DAY 1 – THURSDAY, JUNE 16TH: Medford to Seattle to Portland.

Michelle: In order to leave the country, I have to pick up our secondary passports. We applied for them in person Monday 6/13 in Seattle and we have to pick them up in person because they were not going to make it to us via USPS/FedEx/UPS in time before we leave Sarah Way. I have a one way ticket from the Medford airport to Seattle, and have made no other travel arrangements in advance because my sprained knee, which had me on crutches for four days, and the road trip to Seattle earlier in the week for the application process has put me at least a week behind.

I wake up at 7:00, my flight leaves just after 9:00 and the house is still in a state of complete disarray. We have converted our guest room/office, where we have been sleeping on yoga mats and sleeping bags, to a packing hub. We have 5 large suitcases and only two of them are completely packed. There are clothes, electronics, dishes, paperwork, pet supplies, and toiletries everywhere. I have finished my very last load of laundry before my washer and dryer are turned over to our friend Andrea who purchased them from us. I focus on packing as many items as I can before my departure and I am extremely skeptical that Andrew will be able to finish the very long to do list before 5 pm on Friday.

I leave the house with a fair amount of anxiety, I usually do the packing for our household and feel like I am leaving Andrew in the lurch with everything else he has on his plate. I still have quite a limp and am moving slowly especially with the extra weight of my backpack and purse that I am carrying. I have Ace bandaged my knee, but it isn’t happy about moving great distances or stairs or sitting still too long without elevating it. I make it through TSA, sit down pre-flight and work on booking a pet friendly hotel in Portland for Thursday and Friday night. Amenities and comfort are not a consideration for us, I need a hotel that will take 3 pets and most hotels don’t take cats at all. Fortunately, I locate the Portlander Inn and Marketplace, they take pets for a $25 fee (amazingly it is $25 for all 3 pets – which is almost unheard of). As a bonus the hotel is only 7.5 miles from the Portland airport where we are departing from Saturday morning. I make a quick call in the Medford airport and have lodging for at least tonight and tomorrow.

The flight to Seattle is uneventful, I focus my nervous energy on Sudoku (it has been my stress busting activity of choice lately). I take a cab from the airport to the passport office. I know what to expect and where to go because I was just here on Monday. What I don’t know is how long I will be waiting here today and this is another reason I haven’t made any other flight or travel arrangements to Portland yet. Our application appointment last time took 2 hours and today I don’t have an appointment at all. I slowly make my way through security (my knee’s fault, not security’s), head up the elevator and as I turn to walk to the end of the line, a security guard asks if anyone is just here for “pick up”. THAT’S ME!! This is great, I don’t have to wait in the pre-line for the regular line. The guard directs me to a specific window with a very short line and by the time I get there, I am next. The attendant takes my ID and my receipt and after a few short minutes I have two passports in hand. I cannot explain the relief I experience when I grasp onto those two blue envelopes. We can keep our original flights with most of our pets, I am so excited.

I didn’t expect the passport pick up to go so smoothly, now I just have to get back to Portland where I have booked my hotel. I initially planned to take a cab back to the airport and fly, but the available flights to Portland tonight don’t get in until 8:30 pm, a full 9 hours from now and they are running $200 for less than a one hour flight – ugh. That also doesn’t include the $50 cab ride back to the airport and going through TSA again, which is never my favorite. I discover that there is a bus leaving from Seattle to Portland at 1:00 and it should get there at about 4:30. I think I will have time to hobble the 1/2 mile to the pick up spot. I book my ticket with my phone, buy an extra seat so I don’t have to sit next to anyone else, and for a grand total of $33.73 the next leg of my trip is planned. I make it to the bus stop early, finally remember that I haven’t eaten anything yet today and being of limited mobility, decide on some snacks and beverages from a nearby gas station.

The bus ETA is delayed due to traffic/congestion and I arrive in Portland about 5:30 pm. After a quick Uber ride from the bus drop off, I arrive at the hotel. It is a huge truck driver’s complex with multiple restaurants, a bar, a laundromat, a post office and almost anything else a traveler could need. I have been in communication with Andrew throughout the day, but we were both so busy that it has been fragmented and sporadic at best. I have been forwarding him cute pics of Zoe on a road trip with my parents for encouragement and hope he checks in with a status update when he can. About 9:00 pm Andrew calls, says he plans to clean the house and head towards Portland tonight. I don’t know how he isn’t passed out already with all of the manual labor he has done today, but I trust his judgement (and hope it isn’t utter exhaustion and stress propelling this decision). At about 10:00 pm we do a video chat and a final walk through of our empty house together. Time to say goodbye. We loved you 1816 Sarah Way – we have to break up, it isn’t you, it is us.

