How I Traveled Across the Country On A Restricted Diet (And With Cats!)

Traveling on a restricted diet comes with special challenges. So does traveling with cats, especially when those cats are terrified of cars and refuse to use the litter box as long as they are in one!

I had my first experience with both of these challenges on our cross-country move from Madison, Wisconsin to Portland, Oregon just a few months after diagnosis with ulcerative colitis. Since that trip, I have usually opted for Airbnbs when traveling so that I can cook my special food myself—having a kitchen makes all the difference.

But on the move to Portland, the presence of the cats meant that pet-friendly motels would have to be our housing. So this post is about how we pulled off motel travel with my diet…and with cats.

For weeks leading up to the trip, I puzzled and puzzled till my puzzler was sore, just like the Grinch. I lined up all the factors one by one, plotting out a way for this complicated trip to happen. I was often too tired to help Ron box up the apartment, but this mental strategizing was something I could still do.

We considered flying me and the cats to Portland ahead of Ron and having him drive the car out after us. That would have been the simplest solution. But I nixed it, for various logistical reasons and one emotional clincher: missing out on the road trip would be too depressing.

We had driven to Wisconsin together eight years ago. On that trip, without the cats or my ulcerative colitis, we had swung by national parks and had many adventures along the way. This time the adventuring would be limited, but still, I wanted the satisfaction of doing this trip together, too. I wanted to bookend our time in Madison with these drives across the country. I wanted to watch the landscape slowly change in reverse, from Wisconsin’s green forests to the open plains to the mountains and the Western high desert.

And Ron and I were starting a new life together in Portland. I wanted to enter into that life side by side.

So I had to figure out how to make this trip work. The main conundrum was how to cook my special food along the way, since pet-friendly motels don’t have kitchens.

I briefly considered breaking my diet on the trip, but that didn’t seem prudent or even safe. Macrobiotic food was the only medicine I’d found that had really worked for me. In the weeks since beginning the diet, I’d had more consistent energy—though it was still low—and less gut pain than before. Importantly for our trip, I could now also go for hours without urgently needing a toilet. Urgency to use the toilet is one of the trademarks of ulcerative colitis, and if I broke my diet, I feared the long stretches of Western highway between rest stops.

Macrobiotics is gluten-free, dairy-free, meat-free, and sugar-free. I relied on whole grain brown rice, legumes, miso, root vegetables, and seaweed. My rice and legumes needed to be soaked for around twenty-four hours before I ate them, and they also had to be overcooked in order for my inflamed gut to digest them. Vegetables, likewise, needed to be well cooked.

I couldn’t rely on restaurants to do any of these things. I also couldn’t snack on raw food like salad, or gluten-free crackers, or other cold, hard foods that have a lot of fiber. I needed warm, mushy food—food I would have to cook for myself.

I could only think of one solution: I would cook all my macrobiotic food for the trip ahead of time and bring it with us in a giant cooler.

My goal would be ease and safety: accomplishing the trip even though I had limited energy, and keeping my gut from flaring for long enough to get us across the country. For the time being, I wouldn’t worry too much about enjoying the food I’d be eating. I would just use a few macrobiotic meals from Virginia Harper’s book, which had become my Bible for my new diet.

Below is what I did to prepare for eating on the trip. I’m writing it out in to-do list form, in case you’re planning your own similar trip and seeking advice.

The big day finally arrived. It was a gorgeous, hot Sunday morning in August, and sunlight streamed over the lake and into our nearly empty apartment. The cats, already terrified of the emptiness that had materialized around them in the last forty-eight hours, cowered on the mattress we’d slept on. When we arose, they searched futilely for other places to hide while Ron and I stripped the bedding and carried it and the mattress down to our moving pod outside.

Thanks to my recent flurry of cooking, the fridge held a dozen mason jars full of cooked rice, soup with tofu and seaweed, and precooked red lentils, as well as a tub of miso. We now transferred it all into our large cooler, dumped two bags of ice on top, and wrangled the cooler down the stairs. My knees ached as we descended for the hundredth time this week—our apartment was on the third floor.

We shoved the cooler into the trunk of our little Hyundai accent, working around the orange ratchet straps that held down the seventeen-foot aluminum canoe we’d also be taking with us.

Next we set up the cats’ space in the car. I had researched this, too. For their safety in case of an accident, and our safety as drivers, we’d be keeping them in their carrying crate whenever the car was moving. (We also thought they’d be more comfortable in their crate—enclosed spaces are often comforting to cats.)

We laid Hefty sacks across the backseat in case litter spilled, and placed their litter box on one side of the seat—they could use it (we hoped) whenever we stopped.

We ascended one final time, gazing around our bare, sunny apartment and giggling in sympathy at the cats, who, in their terror, had found the last available place to hide: each cat was cowering inside one of the cinder blocks that supported the empty bookshelves on the radiator. Both of their butts were sticking out of the ends of their blocks, since they couldn’t completely fit inside.

