A WORRISOME 24 HOURS – ON TO LAS CRUCES, NM

Some days don’t go at all as expected. 

Our plan for Sunday (yesterday): a leisurely morning, including a walk near the RV park.  At noon, take our potluck dish to the office to enjoy lunch and football viewing on the big screen with the friendly owners and residents at Rusty’s RV Park.  Afterwards, we’d start the preparations for Monday’s departure, a short (100 miles) trip to Deming, New Mexico, where our General Delivery mail would be waiting for us at the post office.  We’d settle in to the Escapee RV park in Deming for a couple of days, pick up our mail (including Boomer mail), visit the winery, and the museum.  We have a little water leak from the back of our toilet – in Deming, we could start making phone calls to line up a repair, probably in Las Cruces, 60 miles farther east from Deming.  Excellent plan.

The reality was far, far different.  Just like a week ago in Bisbee, Luna quit pooping, bloated up like a balloon, and spent all of Saturday night moving slowly and pitifully from one spot to another, trying to get comfortable.  We don’t know WHAT is wrong with her.  In Bisbee, the vet couldn’t find anything specific, but the $300 visit seemed to work - Luna began to improve as soon as Odel brought her home. 

This time, we were nowhere near a vet, so had to simply watch, console each other, and hope she improved.  It was a sleepless Saturday night.

On Sunday morning, I couldn’t imagine us watching her suffer all day long, until we got to Deming on Monday.  I suggested we pack up and move to Las Cruces.  If Luna needed emergency care, we would be able to find it.  If she didn’t, we’d be able to get to a “regular” (read: less expensive) vet on Monday.

That’s what we did.  We left Rusty’s at 9:30 am and stopped in Lordsburg, NM for fuel less than an hour later.  By noon, we had waved to our General Delivery mail, locked up in the Deming post office until Monday, as we sped past Deming on I-10.  By 1 pm, we were settled in for a week at Sunny Acres RV Park (click here to read our review), our usual Las Cruces choice (nice big sites, discount for Escapees).  Luna spent the entire ride on the lounge chair, curled up in a ball.  She NEVER does that!

We backed into our site at Sunny Acres and began the setup process.  Oops – what’s wrong with this picture?

The back slide slid… and stopped moving halfway.   Hmmmm…

Luna, meanwhile, perked up.  As usual (but with considerably less vigor than is normal), she wanted to go outside.  HUH?  She sat on the patio, looking peaked – but interested!  We decided to finish our setup and keep an eye on her, both fervently wishing she would poop (it had now been two days).  Remembering (with a little help from the internet) that we used to give our super-senior cat, Tucker, Metamucil as a regular part of his diet, Odel went off to the drug store and came home with Benefiber.  When Luna expressed a bit of interest in a meal, we mixed up a tempting slurry of canned food, Benefiber and water.  Yummmmm.  She liked it.  Since she had gone outside and was once again interested in food, things were looking up (slightly).  We put a trip to the emergency vet on hold.

Before long, we figured out the problem with the back slide: one of the two shear pins had broken.  And guess what?  WE HAD AN EXTRA!  And we knew where it was!  This turned out to be a simple repair that we could do ourselves, from INSIDE the motorhome.  Wow.  We had it fixed in 15 minutes, a real bright spot in the day.

Other, more minor problems, presented themselves… the leaking toilet connection, a loss in power from the water pump.  As we worked with each, we kept an ear cocked to the cat box.  We want poop, we want poop!

It never happened, so at 4:30 we packed up Luna for a trip to the emergency vet, neither of us able to imagine another night of worry over her health.  Once again, the vet found no obvious reason for her lethargy and distress.  She couldn’t feel any problems with the colon, or anything else.  She said Luna had no fever, and no tenderness.  Lots of discussion, no resolution. 

Back home, Luna continued to improve.  Does she just need a scary ride in the Jeep to renew her?  A cat thermometer in the _______?  An expenditure of money? 

Its now 24 hours since our flight from Rusty’s.  Luna just finished another custom-blended high-fiber breakfast slurry and is sitting in the sunshine taking a bath.  Not 100% herself, but not suffering.  Odel is on the phone lining up a mobile RV repair for the toilet, and discussing replacement of the water pump with Shur-Flo (going very poorly indeed, it appears).

Today my needs are very simple.  All I need to make me happy, happy, happy: a lovely, well-formed, typically-sized, Luna poop!  Photo to follow… (just kiddin’).