Andrew: 10:12 pm. I’ve just locked the keys inside our former house in Medford. I hope I haven’t forgotten anything. I’m driving a rented Kia that I hate for many reasons. It is stuffed full of all our (non-shipped) belongings and (non-Zoe) pets. We grab a tank of gas and hit the road, I’ve had a super long day starting around 7:00 a.m. but I’m armed with excitement and a Rockstar energy drink that had been sitting in the back of a cupboard since our Extra Life event in October. I call my mom and have a nice chat while the furry babies calm themselves down a bit, all seems to be going great!

DAY 2 – FRIDAY, JUNE 17TH: Medford to Portland Continued.

Andrew: Midnight passes and Michelle and I are texting and chatting occasionally (using the car’s hands free mode of course). Thursday is acting squirrely in her crate and I’m trying to keep her calm, but there isn’t much I can do. All three pets are in soft crates, Basil on the passenger seat, Thursday on the passenger floor nearest me, Morse on the floor by the door. Because we ended up buying five crates, Morse has been upgraded to a very nice travel-home, but Thursday is in one of the $35 units that appeared to be decent for the price.

Almost simultaneously I smell cat feces and see Thursday jump past me heading to the rear of the car which is overfilled with our luggage. Bad bad bad. There isn’t a rest area for about 45 minutes and I’m not on a great stretch of Interstate 5 to safely pull over. I had thrown a tiny flashlight in the center console and am able to peek down at her cheap carrier. She didn’t pull a Houdini, it was more of a Hulk! The carrier is a total loss, she shredded the top mesh part, and it is filled with poop. Our near feral cat (that’s just the way she is) is running around like she’s discovered an amazing playground throughout the car.

I survive to the rest area, discard the poop, and am able to clip her into the destroyed carrier. This gets me an hour closer to Portland, I’m sipping that now-warm Rockstar trying to pace out this magic juice to get me through the night. A bump in the road, an errant noise, or a bad music choice on my part spooks the feral beast and she jumps OUT of her harness and headfirst into my half full can of gross energy drink. It is all over the car, me, and probably her. The stench of high fructose corn syrup and cat shit is debilitating. The beast is completely loose now and apparently as irritated as I am about the odor. Basil and Morse seem to be sleeping. I chat with Michelle a few more times, she is likely very glad that phones don’t have smell-o-vision yet. My brain won’t listen as I tell it to stay “zen”, instead it keeps wandering to tomorrow morning when I have to put this untamed animal onto a plane and fly across the country. I am immensely grateful to pull into Portland with no further incident and almost immediately see Michelle coming out to help unload.

Michelle: I have already made a phone call down to the front desk employee at the hotel. I explained the change in plans and that everyone is joining me now, so she has the parking pass ready when I walk down to meet Andrew and the furry kids. The pets seem pretty calm, all things considered, possibly confused that we have all reunited in a strange, distant place. We now have 6 pieces of luggage (Andrew ran out of room while packing the last of our belongings and had to purchase another suitcase), Andrew’s backpack, and 3 pet carriers. I start bringing pets up to the room. Once all of the pets are inside, I stay with them while Andrew brings up the luggage.

I’m not sure if it was the shock of seeing me or general distress/PTSD, but everyone starts pooping. Not a little poop. Thursday is already smelly from the car debacle. Morse has pooped inside and outside of his crate. Basil has pooped inside and outside of his crate. My quiet night to sit down, relax and find my center has turned into the clean up brigade of a poop festival. Thank goodness we don’t have to leave until Saturday morning because I have quite a few loads of laundry to do and we still need to find a suitable replacement carrier for Thursday the wild cat.

Andrew: We slept about five hours and get right into final preparations for our flight. I bought a luggage scale from Tommy at the last minute and Michelle starts working on rebalancing all our checked luggage to be under 50 pounds apiece. This takes many hours. Between the six suitcases we might have about 20 pounds to spare (if that) so it is imperative that we pack each one just right.

I have to go out to a pet store to get a new crate for the demon cat and updated pet tags with names and our phone numbers for all four pets. I get back to the hotel and work on requesting an appointment with the airport veterinarian in Lisbon (which is required in order to leave the airport with pets – we could have done this up to a week in advance, but we didn’t receive the necessary paperwork until Thursday night just prior to the road trip). Michelle washes all of the soiled laundry from the night before and is showing the first signs of illness at this point, but otherwise the day is productive. Also, we failed to hire a car for our arrival in Lisbon, so Michelle sends off messages to three drivers in Portugal. We are feeling anxious because some of the drivers are booked months ahead of time and this is just another thing that got away from us. We pack it in early since our flight to Newark, New Jersey leaves at 6:00.

