Difficult kittens and new lives

Well, I’m officially a resident of Whanganui now. I’m settled into my cousin’s house with my cat, and I start my new job on Monday. It’s hard to believe it’s actually happening.

The drive down was a nightmare.

The problem is this, you see. Tonka likes to be out of his cage in the car, BUT THREE TIMES NOW he has pooped in my car. This isn’t something I really want again, so I decided to keep him in his cage. At least, then, it would be contained.

Now, the last time I took him on a long car trip, I discovered I could let him out of the car for a walk without worrying about him running away. This is no longer the case. He starts exploring, and he doesn’t stop until he’s out of sight. I even lost him in one of those drain pipes that run underneath driveways.

The first place I let him out for a walk in, he behaved. Here he is, contemplating life. 

About halfway through the trip, Tonka started to pant like a dog. He does this occasionally when he’s tired or hot, and it always looks hilarious. I pulled over at another rest stop and tried to give him some water. The little monster wouldn’t drink it. I tried everything – pushing his face in it, putting it on the backs of his paws, squirting it into his mouth – nothing worked. He just wasn’t interested. I was becoming increasingly worried because his panting was starting to get heavier. Eventually I just squirted water all over his fur and turned the air conditioning towards his cage, hoping that would help cool him down at least. It seemed to do the trick, because he stopped panting after that, though he did start doing cartwheels in his cage trying to escape the air conditioning. For some reason, the wind is fine, but any machine-made breeze is witchcraft and must be avoided at all costs.

The rest of the journey was relatively uneventful, bar the four flocks of sheep we came across while driving through the Paraparas. Tonka was very alarmed at the incessant baa’s, because he could only hear, not see, them.

I’ve already let him out of the house. He’s perfectly happy to go explore and then come back inside. He also, apparently, has a fascination with my bedroom window. This is the second time so far I’ve caught him hanging out it like this.

Cats.

The fun part of road trips

Sacha and I had the fun part of our trip today – exploring everywhere on the way home.

I think, scenery-wise, the trip between Hamilton and New Plymouth is my favourite out of all the trips I’ve done around the North Island. The hills are huge, the coast is beautiful, and the black sand and driftwood looks super cool.

As we drove home we saw a sign pointing left that said “White Cliffs Walkway, 11km”.  We figured we had plenty of time and petrol, so we followed the road. Eventually we came out here, and spent the next half hour running around with our cameras taking photos and hoping not to get trapped by the tide.

Our big adventure

My friend and I recently put our hands up to join in on a project that involved travelling to another part of the country for a night and interviewing a doctor. Pretty simple stuff. Our accommodation, petrol, and food is paid for, and once we have the interview out of the way we can spend the rest of our time here chilling out and exploring.

So here we are, living it up in New Plymouth. Well, as much as you can live it up in New Plymouth anyway.

I woke up at quarter to six this morning to make it from Tauranga to Hamilton in time to leave Hamilton for New Plymouth at 7.30. Sacha and I left the house at 7.40, and ended up turning around three times to get something from home. The first time Sacha realised she’d forgotten her laptop. The second time we figured out that neither one of us had brought the important piece of paper telling us about what we were interviewing the doctor about. The third time we decided we wanted to get the cassette thing that lets me plug my ipod into the car. By this point we realised we were actually running well on time and could afford to turn back one more time.

When we reached the hospital we got a little lost, but everything went well once we found our guy. After the interview we set off in search of our hotel.

Now, as we reached the hotel, I started to get a deep feeling of dread in my stomach. It looked like a dump. We pulled into the hotel carpark and I thought to myself “this is the place where dreams go to die”. There was a strong possibility, in my mind, that we would get murdered or abducted as we walked from the carpark to the hotel reception.

When we went inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was nice. It looked classy. We survived the treacherous trek from the car.

So as it turns out, the place isn’t half bad, and we did not, in fact, choose a dud. That being said, here’s the view from our room’s window.