12 years ago
Here's a photo of Alazha at the beach at Santa Monica on the way home from our winter Arizona in early 2007 (our six months being up, or I might have stayed in Flagstaff long time). She was such a great travelling cat. Yarrow's first trip to Disney was that year too (Ala stayed in the hotel room and didn't actually get to go to Disney with us). Yarrow had little brown shoes and he ran and ran and ran. <3 It was so fun. Being able to travel in the offseason meant it was easy to find a $50 motel within running distance of Disney. I never fed Yarrow much sugar or chocolate (I was such a good mom back in the day, ha) but during that day or two at Disney we just fueled up on constant sugary chocolatey things (honestly, Disney didn't offer much good food those days, maybe still doesn't).
We went camping in Utah near a giant lake on the way to Las Vegas and I had Ala on a leash which wasn't a great idea because she got stuck to a tree or something somewhere and was gone a long long long long time. We had tickets in Las Vegas and so I gave my phone number to people at the campground and we went to the knight show (While staying in the Excalibur Hotel, 3 year old Yarrow decided to be potty trained at last -- if he was going to be a knight he'd have to be potty trained.)
Ala came back to the campground and people with an RV who we'd had the tent beside kept her for us and called me -- phew. Safer not to leash cats. It must have just trapped her. That desert was all sagebrush and creosote brush and had these jackrabbits with GIANT ears that I could see above the sagebrushes while I was looking for Ala. I'm sure glad she found us again.
I loved living in the desert in Arizona. If I have to pick an absolute favourite environment in all the world, it might be Flastaff&Sedona, Arizona. Belle-Ile-en-Mer is right up there, too, but I do so love the desert.
We lived in two condos in Arizona, 3 months each. At the first one, Alazha could go straight out to the desert and she went on long explores because we had wonderful empty desert and a forested ridge behind us. When we lived in that place she got acne on her chin. Maybe she was allergic to some desert plants or she was eating lizards she was allergic to? It was a bit of a worry but I phoned Joanne Wegiel who put my mind to rest that it was just acne. Anyway she would patiently sit on my chest while I squeezed out the inflammation for her. Had to do it quite often because it kept swelling up. Anyway when we moved in with Megan Beach in our second Flagstaff apartment, Ala didn't go on desert rambles as much, and the acne just went away by itself.
But how can I talk about acne with such a beautiful photo of a cat on the beach! :) Funny how when we love someone, sometimes it's thinking of their flaws or that one brief period of their life that they had some bit of trouble that we got to help them with, that makes use love them and love them forever.