Coaxing them into their carrier, we brought them down and into the car, setting the carrier to face the litter box so we could just open the door at rest stops and let them out. We made sure food and water were nearby to give them, too.

(We had sprayed the cat carrier with Feliway, a pheromone spray that supposedly helps kitties calm down, but they still yowled as if being tortured. There are also calming treats and even meds you can give kitties to help them calm down on road trips. Be careful with meds, though. My parents’ cat once died on a trip because she was drugged—she escaped from the car at a pit stop and stumbled dazedly into a street, right into the path of a moving car.)

I eased into the passenger seat at last, already exhausted before ten in the morning. Because of my frequent exhaustion, and because sitting upright for hours hurt my tender belly, Ron would be doing most of the driving. I leaned the passenger seat back, stretched out my bloated stomach, and rested gratefully as he drove us out of town.

We soon fell into the routine of travel—canoe, cooler, kitties, and all. For the first hour of each morning’s drive, the kitties would yowl plaintively, then their mews would taper off to just occasional, pathetic squeaks from the backseat. I felt immensely grateful to Ron, and thankful that he was well enough to drive most of each day, but I gave him breaks when I could.

Despite my fatigue, I felt optimistic as we traveled. Macrobiotics had been helping so much lately. I hoped I was leaving the worst of my disease behind me in Madison.

By midday each day, we could tell where we’d want to stop for the night. We were worried about the kitties’ bladders and health—even at rest stops, they were refusing to eat, drink, or pee.

Sometimes Kili would leave the carrier and climb into the litter box, but then she’d just crouch there, as if she just wanted a break from being cooped up with Bear. (The litter box had a top, so she was still in a dark, enclosed space—which apparently she did prefer.)

Bear didn’t seem to want to leave the carrier at all. Both of their faces looked constantly terrified. We thus made our days shorter than we would have in the past, traveling only six or eight hours each day. Once we knew where we’d stop, I would call ahead to book space at that night’s Super 8.

Settling into the motel each night was an ordeal. After checking in, we’d first bring the litter box into the motel room, then would bring in the cats. They always dashed out of the carrier to the nearest hiding places. Allowing them to cower there for a while, we’d next wrestle the heavy cooler inside, take all my food out and cram it into the mini-fridge, and dump the (largely melted) ice into the sink. Then we’d finally bring in our bags.

After this lengthy routine, which took perhaps half an hour, Ron would try to exercise by jogging around the small towns where we stayed and would find himself some dinner at a Safeway deli or a nearby restaurant. I would rest or begin my next daily ritual: microwaving and eating my macrobiotic dinner.

I’d spoon rice, lentils, and seaweed into one of my bowls, along with some of the soup water, and would heat the whole thing up. After heating, I’d mix in a little uncooked miso. Miso is central to Virginia Harper’s macrobiotic plan and is beneficial because of its probiotic properties. Like most fermented foods, it needs to be kept cool and should not be boiled—boiling kills the beneficial bacteria.

I suspected it shouldn’t be microwaved, either. I would add it after heating the soup, and each time I stood at a kitchenette mixing miso into a hot bowl of seaweed and tofu, I willed the beneficial bacteria to spread through my colon and heal my gut.

We would allow the kitties an hour or so to cower in whatever nooks they’d found. Usually, they’d wedged themselves between the bed and the wall, or at least on the floor beneath the draped bedspread, making themselves as small as felinely possible.

But after we’d settled in, we coaxed or, more often, dragged them onto our laps and petted them till they came to their senses. Then they would nervously sniff their ways around the room, no doubt smelling all the previous animal occupants. At last, they’d grow comfortable enough to eat a little, use the litter box, and snuggle uneasily with us on the bed in front of the TV till we all fell asleep.

In the morning, I would eat at the kitchenette while Ron sought his own breakfast in the motel lobby or nearby establishments. I hadn’t yet learned about insulated food canisters like Klean Kanteens, which I would buy a few years later. If I had known about them, at this point I would have made up my lunch and placed it in a couple of them, so I could eat it warm later on.

We would load up the cooler again, pack in loads of ice from the motel’s ice machine, and bring the cooler, bags, litter box, and yowling kitties back into the car for another day of torture travel. At some point along the way, I’d make myself a cold lunch at a rest stop and try to enjoy it while Ron drove.

The trip was an challenge at times. It was hardest on the kitties, but they did emerge free of UTIs, and their trauma would eventually subside as the weeks and months passed after the move.

As for my gut, it held steady and did not worsen. That had been my goal, and it was a triumph: I could travel! It was harder than before, but I could still do it.

My optimism about macrobiotics persisted as we crossed from Minnesota’s lush forests into the rolling plains and approached the Rockies. We cruised down the highway, listening to Neil Young or Ella Fitzgerald, me slightly reclined and often researching Portland on my iPhone. We even stopped for one brief adventure, staying an extra night in Rapid City, South Dakota to see the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore.

At the end of the week, as we drove the last hour of our journey, the evening sky lit the spectacular Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood to the south as we neared Portland. I beamed and texted my mom: we had done it. I was almost home.