The Kids
For those of you who don’t really know us, you may still recognize our pets! They are our besties and we couldn’t live without them, it just wouldn’t be home. So when we decided we wanted to live in an RV full time to make travel easier for us, it made perfect sense because now they can go with us on these adventures! So let me formally introduce you to my fur babies.
Hope
Starting off with our Queen. To be fully transparent, I’m obsessed with her. Caleb and I found Hopie back in 2014, three months after we labeled ourselves boyfriend/girlfriend. It was a Monday, about three o’clock because he was dropping me off at home after school. When I heard this small meow, my ears perked up and so I made my way over to where the sound was coming from. In the bushes that had started to turn the colors of early fall, we found a small hopelessly skinny black cat making her way towards me. I decided on her name about three days later, in a way of devoting myself to her care and giving her hope again. The rest is history.
Hope has been with us practically through our entire relationship, in fact she is partly responsible for the moment I decided that I loved Caleb. He had taken me to the store, not really saying why, and we ended up in the pet aisle, where he proceeded to pick up a bag of kitten food and put it in the cart. My heart melted into my stomach and gave me the biggest butterflies because this boy wanted to feed that skinny kitten, not just table scraps but wanted to spend what little money he had on nutritious kitten food. The fact that he showed that much heart and compassion towards a little creature, which most people would just ignore… Seriously, I’m still tearing up thinking about it to this day! I was determined to hang on to him tight from there on out. Hope was even made “cat of honor” at our wedding and we have loved getting to share all of these experiences with her.
As mentioned, Hope was skinny (and if you know her now, you’d find that hard to believe) so we were a little worried. Now I’ll be honest, she wasn’t technically a kitten. My grandma, our resident stray cat expert, had guessed her to be about six months old (but to me she’s still a kitten at about eight years old!) I fixed up an old dog house that my parents had with hay and such to keep her warm, also keeping a good supply of food on its little porch for her, and then going out nightly to check and make sure raccoons weren’t stealing the food and to see if she was okay. I’d take her to my grandma’s who lives next door because they always welcomed and fed strays. All secrecy was needed because my dad wasn’t letting me take her in and also didn’t want me feeding a stray (as all dads do - not wanting another mouth to feed). Yet I was determined (sorry, dad, you raised a hard headed daughter) and when hunting season came around and he was up north for the next week or two, I convinced my mom to let me bring her in for a few hours, then a night, and so on.
She was so little! (Peep the old dog house that I fixed up behind us)
After that, she was a part of the family, and when my dad returned from hunting he kind of just sighed in a resigned way and said “okay I guess you can keep it” (I may be getting a lot of this dialog wrong here, but that’s how it goes in my head after eight years haha).
From there on Hope became this household name to our friends and family because she was all over my socials or I was always talking about her whenever I could. She started to get the nickname Queen from my sister, Makayla, who loves her so much as well.
She is an introverted cat, if she sits on or near you, you’ve been blessed! Caleb is her favorite (sad for me) and will greet him when he gets home, sit with him watching TV and even cuddle at the foot of his side of the bed! Hope has created this sort of aura around her of sophisticated beauty, maybe that’s because I would dress her up in sweaters during winter and give her pretty collars with rhinestones or pearls on them. Regardless, Hopie is our star, I marvel at her perfection constantly.
Henry
Then came 2020 when the world was in lockdown at home. Caleb alone found our boy, Henry, in roughly the same spot as Hope was eight years ago. But first, some backstory. Caleb and I had taken in his elderly childhood cat, Tiger, from his parents to take care at the end of her life. Hope wasn’t her biggest fan (because of her introvertedness), and after about a month of them not being the best of friends, Tiger sadly passed. Two days later, Caleb went to get some things out of my dad’s pole barn for a project he was working on. When he got out of his truck, there was a very high pitched desperate meow coming from some tall grass off to the side. It was this teeny tiny newborn kitten beating all odds by walking (more like a little zombie crawl) over to Caleb. He tried to ignore it for the longest time, knowing the mother needed to care for such a small newborn. Yet after waiting about 20 minutes, and with it being dark outside, he decided to scoop him up and take him back home to me. We were living with my grandparents (the stray experts haha) at the time so when he brought this tiny baby home the whole house was shocked, and excited, and scared! What are we gonna do with a newborn kitten?
And when I say newborn, I’m talking still has the umbilical cord on! We looked up certain stages of a kitten’s life to determine how old he was, and with the cord still attached he was at most, four days old! It was remarkable, and kind of meant to be. Tiger had just died 2 days earlier, and being she didn’t like Hope very well, we decided to acknowledge this little guy’s birthday as July 21st, 2020 (the day she passed) and joke that Tiger was reborn in this kitten, to come back and give Hope a kitten to put up with haha!
Caleb and I had rushed to the store, being it was almost eleven o’clock, we were worried there would be no way to feed the kitten without formula. The next few weeks passed with everyone taking turns feeding him and caring for him, my grandma took over his care really as time went on because we had to be at work all day and couldn’t. As the next couple of months went by, we bonded with Henry, and Caleb was head over heels for him. So when it came time for us to move out of their place, grandma agreed to let us take him in as our own.
