Woah. That's freaky weird.

Another bad place to be in a thunderstorm is on a motorcycle. (And it's not much fun, either.)

So what is the answer to this question? "You're screwed"?

I once ran off a beach before a large, violent thunderstorm. We threw ourselves into the car and thanked the universe for the laws of physics. As we waited to get off the island, an ambulance came tearing onto it. That beach extends several miles beyond the last access point, and if you go down to the wild part, there is pretty much no getting off the beach -- it's beach, dunes, and marsh behind them. A man had been caught down there when the storm blew up, and had been struck by lightning and killed instantly.

I've often walked down to that end of the beach in the summer. If I were ever to find myself in his situation, is there anything I could do to avoid being struck?

I was once on a ferry when lightning struck a nearby island and I got a pretty good jolt from the metal ladder I was stupidly holding.

We have this nice hand-cranked weather radio. It also has a siren, a flashlight and a cellphone charger (with adapters for several different types of phones). It can run off house current, regular batteries, its own built-in battery (which charges as you crank it) or, when all else fails, crank power. Gets weather radio, AM, FM, and UHF TV audio.

If it were me, I'd hit the dirt half-way up the side of one of the dunes and hope for the best.

I don't remember if it was the Detroit or Cleveland date last year that had the tornado. Cleveland, I think. Friends of mine were there for it. Scary!

There's at least one case in my family - not recent - of a kid being killed by lightning that struck a tree, went down it and into a fence, and got the kid, who was next to the fencepost.

The good news is that it's supposed to make it ten degrees cooler tomorrow. If it's still unbearable in here, I'm using the free wi-fi at Panera.

I have been caught out in the Chesapeake Bay in a 17' sailboat in a major storm. Scary stuff, which leads to another rule: take the jib down first. That boat had a jumper cable to hook to the mast and trail in the water. It had already been struck once, on land.

What??! The sound of thunder carries for miles beyond the storm itself. But maybe you meant the thunderclap, which generally you only hear if you're close. It's plenty scary when the flash and the clap coincide; been there twice, no fern-like pattern to show for it.

I've actually had the experience of being extremely near a lightning strike. I never saw exactly where the bolt hit as I was in a car at early evening driving through a tall forest and all I experienced was the flash of light, a simultaneous (within the error bars of my perceptual capacity) thunderclap, and felt a surge of static in the air. One thing that I've never seen described before but which I noticed was a sudden smell of ozone, almost as if air freshener had been sprayed in the car.

Rikibeth 15: Something about the terseness of this post made me want to rewrite it thus:

Summer storm has passed;
Penny-sized hail did not come.
Where is my cool breeze?

Ahhh ... this is "in theory." Lightning does what lightning wants to.

If you're with a group and caught in the open by a storm, the general advice I've heard is that you want to separate everyone by a hundred feet or so. That way, if someone's struck, the uninjured members of the party will be able to help them. If you're all bunched together, you're all going to get zapped.

(Also, just speaking from experience -- a very close lightning strike will fry a cell phone even if the phone itself is not actually zapped. The EMP is fairly significant off a lightning strike. You shouldn't bet on being able to call 911 if someone in your party's hit.)

As far as heat stroke goes, there's a very interesting book that tallies all known deaths in the Grand Canyon in modern times. (Death in the Grand Canyon: Over the Edge)

I was surprised to read that a very significant number of the deaths were from water intoxication, not actual heat stroke or dehydration. It was rather distressingly common for bystanders to think someone with water intoxication was dehydrated or had heat stroke, and push water on them, and then they would croak. (Falling over the edge wasn't as common a method of death as you would expect; a lot of the deaths were due to people underestimating the elements.)

(I'd love to shower, but the thunder is still rumbling in the distance.)

Don't drive into water on the road, no matter how well you know the spot, no matter how low it looks. Be prepared for flooding if you live on low ground, and find out ahead of time if you *do* live on low ground. This looks like it will be a very wet year in some parts of the country.

By the way, it's still possible to get Dr. Franklin's wonderful invention, the lightning rod, installed on your home. Surge protectors are a good idea, too.

*The previous record for tornadoes reported through this date was 1067, in 1999. There's nothing to this climate change business, of course.

And I like it as haiku! I wish I'd thought of posting it that way, but I haven't yet cultivated the ML talent for extemporized verse.

