(PLEASE NOTE: This was written after a couple of challenging nights. Feeling much better now. 🙂  )

 

I knew this was going to be hard.

But I don’t think I knew it was going to be this hard.

We’re on our third night out. We’ve moved from the farm to a really nic e KOA in Salinas/Monterey. All the neighbors are lovely. In fact, the people next to me pretty much live here full time, which got me thinking about what that would mean – living in KOAs full time. Another woman does the same thing, but in a different area.

My little trailer is dwarfed by all the gigantic behemoths around me. There’s one that I think could easily fit three of my trailers inside. I guess I have trailer envy.

And I did smart things when I built mine and packed it. The cabinets were packed thoughtfully so I think I know where everything is. I even tried to pack the car thoughtfully.

But it’s hard.

Living with a 22lb. very stubborn cat is like living with a toddler. He wants what he wants when he wants it and nothing I want matters. In both places, the first night was hell. He started out kind of snoozing when I turned out the light. But then about a half hour later, he started prowling the trailer, his eyes big and staring. He would stand I each window, staring outside, his whole body at attention. Then he’d go to the next window. Then he would go to the door and start digging at it. A 22 lb cat has a lot of weight to him and when he’s determined, his weight feels like it’s double that. I thought he broke the door the first night because I heard this enormous crack. I couldn’t find any damage, thank goodness. It took him forever to settle down, which means I got almost no sleep.

Also, on the first mornings in both places, he woke me up at 5:30 am, digging at the door for what I have begun to call “dawn patrol.” Same thing – going from window to window, digging at the door. He will only stop if I take him outside. At 5:30 in the morning, it’s chilly and the first morning, I didn’t have my sweater handy so it was walking around in my pj t-shirt and shorts in 53 degree weather. Lesson learned – my sweater is now at the foot of the mattress where I can get it easily, as are a warm pair of sweats.

I didn’t anticipate this kind of behavior with him. It stresses him out. It stresses me out. We end up battling for dominance of the door. I yell at him, I cuss at him. He’s growled at me and hissed at me.

Last night, after the battle for the door, I laid in bed and cried for a long time.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of things being this hard.

I wanted to pack up and leave. To go home.

But I don’t have a home.

I’m in what is my home, which only made me cry harder.

I can’t go home because I don’t have one.

And I don’t want to be mad at my cat. I love my cat in an almost unreasonable way. But he pisses me off sometimes. And when we’re trapped together like this, the stress is awful.

The fact that most of my stuff is in the trailer but a bunch of it is in the car means never-ending bouts of moving stuff from one vehicle to the other. I had to get warmer clothes out because, on the farm, it was around 90 degrees. Here in Monterey, it’s around 60. Those clothes, of course, were in a suitcase in the back of the car. So I had to take the ball for the trailer hitch off so I could open the back. I had to pretty much unpack the entire back until I could free the suitcase, then repack it all once I took out what I needed. It’s a constant battle of arranging and re-arranging and arranging again. There are too many things to re-arrange every time.

For tonight, I’m going to see what I can do to make things less difficult. I cannot put window coverings on the inside of the trailer because Indy will tear them down. But I’ll try sticking them outside of the trailer and see what happens. Hopefully that will reduce both of our stress.

And it will probably get easier. I think part of it is that I don’t have an endgame and that’s always hard for me. My brain spins and spins and spins, trying to figure out what all the angles are and how things could end up, ad nauseum.

After writing most of this, I spent the evening chatting with the people in the RV parked next to mine. They had a healthy firepit going and I abandoned writing to sit with them – safely – and socialize. And I’m glad I did because it helped alleviate some of my stress. Indy did manage to get out of his harness briefly, but I got him back and shut him in the trailer.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings and hopefully my brain will quiet down some and I can make some decisions.