Tails from the Nine Lives Express

As I am sure you have read from Robin's blog, my husband and I are drivers on the 9 Lives Express. That is what we call our trips from Pennsylvania to Georgia and back to transport rescued kitties to foster care or furever homes in the North East.

We've made this trip four times so far, and I expect that we'll make it again before too long. We are planning a trip down to Florida in December for vacation, and I am sure there will be kitties in need of a ride hitching their way up north with us on the way back.

Mark and I are drivers. We live in Central PA, but Mark works in eastern NJ some 250 miles away. He make the trip back and forth weekly where he works in the office for 2 or 3 days before returning home. I am a nurse's aide specializing in hospice and home care. I serve a very rural area. When I worked for an agency, it was not unusual for me to drive 400-500 miles a week visiting rural patients who lived 20 miles east of nowhere.

So suffice to say, we don't mind driving. We have very close friends in Rebecca, GA south of Macon, and we own a timeshare interest in Disney World (Disney Vacation Club.) Even before we were drivers for the Nine Lives Express, we drove south 2 or 3 times a year. We're just including kitty rescue on the route now. :D

This past weekend Mark and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary by driving down to Rebecca - and WDW at the last minute - and we brought back 7 rescue kitties. On the way down, we stopped at Donna's, one of the foster moms for Winging Cat Rescue. She has a lovely foster care home for many, many kitties Winging Cat saves from kill pounds in GA. It was her birthday on Sept 19 so I brought her a peach melba cheesecake with a kitty drawn on the top.

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/kittycheesecake.jpg

We also dropped off a bunch of stuff for the annual Winging Cat Rescue yard sale on Sept 25th, then we headed on to Rebecca to stay with our friends there. Robin already posted about our last minute decision to head further south to Disney World to spend our anniversary there. We left Rebecca when our friends went to work, and drove down to Orlando. We had a wonderful dinner at Boma in the Animal Kingdom Lodge and spent the night at the Old Key West resort.

Throughout our trip we had been hoping and praying to get the word that the twin sisters at the East Lake Animal Hosp had been adopted or needed transport, but as the days went on, we feared that no one would step up and the vet clinic would send the two dumped sisters to the pound. Mark and I discussed it, and we decided that if no one could take the sisters, we would and we would foster them until a furever home could be found. We could not idly sit by and let that happen when we were in position to prevent it. We called Robin and told her what we had decided and the pieces fell into place. I called Maria, Maria called East Lake, then went to get them so they would be there when Mark and I arrived to pick up Sammy, Pauley and Little M.

I affectionately named the two Ping Pong and Butterball.

Ping Pong - http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/pingpong.jpg
Butterball - http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/butterball.jpg

My mom was always a bit on the portly side, and Ping Pong and Butterball were nicknames of hers when she was younger. These two pudge pots just screamed roly poly names, tho I'd be delighted to have a new owner rename them. ;D

Our first stop was Donna's to pick up two special needs kitties for Winging Cat Rescue that needed a ride to Rikki's Refuge in VA. Since we couldn't get to Rikki's until they opened Sunday morning, the plan was to leave GA late and drive overnight. As such, we didn't pick up kitties until after nine, and we didn't get on the road until close to 11pm.

Maria warned me that Sammy was a poor traveler. She was right. He cried and cried until we let him out of the crate. He quickly took over my lap and the dashboard.

http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/sammy-dash.jpg
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb291/isilwath/sammy-dawn.jpg

Ten hours later, we arrived at Rikki's to drop off Haylee and Rita, and we were back on the road by 10am. We got home around 3pm, unloaded and settled in the kitties. I took videos of the fosters set up in my bathroom and in my office.

Fosters 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm_mr_5l7bI
Fosters 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtXvcU8aOk4
Fosters 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdm1czg8i1s
Sammy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDqQhdNM0MY

Tomorrow, Mark will load Pauley, Sammy, and Little Maria into his car and drive them east to meet Robin and Connie where they will go on to their foster, and hopefully to furever homes soon. Ping Pong and Butterball will be staying with me, and hopefully we'll be driving them to their furever home soon too. :)