The story of ZoePhee Moving to Oregon....

.....or how I moved 5 animals out of state with a 12+ hour drive without loosing my cool. 

  

What an adventure!! Let me tell you! It's not easy to move with animals, especially cats.. but lets start at the beginning. 

We moved from Sparks Nevada with our three cats to Beaverton Oregon three and a half years ago and spent two absolutely amazing years in Beaverton. Oregon is magical... We got our dogs here and I've met so many wonderful friends and I absolutely love it here. I've always dreamed about living in the rainforest and it was like that dream had finally come true.

About a year and a half ago, Vince's family called to inform us that his Grandfather had a "heart incident" and after a lot of long conversations and whatnot everyone decided that it would be a good idea for us to move down there to help him out. He would need us to live with him and keep an eye on him and help him with stuff as needed. So we packed up our stuff and our animals and moved to California. Grandpa was fully aware that we had two dogs and three cats and that they would be coming with us... he wasn't thrilled about it but was okay with it. When we arrived he changed his mind and did not want the animals at his house. (Insert Major Family Drama Here) There was no way I was going to live without my furkids and we ended up in the spare bedroom at my in-law's house. We lived there a year and a half and it was helpful because we were able to get some of our bills payed off. 

Neither of us were very happy about being back in California. I missed Oregon pretty badly, all the friends we had made and how dog friendly it was and I knew I would never get over it. My husband wasn't that thrilled with being back in California, either. So we decided to move back. My husband found out that he was re-hirable at his job and he began the process of that and once we knew he had the job back, we found an apartment and the adventure began! We literally moved a week after we found out he was able to get his old job back and it was very sudden and quick. 

KB Bear from Romping and Rolling in the Rockies asked: "Please add to that post how you managed to keep your blog running so smoothly and well despite being in the midst of a big move :)" I actually didn't know I was moving. I kind of had a feeling we might be because my husband was trying to get his old job back but nothing was for sure. We found out he had the job and the next day we got an apartment, then a week later we were moving in. I was in the blogging groove before this all happened and had around two weeks worth of blog posts written and scheduled to go up. During our move, I tried to keep up with everyone's blogs as much as possible and did my best to comment when I could. I did have a few hiccups with the blog hops because I discovered that I couldn't post the codes from my cell phone but other than that everything went okay.

The RockStar was absolutely necessary! :D

Lilly and Hurley. Pandora was up front with me.

Zoe and Phoenix were in the backseat. 

The drive from my in-law's place to our new place in Oregon was over 12 hours and we planned to do it in two days. We've done it in one day a bunch of times and it's just so exhausting and harder on the animals. We decided to spend two nights in motels and chose Motel 6 because every location is pet friendly and they do not charge extra. It's not the best hotel/motel out there but you can't beat the price and we needed to do it as cheaply as possible. We chose a meeting point and I took off with all the animals and my husband drove the moving truck. Both days, I decided to drive straight through with minimal stopping to get us to our motel rooms as quickly as possible. It made it much easier on the animals.

 I took this photo when we came to Oregon to get an apartment. I was not driving when I took this.

On the first day of driving, I sedated all of my cats with acepromazine. I thought it would be easier on them if they were sleepy and I hoped that it would just chill them out a little. Two of my cats were fine but Pandora did not react well on it at all. Pandora screamed like a banshee for a lot of the trip and not only that, my sweet fluffy kitty who doesn't have a mean bone in her body, became aggressive and angry. It wasn't pretty. She even attacked my other cat when we arrived at the first Motel 6 and bit me and the cat carrier multiple times when I attempted to try and calm her down. None of the bites broke the skin, though. I will never use ace on her ever again. 

Pandora on ace. :( 

(When cats are on ace, their third eyelid pops up and it is completely normal, even if it does make her look evil)

 Both of the girls are very well behaved and sleep on road trips!

 Lilly exploring the motel room.

Hurley did really well. 

Road trips are hard work!! Zoe was so tired.

The second day of driving went much better. The cats were not sedated and they were already used to being in the car for a long time from the previous day. Everyone did so much better. Pandora did not scream, although she'd complain with a very pitiful meow once in a while. They were all very happy to get to our next Motel 6 and settle down for the night. 

 

Everyone is sleepy!

 

Lilly is pretty chill. 

 Pandora, back to normal. Thank goodness!

Lilly was so tired, she fell asleep like this.

 On the third day, we drove to our new apartment, signed our lease and began moving in. We put the cats in the bathroom with their water and litterbox and the dogs were either in the bedroom or out on the patio. It took us around 7 hours to move all of our things upstairs. 

 

Zoe hanging out on the patio with our Maple Trees

 Phoenix hanging out on the patio with our Maple Trees.

We've been in our new apartment for a week now and we are loving it. We're 3 miles from my favorite park in the Portland area and the girls are having a fantastic time running around. We are getting all of our stuff situated and our place is starting to look like home. Both of us are so happy to be back!