That reminds me of a Frisbie story.
He was driving down the Santa Monica freeway in a thunderstorm (yes, LA does get them) when all of a sudden there was a loud noise and the world lit up blue. He got off the freeway at the next exit and checked the front of the car for scorch marks, then drove over to the Pelzes (Pelzi?), where Bruce opened the door and said 'We were just thinking about you!'
To which the answer was 'Next time could you not think so hard?'

I will admit I have violated that but I HAVE turned the water off when I don''t need it in that case.

In the last couple of thunderstorms we've had lightning/thunder that were close/vigorous enough to shake our 1912 house's windows. It's scary.

On the positive side, we have a television mast, the KCMO tower, that takes a fair amount of really big bolts for us. It's up on the ridge, where this side of KC reaches it's peak and then goes down the bluffs to the river. I can see that mast from my north window of my little office and the displays of the lightning are amazing. if they hit the mast they usually rattle the windows with the thunder, but better that than a house around here.

Many years ago I heard from a ranger in the Sierra that they called situations like that "INS" rescues: Interfering with Natural Selection.

That may have been the time I saw a body bag coming down from Trail Camp on Mt. Whitney in July--someone who thought that a Sears kapok sleeping bag would keep them warm the previous night...at 12,000 feet above sea level. On that same trip I saw someone smoking a cigarette at about 14,000 feet or so.

The storm finally hit and when it had gone, it was much much cooler and I brought the van back to its parking spot so I can run errands tomorrow.

Get yourself a good homemade switchel recipe.

For camping I mix orange/pinneapple juice frozen concentrate with some honey, split lemon wedges, kosher salt, cider vinegar, ginger or mint tea bag and tiny sprinkle of cream of tarter in 4L batches. You can serve it cut with carbonated water and it will go down fairly smoothly.

Some weather radios can be configured to cut down on nuisance warnings. The one I bought from Radio Shack a few years ago (which I can't find on their web site now) can be connected to a PC via USB cable; a program on the PC lets you set the radio's response for each type of weather alert. So for example, I'll get woken up in the middle of the night for tornado warnings & watches, but not for floods. It doesn't completely eliminate the nuisance factor - one recent afternoon it seemed like NOAA was sending out alerts about every 10 minutes or so that were all saying basically the same thing over & over - but it does cut down on them.

I'm still using my electric mattress pad!

The rain started falling very hard; within a couple of minutes there was at least a couple of inches of water on the ground all around, and the car couldn't get enough traction to go anywhere**.
About ten minutes after the rain started, and after we'd heard some thunder in the distance, there was a loud bang and a very bright light. When the rain stopped a few minutes later, we left the car and walked around. About thirty feet from the car was a large scorch mark in the sand where a bolt of lightning had hit.

Then we drove off to go back to the office, about 8 miles away. Our route had to cross the largest arroyo on the mesa, about 20 feet deep and a couple of hundred across. On the way out it was bone dry, and we just drove along the road down into, across, and out of the arroyo. On the way back we had to stop and wait for a half hour or so; the rain had flooded the arroyo ten feet deep, making it impassible. I'm really glad we weren't driving across it when the rain started.

* Sometime in the Upper Devonian, IIRC.
** Early '60s Detroit 4-door beater, I don't remember the make; rear wheel drive, standard differential, and crappy tires on deep sand with water on top. Kill the engine, put on the parking brake, and wait awhile, because you're not going anywhere.

What is this "sun" you speak of? What is "heat"?

The Canadian west coast has had the lousiest spring in years to date - rain, cold, overcast, rinse and repeat. It's vile, and it's lousy flying weather... rain around here usually means stratus below a thousand feet...

On the subject of hot-weather drinks: lemon tonic is awesome. 4 parts tonic water, 1 part lemon juice, over ice. Mouth-puckeringly awesomely refreshing. Gin optional. Now, if only we had some of this mythical "heat" to enjoy it in!

Don't forget the old-fashioned telephone that doesn't need power except for what comes down the 'phone line. Your electric-powered handsets won't work. We had to fish ours out (along with the wind-up and battery-powered radios) when we lost power on Sunday morning (fire at a substation; they cut off power to a fair chunk of south-east London for a while (turned out to only be three hours).

At least we have a gas cooker/stove/hob (sorry, can't remember the proper trans-Atlantic term) so I could boil water for my morning tea.

