Two facts are important in explaining what happened the next day.

Fact one:  I am not a morning person.

I approve of morning in theory, and when I do find myself up early I am
awestruck by the beauty of sunrise and the tranquility of those
early-morning hours.  I like getting a jump on the day, having time to
relax with coffee and a newspaper before I face the world.  I just wish
they would schedule mornings later in the day so I could enjoy them.

Because, you see, under the best of circumstances I have trouble getting
up in the morning. I have a sleeping disorder which has plagued me since
childhood.  Mind you, I am not complaining.  I only tell you this by way
of explanation.  By the time I am able to fall asleep at night – no matter
if I’ve gone to bed earlier than your grandma – it is almost always four
or five in the morning.  So at my best I’m usually running on three or
four hours of sleep a night.

Fact two:  Shiloh does not travel well.

In his defense, I must mention that Shiloh is under most circumstances a
gentle, affectionate, sweet-natured cat.  He acts as loving big brother and
protector to Badness and Willy D, and has even come to love Bridget,
even though she was introduced into the house when he was already full-grown,
by which time most cats have learned an intense fear and loathing of dogs.

However, the events of the preceding day, combined with the fact that when
we finally let Shiloh out of his cage it was in a completely foreign environment,
put Shiloh in a surly mood that kept everybody in the room, except for Stephen,
up all night long.

He lay curled up on my pillow as is his custom, except, as is not his custom,
steadily growling.  Whenever an animal came within three feet of his fortification,
he lashed out with a withering hiss and several deadly accurate swipes of his claw.
I spent the night breaking up fights andby the time I fell asleep it was close to nine
in the morning.

We had set the alarm for 10 in order to check out by 11.  But I could not even lift
my head off the pillow.  In the few minutes it took for Stephen to rouse from sleep
in his bed on the other side of the room, I hatched a plan.

We would get the room for another night, sleep all day and get on the
road at about 10pm.  Less traffic meant faster travel, anyway, right?
So we could catch up on our sleep and still not get any farther behind schedule.
We could drive straight through until the following afternoon and be in Savannah
in time for the customary 3pm check-in at some hotel there.

It was a great plan.

And it would’ve worked, too, if I had been able to get back to sleep.
But alas, once I am awake, it is very difficult for me to get back to sleep.
So between my sleeping disorder and Stephen, who had been able to sleep
the night before, coming in and out of the room, and the animals hissing
and spitting and fighting, I did not finally drift back to sleep until three in
the afternoon.  About ten minutes later, Stephen came in with diner food
for me to eat after my nice long sleep.

Still, we tried to stick to our plan.  At about 9pm, we went out to have a
nice meal, then went back to the motel room to pack up the car and leave.

I guess our mistake was lying back down, “just to close our eyes for a
few minutes.”

When we woke up, it was five the next morning.  We would not make it to
Savannah today now, and therefore had spent an extra night on a motel room
for nothing.  We should be in South Carolina at least by now.  Instead
we’re still just barely over the New Jersey border.

So okay –now I’m $1,210 overbudget and two days behind schedule.

We packed in a hurry, loaded the animals and our things into the truck
and the rental car, and got on the road.

We pulled onto the highway entrance about 50 feet from the motel and
stopped at the toll plaza to get our ticket.  The New Jersey toll booths
give you a ticket when you get on the highway, and you pay when you get
off based on how far you drove.

I pulled out of the toll plaza and saw that Stephen was getting his ticket.
I drove on, figuring he would be behind me in just a moment.
I glanced back in my rearview mirror a minute or so later.  Stephen was
not there.  I glanced again.  Still no Stephen.  But there were a bunch
of 18-wheelers coming up behind me.  I assumed Stephen had gotten stuck
behind them and would reappear as soon as they all passed me.

After about five minutes, I knew something was wrong.  I checked my
cell phone voice mail.  No message.  Now I was afraid something was very
wrong. I called Stephen’s cell phone.  I got his voice mail.  As I prepared
to pull off into the emergency lane to see if Stephen caught up to me, I
checked my voice mail one more time.

The message both relieved and panicked me.  It was Stephen.

“Christian, I’m fine, the cats are fine, the dog is fine.  Nobody was hurt.
The car is totaled.  Call me back as soon as you get this so I can tell you where we are.”
I called Stephen back and he picked up on the first ring.

“Did you see what happened?”

“No, what happened, are you all right?”

“We’re all fine.  We got hit from behind by a tractor-trailer.
 The car is totaled.”

In a daze, I listened while Stephen put the state trooper on the phone,
who told me they were about 200 feet behind the toll plaza where I had
last seen Stephen in the minivan.  I pulled off at the next exit and went
through the toll plaza, where I paid a dollar or so for the toll, then did
a U-turn and got back on the highway heading north.

When I got to the right exit, I pulled off and went through another toll
plaza.  In the haste and confusion, I had lost the toll ticket.  I explained
this to the toll collector.