(Left to right) Hazel, Harold, Margaret (passed away from a heart condition shortly later), and Henry!
Henry also had three other siblings show up two weeks or so after he did. My little sister found them practically in the same condition. She brought them back to care for as well, and so Henry was able to grow up with them and get more sociable. As if he needed that though, he is the most gregarious little guy, always happy to be the host, loves new people and I am not too confident he is familiar with stranger danger like Hope.
Speaking of Hope, she is like a tough older sister to him, which was very surprising to us because she usually hated other cats and dogs. That’s why we had never thought to adopt one again. Yet her being so comfortable around him really proved to us that this was meant to be. He’s also been a great help towards Hope, actually, with her health… our sweet girl who used to be a twig, gained plenty of pounds through the years after getting spayed. So our vet has been trying to get her down to a healthy number, and Henry was our solution! He is so active and energetic that he gets her to play a lot. In the last two years Hope has done wonderful, losing about 4 pounds (which is very difficult for a cat to do)!
Henry loves paper and plastic, anything crinkly really. As I said before, he is so friendly, and always at the screen door howling at whoever will listen that he wants to go outside - like a puppy dog! We joke that he is the family dog because the little guy plays fetch with us! No, I am serious, our cat plays fetch! He can be a little bit too curious though somet- most of the time. When we had first moved into our house, the previous owners had left a thing of rat poison in the basement somewhere we couldn't see. So when I found the tiny chunk bitten out of it as it was sitting on the floor near the basement door I freaked out! I knew it was Henry because it was covered in plastic. We ended up having to give him vitamin K pills twice daily, per our vet, for about a month just in case he started internally bleeding! In the end, Caleb and I realized there was a chance he probably never even ingested much of it, because it had been after all just a small piece bitten off, and it was possibly too bitter and he spit it out. Who knows, at least the crazy little guy is okay!
His other issue (a bigger problem with living on the road) is that he hates car rides! He’s got a big anxiety problem (aw, just like me) and motion sickness issues, so he will get all worked up and feel ill before vomiting --among other reactions-- all over me or the car. Lately we have it worked out well enough that he gets anxiety medication and even motion sickness meds for longer hauls before we take off. Usually it will work flawlessly, and other times we wish we stayed home!
Even through all of that, Henry is very loving and so loyal that it makes up for all the wild things he does daily. Couldn’t live without my boy.
Where Hope’s favorite “hooman” is Caleb, Henry’s favorite is me, they’re so obviously clear to the both of us who they prefer the most. These two cats have the biggest personalities, cats are remarkable in a way where they can heal your deepest heartaches and also make you laugh until your sides may burst!
Roger
Last but certainly not least, our bunny rabbit, Roger! We got him from a Family Farm and Home a month before we got married in 2018. He was the most interesting colored rabbit they had so we picked him up! Ever since then, he’s been the most constant one in the household, the “chill” guy. He never seems to get upset, or have an issue, unless his water is suddenly empty, and then the world literally falls apart. Really, he never seems to complain-- even just recently we discovered rabbits’ teeth grow out and need to be maintained. Well, Roger never made a fuss about it, and he had a pretty bad case for two of his teeth, growing into his little cheek! Our vet had to put him under anesthesia to trim them even. All he does is bite at the cage walls, thump his back feet on the floor, basically he’s the most obnoxious he possibly can be until someone gives him the attention he needs!
Dropped the blueberries and Roger went crazy!
Recently, we have also figured out that his favorite thing on the face of the earth, blueberries. This rabbit will go bonkers for them! Caleb was making his lunch one day, and thought maybe Roger would eat one, so we fed him a blueberry (after I anxiously searched the web to make sure it was safe for him) and he chowed down! Nowadays, he expects at least one every single morning, and will not even touch his actual food until there is a blueberry presented to him. If that’s all the crazy our bunny will show us, then I think he is probably the most undisturbed bunny rabbit ever. He’s also the only bunny I know of that will not bite you, no matter how many buttons you push. He will lick the salt off of your arms but that’s about it.
A recent family outing to the vet! We LOVE Cedar Creek Vet, Dr. Maria is the best person on the planet. No one else I would ever trust with my pets.
Recently I went on a trip for work by myself, it was only for four days, but it felt like an eternity. The first time in a long time I had to stay at a hotel without my family. I was so alone and it felt so weird to “come home” to an empty room. I could never ever live without an animal, they’re a huge part of my life. My animals are one of the reasons I wake up in the morning… literally, Hope and Henry meow so much they are the alarm clocks!
Our fur babies are like real babies to us, and we wouldn’t want it any other way. The transition to full-time RV went pretty well with the animals, and everyone has settled into the new lifestyle. Now, if we can only get Henry to enjoy car rides more…
Stay Adventurous!
-E
