You find yourself in a small fabric carrier being bustled about in the back of an oh-my-god-what-happened-to-our-old-car Ford F-250. And you don’t like it.

Such was the predicament Sadie, Willow, and Frankie found themselves this fine spring day. Like prisoners in a lineup, they glanced about nervously as we secured Ellie’s front door and prepared the treats.

As if the treats would matter one iota.

We unzipped the front flaps of each: Willow, then Frankie, then Sadie, and we watched as each of them spied the nearest safe, hiding spot and jumped over each other to get there, treats be damned.

There are perhaps not surprisingly, many tiny little spots in an Airstream a cat can squeeze into. And they did. And they stayed there for a bit. Until Willow’s stomach growled, and she allowed herself to venture forth to the still-waiting treat next to the oh-is-that-my-food-bowl? Maybe the Airstream wasn’t too bad after all.

Admittedly after about a week we considered taking Frankie to the vet. His rather foul habit of howling at about 2:37am in the dead of night was taking its toll, and we wondered how, and if, he might adapt to the sudden reduction in his available square footage.

Thankfully after another couple of nights his plaintive cries for…something…subsided, and we were all able to get an almost-uninterrupted night’s sleep.

Almost, because around 5am each morning, Frankie, hungry because he hadn’t eaten in oh, 42 minutes, bounced up on the bed and started patting at my shut eyelids, cheeks, forehead, and then marching up and down my torso until I made the ultimate reward available to him. That was when we bought an automatic feeder, extra electrical load be damned.

See, we couldn’t exactly promote that kind of behavior by getting up and feeding him immediately. But we also didn’t know if we could outlast his persistence.

Eventually we got there. Tough times at first, but everyone’s reasonably content at least now.