial travels to Japan. Shortly after leaving Virginia, Susie passed from what was apparently quite a lot of cancer, leaving Xena to adapt alone. But she did! She lived in Candace’s basement for about a year, and seemed quite comfortable.
But eventually it passed from Candace doing us a temporary favor to us definitely imposing on her, so we talked to some friends in California about bringing Xena with us out here. We wanted a couple backups (in case she didn’t get along with their pets), and we wanted at least a general openness to keeping her indefinitely/permanently, in case the transfer to Japan wound up not working like we expect.
And we got it! The McFarlands were very generous in welcoming her into their home. We were a little concerned about how she’d adapt to their new dog, but he’s so chill we were willing to give it a shot, and then bring her to some other friends if it didn’t work out.
But first we had to get her here!
For the flight from LA to Florida a few years ago, we’d given the cats, like, I think the vet said it was basically just painkillers? But it was supposed to relax them too. It worked fine for Susie, but Xena spent the whole flight yelling, and we were very sorry for her. So for this flight, we wanted to try something stronger.
Luckily, she’d been kinda stressy when first adapting to Candace’s house, and Candace had gotten her some gabapentin, which Xena liked. So we gave her a dose of that for the flight and she spent the whole thing pretty zonked.
Then she was here!
Xena adapted to the McFarlands’ place real quick. It hasn’t been quite as smooth as we’d hoped, but she’s adjusting well, especially to the dog – she spent the first few days terrified of him, but by now he’s no big deal. She still hides if she hears him walking down the hallway, but once she sees it’s him, she chills.
Honestly, she’s getting along worse with their cat Roland, but we’re not too worried about that, either; it’s mostly her fault for hissing at him when she sees him. The more she adapts to this place and gets less scared in general, the less she’ll be provoking him. We just hope that they can get beyond a “truce” and reach a point where they get along and play together – Xena always wanted to play with Susie, and Susie was too fat and lazy to put up with that.
We leave soon to stay with some of our other friends in LA who have a bit more space, but Xena is staying here with the McFarlands until we’re either heading for Japan or we find a place of our own here. We’ll be sad to be apart from her again, but we’re glad she’s in good hands!