DAY 3 – SATURDAY, JUNE 18TH: Portland to Newark.

Michelle: I wake up at about 1:30 due to stress and not sleeping well. Our alarm is set for 3:00 so we should have plenty of time to get everyone ready and to the airport on time. I keep having visions of loose, lost cats in airports and nightmare interactions with TSA. Would Thursday destroy another carrier mid-flight and hide in the underbelly of a plane? Neither of us have ever flown with cats or dogs and the anticipation of doing so is not pleasant. I have also never traveled with so many bags of luggage and am worried about the logistics of dropping off the rental car and checking in at the airport.

We aren’t sure how far the car rental return is from the airport terminal. To be safe, I will take the pets and luggage to the United Airlines desk and Andrew will return the rental car. There is a very sweet stranger at PDX who gives us some useful tips on stacking luggage carts very high. I have to maneuver 2 carts with all the luggage and pets to the counter. It is a slow process, moving one cart and then another, but eventually I get to an electronic kiosk. I start the check in process, but it immediately directs me to see an attendant in person. Cats are crying, Basil is barking, and my stress is rising. I’m sure a hidden camera of people’s reaction to what looks like one person traveling with enough belongings and pets for four people would be an interesting watch.

The airline employee at check in is a dream. He automatically refunds me a $125 pet fee when he learns that Zoe was unable to fly with us. We keep her seat for extra space on the plane. He charges us the base rate for 4 bags since we have purchased 4 seats, and charges us for 2 bags at the higher rate. I have just finished weighing and checking in all the bags and pets when Andrew joins me at the counter, fresh from dropping off the car. Next stop TSA with pets!

Andrew: Portland TSA is relatively smooth. We keep one push cart after dropping off our bags and they let us take that past the security scanners. The pets in their carriers bypass the scanners and we all enter into a tiny room. All the pets exit out of their carriers and stay with us while the tiny travel homes get scanned. Everyone cooperates and even seems OK about getting back inside with little complaint.

We find an AMAZING pet area and hang out there with all three pets loose until the last minute when we have to head to our gate. It is spacious, clean, has human seating and I can’t give PDX enough credit for being pet friendly. While waiting in the pet area, we get good news! Two drivers respond and will be able to pick us up in Lisbon and drive us to Olhão. We hire one on the spot!

At the gate Michelle checks us in to make sure our extra pet seats are adjacent to their humans. Our assignments are window: Andrew (Morse), Thursday, stranger: aisle: stranger, empty, Michelle (Basil): window. How do I get the demon again? Since we were still running behind on our lodging arrangements, I find a Motel 6 near the Newark airport. They are known for allowing pets, we double check that they allow cats and I book it for two nights. Our flight to Lisbon leaves after 8:00 pm on Sunday and we don’t want to be homeless after an 11:00 check out. Last lodging dilemma solved!

After boarding and stuffing cats under my seat the dread begins to build. The cats are verbally expressing their displeasure with mews ranging from mild to medium volume. Once we steady out after take off they are generally OK other than an occasional back and forth conversation. I even manage to take an hour nap at one point. The stranger in my row loves cats and asks some technical questions and what their names are, but has in headphones most of the time and seems more excited to have a free seat between us to set some stuff on. I heard one person say “where is that cat that was howling the whole ride” while exiting the plane – which I consider a win since their were TWO cats. Basil is pretty much quiet once we get into the air.

Michelle: We exit the plane with our pets, collect our increasingly heavy luggage and wait for the Motel 6 shuttle. We wait and wait. Andrew makes multiple calls. Finally we get sick of waiting and take a cab. The cabbie is super patient, guesses that we are “moving somewhere” and tells us to stay in our room. I don’t think he is impressed with the ambiance of our Motel 6 neighborhood. All we want is food and rest. Jackpot, there is a pizza flyer at the check in desk and the employee vouches that the food is good. The menu looks promising and we feel confident that we will get some decent pizza. We are wrong. My head cold and nasal congestion are worsening and I am getting quite a bit crabbier. We eat crappy food and sleep A LOT.

DAY 4 – SUNDAY, JUNE 19TH: Newark to Lisbon.

Andrew: Newark continues to be a crappy place to be throughout the day. Taking Basil out for bathroom breaks involves dodging glass shards and needles. People are being kicked out of the facility and having loud arguments with staff. When I ask where to find the morning coffee the staff scoffs at me (I am standing in front of the sign saying there is free coffee EVERY MORNING). At least there is actually a shuttle to bring us back to the Newark airport.