“I just got on at the last exit.  I have to get back to my friend.  He
 was in a car accident one exit back.”

“If you don’t have your ticket, I’m gonna have to charge you the full
 toll for the whole state.”

“Fine, what is it?”

“Eight-fifty.”

I handed the man a ten, marvelling that he was charging me at all under the
circumstances and wondering if he was going to ask if my friend was all right.
He didn’t.

It was a ten-minute drive back to Exit 8, so I had time to get good and
panic-stricken.  Stephen had said he was all right, but there was no way he
could possibly be uninjured.  He got hit by a Mack truck, for God’s sake.
But then I passed him as I drove.  I looked over to the southbound side of
the highway, and there he was, standing.  He was standing up. He was
standing next to the minivan, walking back and forth.

“Sonofagun, he really is all right,” I thought.  That’s when I started thinking
about Shiloh.  Stephen had said all the animals were fine, and I had seen
Bridget with him a moment ago.  But Stephen hadn’t known that I had put
Shiloh’s cat carrier in the back of the minivan that morning to separate him
from Badness and Willy D so he wouldn’t drive Stephen nuts hissing at them
all day.  Stephen was undoubtedly in shock.  He had probably just looked
into the back seat, seen the one cat carrier, and assumed all the cats were okay.

So now I drove the last five minutes convinced that Shiloh – my favorite
of the three cats, I’ll admit it – was dead.  He had to be.

I got to the scene and ran over to Stephen.  He really did seem to be all
right.  He was walking and talking just fine, and the cop said he seemed
okay to him.  Bridget was obviously okay, too.  So I went to the minivan.
I saw Badness and Willy D first.  They were both blinking up at me, dazed
and confused, and covered in their own waste.  They were scared shitless,
literally, but they seemed okay.  Then I went to the back of the minivan.
Shiloh’s cat carrier was not there.  I looked around on the highway,
expecting to see something horrible, but then I looked in the minivan again.

And there was Shiloh, in the second seat, also dazed and confused and
scared shitless, but looking up at me as if to say, “What the FUCK was
that?”  He didn’t remember doing it, but Stephen had obviously moved the
carrier when he checked on Shiloh.

About this time the tow truck guy is attaching the cable to the front of
the minivan.  I tell him I need to get my cats out of the car first. He
says okay, just hold on a second.  I wait while he finishes attaching
the cable, then he actually begins to haul the minivan up onto the flatbed.
Hold on a second, I say, let me get my cats.  Let me get it on the
flatbed first, he says.

“You want to haul my already terrified cats up at a 90-degree angle,
knock them all over the place, and then you went me to crawl into a minivan
with broken glass everywhere while it’s suspended in the air from a cable to
get my cats?  No way.  Put the fucking thing back down.”

He gave me a dirty look, but he lowered the minivan back down and I
crawled in and got out first Shiloh, then Badness and Willy D.

Stephen insisted he didn’t need to go to the hospital, at least not until
he’d had something hot to drink and calmed down a little, so the first
order of business was to find a vet to have the animals looked at.  The
state trooper told us there was an animal hospital about a mile past the
motel we had stayed at, so I got the directions and we took off, all
crowded into the Ryder truck again, this time all three cats stewing in
their own juices and crying like crazy at the prospect of being in another
vehicle.  When I led Bridget to the truck and tried to coax her into hopping
up onto Stephen’s lap, she looked at me dubiously, and I swear to
God she was trying to say, “Are you nuts?  Don’t you remember what
happened the last car I was in?”

We found the vet with no problem.  It was still only 7:30 in the morning,
so the doctor wouldn’t be in for another hour yet, but the nurse took the
animals in the back, where she would clean them up and clean out their
cages and do a preliminary exam before the doctor got there.

So Stephen and I went to get some coffee at a diner down the street.
By the time we got back to the vet’s, the nurse said the doctor had just
finished looking at the animals.  They were all fine and the doctor
would be out to talk to us in a second.

The doctor told us that all the X-rays were clean and the animals were
responsive and breathing normally.  He gave the cats a sedative that would
keep them sleeping most of the day, but no matter how he begged, they
would not give Stephen one.  It cost me $120 for the cats and Stephen
$33 for Bridget.  We paid it gladly.

Now I’m $1,337.50 overbudget and two days behind schedule.  But my best
friend of 15 years and all my pets are unharmed.  So I figure, all
things considered, it’s been a good day so far. A very good day indeed.

Even with the accident and the visit to the vet’s, we were back on the road
by 10:45am – Stephen a little calmer now and even laughing, Bridget curled
up on his lap for security, and the cats stoned out of their minds and singing
99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.  I calculated that if we drove all day, we could
make it to North Carolina before we stopped for the night.  But just remember,
it was only quarter to eleven in the morning.  And the one thing I didn’t figure
into my calculations was the Ryder truck.

And I think this would be a good time to reiterate:  I am not making this up.

To be continued…