How To Move A Diabetic Cat Across The United States

And Other Considerations

Our little family moved to Oregon in 2013 after spending a decade in Minneapolis and a few years in Wisconsin.

It was time to move to the backwoods of The Pacific Northwest.

I had never been to Oregon, and neither had my wife, K.L. Rockwell, but we really liked Oregon wine and eating Tillamook Sharp Cheddar. Plus, the weather was supposed to be nice. If you like rain.

K.L. got an interview at a little nonprofit in Corvallis, Oregon, flew out and interviewed and BOOM, we were all set.

She can always convince somebody to give her a job. Me? Not so much.

Luckily, I had lots of experience being a gainfully unemployed.

There’s nothing more loving a parent can do than pull your kid out of school and drag that kid to the other side of the country because you like good weather, wine, and weed.

We packed as much of our worldly possessions as possible into the world’s smallest U-Haul trailer you can rent and sold the rest of our crap in the World’s Biggest Garage Sale. Minimalism was big at the time so it felt like we were being noble.

We also packed our diabetic cat, our non-diabetic cat, and seven year old son, Fineas Rockwell into the car.

We headed West, and never looked back.

JK. We go back regularly.

Bitty, the diabetic tuxedo cat

I actually thought we should move to California because it’s warmer there. K.L. Rockwell disagreed. She NEEDED to move to Oregon. She thought the wine was better. I wasn’t going to argue the finer points of wine because I’m fine with Ernest and Julio Gallo.

Before K.L. got the job, I never gave much thought to the Pacific Northwest. The most I knew about it was from Portlandia.

It was supposed to rain more there but snow MUCH less.

But rain? Who gave a sh*t. We were escaping -20 degree winters.

Here’s a little something I wrote about Oregon weather (we live on the coast now. Fancy!):

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Did you know that cats don’t like to ride in cars? Our cats hated being in the car so bad that when we got to Fargo we needed to visit a veterinarian to get sedatives for the cats.

Important Information: Cat sedatives are just human sedatives.

At first I thought most of the problems on the move would come from our son. We thought, “Oh, no, his friends. His family. He’s going to be crying the entire trip!”

He couldn’t have cared less and slept most of the way.

The worst part of the 2,200 mile drive was our diabetic cat, Bitty.

Not only was The Diabetic Cat freaking out from being in a car, but I needed to give Bitty an insulin shot every twelve hours AND check her blood for sugar levels.

Do you know how much cat diabetes medicine costs?? We were broke at the time and only had one bottle of insulin. You need to keep insulin refrigerated. All. The. Way. Across. America.

We were always looking for ice. Ice ice ice.

What fun.

So there we were in our 2008 Saturn Vue, pulling an overloaded U-Haul Trailer with one diabetic cat, one cat that was constantly freaking out, and our toddler. I know seven isn’t a ‘toddler.’ Just go with it.

When you have two cats on a cross-country move that take turns freaking the fk out, you can’t just pull off to Yellowstone and chill out.

No.

This move was anything but a vacation trip.

This move was a mission to get to Oregon. Like the Oregon trail of yore, and you just knew one of us were going to get dysentery (we mostly ate McDonalds on the drive. That’s when McDonalds hamburgers were a buck).

We were just like the Okies during the Dust Bowl, but with second generation smart phones and a crappy dashboard mounted-GPS device.

It was a sh*t show of just epic proportions.

The Best Part Of The “Trip”? The Fargo Woodchipper

There was one incredibly awesome part of our move.

In Fargo, North Dakota, there is a wayside tourist stop that has the ACTUAL WOODCHIPPER from the movie Fargo.

THE ACTUAL WOODCHIPPING PROP FROM THE MOVIE!

After we drugged the cats we were able to briefly view… the woodchipper.

I mean, how many times in your life do you get a chance to see the WOODCHIPPER from FARGO????

They even had it (have it) set up so you could pretend to be putting a real human foot in it.

Apparently this is STILL a thing in Fargo.

I love how the Fargo-Moorhead tourism council thinks!

From the Fargo-Moorhead Tourist Board. (this isn’t me). This must be the best Tourist Board in the entire country!!! https://www.fargomoorhead.org/listing/the-woodchipper-in-fargo/913/

I know I’m gushing about the Woodchipper but I’ll stop now. If you’re ever in the area just click the map below for directions!

So, how long did it take to get from Wisconsin to Oregon?

Thanks for asking!

Mapquest told us it would be about three nights, if we went slow.

It took us… six nights and seven days.

SEVEN DAYS!

And… each night the hotels became seedier and seedier. I mean, you shoulda’ seen the Quality Inn in Kennewick, WA. It was the first time I’d ever sat up all night pointing a pistol at the door, waiting to be waylaid. (I wish I were making this part up)

Here is a picture of it… oh… wait…

The Desert Of Washington State

Fun Fact: Did you know that most of Washington State is apparently… a DESERT??

I didn’t either.

When you cross into Washington State from the lush, forested Idaho (I know, right? I thought it would be all potato fields), you hit something called “The Scablands of Washington.”

The Scablands.

What a name! It must bring the tourists in droves. It’s not the kind of desert with cactuses and road runners but it is still a desert.

A miserable desert that was 105 degrees.

I had to give Bitty an insulin shot behind a random truck stop like some kind of heroin addict.

Making It To Portland!

I was so excited to get to Portland.

I always wanted to see the ocean.

Did you know that Portland, Oregon, is not… on the ocean??

I didn’t either. The word “Port” is right in its name!

The closest we got to the ocean on the move.

Instead of the oceanside port I thought Portland was, it was actually more of a massive traffic jam that K.L. Rockwell had to navigate with our TomTom misdirecting us at every turn.

But we made it.

To the promised land.

The Willamette Valley.

Wine Country!

We went directly to Domaine Drouhan Winery in Dundee, Oregon to buy a bottle of wine. We charged a $90 bottle of Pinot Noir to our credit card that had $93 available credit left and sat in a different seedy Comfort Inn that night drinking high-end Pinot Noir out of paper cups.

We took the first apartment we could find.

The cats lived.

And now we live in Oregon.

The END!

Epilogue. Bitty died in 2016. The diabetes finally got her. I figured out that I had given Bitty over 1400 shots over the course of her life!!

I could’ve been a phlebotomist!

Here’s a picture of Finny and me the first week in Oregon. That’s a WATER BOTTLE in my pocket!! And I wish I still had that hat, but our cat I kept alive the entire ride peed on it a week later. You don’t keep a hat that a diabetic cat pees on.