In repayment for many years of looking after the little troublemaker, I made a promise to Laura: that I would resurrect the MooseBlog and do it right.
So here we go.
There are two things that one does when moving internationally with a dog and a cat. First, one books a passage on the Queen Mary 2 and brings the furballs along for the ride. Then, one obviously decides to road-trip from New York to Montana with the pets in tow. Because there is nothing a cat loves more than a road-trip.
On October 22, after a wonderful walk and goodbye pub lunch, we boarded the QM2 with our distinctly unimpressed cat and our quite freaked-out Moose. We were met at check-in by Robert, the kennel master, who led us up to the kennels. There are 12 kennels on the QM2 (though they are adding 12 more this spring), and Moose and Barley together took up four of them.
The kennels are way up on deck 12, which meant that while embarking and disembarking, Moose and Barley were marched through the grand entrance, through the main restaurant (I really hope they changed the tablecloths afterward because Moose got some really thorough sniffs), and up the lifts to the top deck. Any impression they may have had about life in the lap of luxury was quashed when they saw their new digs. The kennels, though clean, comfortable, and secure, were probably the least luxurious accommodation our spoilt pets have ever seen. More on this in my next blog post.
Moose and Barley were joined by two English Bulldogs (Ralph and Roscoe), a tiny Yorkshire Terrier (Sooty), an enormous who-knows-what (Atlas), a 12 year old dog (Toby), and a genuinely terrified cat called Smokey (who promptly went on hunger strike and was -much to Cunard's credit - moved into his owners' cabin when it became clear that he was never going to eat or drink while in the kennels). I'm not going to make comment on the fellow owners except to say that most were awesome and fun to talk to and some were...not. Ahem.
We think the QM2 kennel program is fabulous and when we move back to the UK, we will certainly be making use of it again. Robert, the kennel master, was a sweetheart who plainly loves the animals and takes care of them well. Any messes (the dogs have a small exercise area on the deck) were cleaned up promptly, and the dogs really responded to Robert's friendly and playful demeanour.
We made the decision NOT to visit Moose and Barley as often as we were allowed (8-10, 11-12, 3-6, 8-8.30), as we realised that Moose became frantic with excitement whenever we were around but settled down and played with Robert and the other dogs when we were not), so we only visited first thing in the morning and then for an hour before dinner. We thought that worked well.
Barley coped well on the ship. All of the animals were a bit skittish for the first 24 hours but Barley especially settled into the rhythm of life on the ship and didn't seem to mind. We let him wander around the indoor exercise area, where soon enough he found a high shelf to sit on and watch smugly as the dogs played below.
Moose - pay attention to this, as this will surprise you - behaved beautifully. He got along with the other dogs. He didn't try to bite anyone (even the many passengers who came up to view the dogs). He didn't make a fool of himself or us upon embarkation or disembarkation. In short, he behaved himself. And has ever since. We gave Robert a Moose and were given back a reformed Moose. Man, we might have to do this QM2 thing more often.
We did have one tremendously silly day at sea. Cunard likes to get all of the animal owners and their pets together for a photo shoot during the voyage. The idea is to get a shot of the owners with their pets, with the stack and Queen Mary 2 sign in the background. Well, apparently they schedule these shoots well in advance, and ours happened to fall on the roughest day we had at sea. We're talking about a day of 20-foot swells and gusts of up to 110 mph. In other words, a perfect day to go up to the top deck and smile for the camera. It was too windy to take photos outside, so we did it in the fluorescent-lit kennels instead. When our stuff finally gets to Bozeman, I will scan a copy of the photo they got of us...we're looking distinctly green.
Matthew spent the rest of the day in bed while I went to the pub (obviously) and enjoyed fish and chips, a couple of pints, and watching the waves inundate the windows. The animals, oddly, didn't seem bothered by the weather at all, even though deck 12 was swaying like an undergrad at a frat party.
All in all, it was a wonderful voyage. We would do it again with the pets, for sure (though I wouldn't recommend taking pets just for fun - it was much better than flying but no one is going to pretend that a week on a ship isn't stressful for animals).
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| You can't really see it, but the Statue of Liberty is just above Moose's head |
For the record, we had fun on the ship as well. Matthew and I were seated next to two very entertaining couples at dinner (Jacky and Malcolm - a British couple who were doing the round-trip, Southampton-NYC-Southampton - were especially awesome company and kept us laughing every evening). Matthew and I also became known from day one as 'the crazy couple' because we enjoyed hanging out in the outdoor hot tub in high winds. We also became regulars at the nightly pub quiz and all of the lectures (of which there many). I'm not sure that we are new converts to cruise holidays, but we are definitely big fans of the transatlantic voyage as a means of transport.
I'll wrap this one up here and then write another post about the road-trip shenanigans and our arrival in Bozeman. It definitely deserves its own post.
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