Newark has a special area for pet check-in which you conveniently learn about once you go to the regular check in area (pushing two overfull carts of baggage topped with teetering pet carriers). As soon as we make our way to this area we are told that United has a one-pet/one-person rule and only two of our animals can fly today. We repeatedly try to explain that we have purchased four full price tickets so all four pets could fly and that we had flown on United the day before but they keep telling us to stop talking and that they are “working on something” and have to call the helpline. After a lengthy hold the agent gets ahold of their customer service who tells them they are wrong and to check us in. Our baggage costs a massive amount because the agent says our extra seats are “special” and aren’t entitled to bring any baggage so we must pay through the nose for our six bags (two of them were considered “excess baggage” at $200 apiece). We weren’t charged excess baggage on the flight the day before, so what is going on today? Finally the agent prints two boarding passes and tells us to talk to the gate agent about our pet seat assignments “they will know what to do.”

Newark is a nightmarish maze of an airport. We go up and down elevators repeatedly trying to get to the start of the security checkpoint line. We are sent in circles by employees and when we get back to them a second time they start us on the same path again. We are told that bringing a luggage cart through security is never allowed so we heft our bags and animals and start working on arm muscles that don’t normally serve much purpose.

The security line isn’t long, it’s an ouroboros nightmare that never ends. People are freaking out because they are obviously going to miss their flights (we are three hours early so this isn’t a concern for us). Just in front of us a man trying to escort his unaccompanied minor child to the gate doesn’t have an ID they are going to accept and he is doing pretty well keeping his cool. A TSA manager comes to “help” him and immediately starts barking at him about being out of control (he wasn’t at all). We ask about getting a private room for pet scans and get directed to the same agitated manager. Michelle tells the TSA agent “oh shit she looks pissed.”

TSA is completely put-off by us having animals and we are stuck loitering outside the screening machines for quite awhile. Finally they just tell Michelle to take Basil out of his crate and walk him through the scanner. I get through and then go with the cats to a screening room where I am told I have to hold each of them while their bags get scanned. The demon won’t comply but the agent with me doesn’t actually care. Their bags are scanned and we get to move on.

We neglected to talk about our very brief stop in Newark’s pet area when we landed the day before. Imagine standing in a cramped, moist, very dirty litter box. Cat and dog urine smells are overpowering and near vomit inducing. I don’t think our pets want to get out of their carriers, let alone feel comfortable going to the bathroom. I’d recommend that anyone with pets avoid this airport at all cost. Portland, we miss you desperately.

We get to the gate early since staying in the pet area isn’t a realistic option. There is about an hour before boarding starts and we realize that people flying to Portugal must really love standing in line. There isn’t even a gate agent and there is a 100 person long line, plus other lines starting in different places, and offshoots of both lines twisting into a jumbled nonsensical mess. Michelle tries to find a ticketing agent about our pet seats and only having two of four boarding passes but her illness is kicking in and she surrenders. I find food and then make my attempt to get some assistance.

I start at the back of the 100 person line, they confirm they are just queued up to get on the plane in over an hour (odd in my opinion). I try a shorter line closer to the counter but that group doesn’t even seem to know why they are in line. I start at the counter itself and find that the line I want is only two people long (even though ten more were behind them because they thought it was the right place to be).

Remember the “employee of the year” at the special pet check in area? After getting to a completely frazzled boarding agent and explaining things she realizes that NONE of our pets were checked in for the flight by the previous pet check in employee. Because of this, our extra two seats were given away to people on standby. This boarding agent is actually amazing. She gets someone to give up their seat and fly the following day, takes care of our seat assignments, and finally makes me feel confident we will be able to get onto the plane to Portugal!

Michelle: We are down to three seats because of the earlier snafu, so I sit by the window with Basil, Morse is under the middle seat and Andrew is sitting in the aisle seat with Thursday (Andrew here – this is obviously intentional at this point!). The flight attendants are amazing, they don’t seem to mind that we have opened Basil’s crate to let his head pop out. One of them even offers ice cubes for Basil to lick. Basil is restless and doesn’t bark, but tries to make a break for it and exit his carrier multiple times. The cats cry intermittently, but the Feliway spray we have brought with and a bit of petting seems to keep them calm and quiet.

Airline food on the flight to Portugal is better than anything we ate in Newark. We have a glass of red wine to celebrate that we are finally on our way. Here we are, traveling to Europe for the first time with 3 pets in tow, WE DID IT! It feels like we are actually on the way to new lives in a new country.