Herding cats

Years ago, when I was a roller girl, my team took a road trip to Canada. What is normally a five hour drive (not counting customs) took eleven, but we finally made it to Vancouver late one July evening. We were split between a 12-person van and a large SUV, and kept pulling over every 30 minutes to use various rest stops or grab fast food snacks.





We were crammed four to a room at a low-end motel downtown, and scheduled to bout against Vancouver's newly-established Terminal City Roller Girls the next morning. Unfortunately none of my friends from our team were able to go, so I was stuck sharing a room (and a double bed) with - to put it politely - some unexpected teammates.

With seventeen roller girls and a couple of refs, we were a difficult bunch to manage. Plus nobody had an international phone plan, so we were forced to stick close whether we wanted to or not. We ate at horrifically terrible restaurants and were basically chaperoned every hour of every day.



The actual bout was a casual one, and the Canadian girls were quite hospitable. Their practice space was clean and nice, with a full locker room and a bar upstairs.





I made friends with several of the TCRGs, including Vixen Valentine, who spied me sulking on a towel away from the rest of the group and brought me an entire two-liter bottle of Growers cider to improve my mood. I also met Apocaliz, and we posed for an international Apocs photo.



Sunday morning, we gathered in the hotel lobby to check out. After a headcount, we determined that Goodie Two Skates was missing. A practicing Buddhist, she had gone off to a local temple to pray around 7:00. Four hours later, she hadn't returned. The rest of us sat piled on top of our luggage, waiting, and one of the team members borrowed the hotel phone to call every temple in Vancouver until Goodie was found.

With our group back in tact, several of the girls decided they wanted to go out to breakfast and go shopping. I, however, had had quite enough of everybody. After being quiet for most of the trip, I finally snarled, "Anyone who wants to get home at a reasonable time, GET IN THE SUV NOW!" Five of us piled into the smaller vehicle and headed south, arriving in Portland around dinner time. When I spoke with the van as we pulled into town, they had just crossed the border and would not be home until after midnight. I was happy to be back home in Portland with my autonomy and sanity back in tact. Traveling internationally with 17 roller girls is the very definition of herding cats.

I was reminded of this story yesterday morning, when I was literally herding cats. Bobby and I were scheduled to take the cats to the vet for a checkup. We thought it would be easy enough, since both cats were asleep on the bed. How wrong we were! The cats fought us like crazy and ran for cover, slicing our hands up in the process. I finally caught Georgia and jammed her into the cat carrier feet-first. Enid, however, refused to go out without a fight. She required dismantling the carrier entirely, and kept sticking her little paws out as we tried to reassemble it. Then they meowed all the way to the vet's office. Once there, Georgia kept hiding behind the computer monitor and Enid rested comfortably in the kitty scale. Both of them were clearly plotting to smother us in our sleep.