Artie

Our faithful but decidedly unenthusiastic travel partner is our cat Artie. Before we abandoned our physical address in Phoenix Arizona, things in Artie’s world seldom changed and he liked it that way. Artie has always seemed to live by the philosophy that “different” is never good. If we moved a piece of furniture he would treat it with great suspicion for days. He spent hours looking out on his familiar surroundings through a window or in the screened Arizona room. Then he found himself living in a home on wheels and all of that changed. Suddenly everything was different and he was pretty vocal about his disapproval. What he saw out his windows one week was radically different the next.

Artie’s “Catio”

Adjusting has been difficult for him and he was suffering from a major case of cabin fever and always trying to get out. He succeeded once and we almost lost him so I knew I had to do something allow him to spend time outside but where he was also completely secure. Right next to the door there’s a tall window that opens from the bottom and is less than a foot from the floor. I engineered a removable insert for that window that had a kitty door in it then hung a small dog crate on the outside. With the knob nuts for the bolts, I can put it up or take it down in about 5 minutes. It has to be the very first thing we deploy once we arrive at a new destination because he checks for it within minutes after he comes out of hiding when I turn off the engine. You can see him looking around and pondering the fact that his view is just not the same as it was before. He eventually gets used to it, though. We thought a great name for a cat patio was “catio”.