I found that book fascinating. Another interesting aspect was that no children have ever fallen off/run off the edge although at least one adult did while in the process of teasing his child.

When I was in Navy bootcamp down in Orlando, we would form up for meals on a huge paved parade ground that had metal poles sticking out of it for lights and basketball goals. Thunderstorms would tend to form right around when we'd assemble for evening mess, and the parade ground often had large puddles of water an inch or more deep we would stand in. Lightning awareness was important; we were told to head for the nearest building (NOT the women's barracks!) at full speed whenever the storm siren sounded.

Only had it happen twice; once the lightning struck the far end of the parade ground BEFORE the warning siren sounded, and we all broke and ran anyway (with the DI leading the way). The other time was after Sunday church service, and we had to take shelter while lightning repeatedly struck the water tower just a few hundred feet away.

Heat; Raleigh just had four consecutive days with the high over 100 degrees. The only other time this happened was August 1947. Surprisingly there've been few reported cases of heat exhaustion.

My wife and I are moving from Georgia to Oregon in three weeks(!) and we have two cats. We're towing the car behind the moving truck and our plan right now is to put the cats in the car with battery powered fans and the widows cracked to allow air circulation. They'll be in a medium sized carrier with water. So my question is, is this a horrible, no good, very bad idea or not?

If not, how can we make the cats comfortable and ensure they don't end up puddles of melted fur by the time we hit the Rockies?

I've been tempted by and afraid of switchel for quite some time.* Tempted, because something that I make myself with real ingredients sounds like a vast improvement over gatorade. Afraid, because a drink that sounds delicious and sweet but contains salt and vinegar is scary. So I never tried making it myself.

I finally ran into some at an SCA event and tried it. It wasn't hot out, so I wasn't in need and maybe that had an effect, but my reaction was that it was not bad but not especially good. Which is the way I feel about gatorade, actually. I may try it again some time.

Did you find that you had to acquire a taste for it? And were/are you one of those die-hard "gatorade is better than heatstroke, but only barely," people?

*I think this fascination may go all the way back to my pre-teen days, when I read about Ma Ingall's mixture to refresh Pa while he was haying. She didn't call it switchel, but it was the same concept.

I don't know how good/bad an idea that is but I did recently read an idea that might help keep them more comfortable if it turns out to be feasible but unpleasant. The idea was to freeze plastic bottles of water and put them into the cage/carrier so the animal could cuddle up to the bottle to cool off. You'd want there to be room to avoid it as well, so the cat can control exposure, but it sounds like it could help.

(I'd also plan on leaving the windows all the way down and just rolling them up to "cracked" on the rare occasions when no one can stay with the vehicles to safeguard them. I say this because *I* would find a long car trip with windows only partly down hellish, and I'm not wearing a fur coat.)

I have the Little House Cookbook, if you want the recipe.

Rolling the windows down most of the way might be better, as it would eliminate the need for the fans, which could fall over and be useless. Though it would add more drag, raising fuel costs. But then, we're hauling a car and a metric ton of household stuff so it might not be enough to matter.

Whose bright idea was it to raise the price of gass over $4 right when I decided to move across country?

I'd love to see a recipe, if it wouldn't put you to too much trouble.

(And I'm really surprised and startled to see spam on a current, active thread. Someone really didn't check the lay of the land, did they?)

Tyrell?

The car will be sort of drafting anyway, so it might not be as much of an issue as if you were driving the car separately.

It might be worth the trouble to get some cardboard and masking tape and shade all the windows you can - really close up the windshield and rear window, and if you don't open all the side windows, get those too. That would keep the sun out and reduce heat. It would be some trouble, because you'd have to do it after the car's on the tow rig, but shade makes an enormous difference.

And I hadn't thought about drafting. We have three drivers, so it might be worth it just to drive the car separately. Then the cats won't be an issue because we'll have the AC.

Is it possible to borrow/hire a truck with extra seating? Then you could have the cats travel in back where you can keep an eye on them.

I never knew how good water tasted until I moved somewhere where the humidity can get down around 4 percent in summer--made staying hydrated a lot more intuitive than it had been. But the same principles apply in more humid places where it's less intuitive--all that changes is the quantity you need to keep feeling okay

Also, by the time you're thirsty, you're probably already dehydrated.

I'm leaning towards driving the car. The more I think about it, the more hassle it seems to rig something that would be comfortable for them and not drive me bonkers worrying about them. Cruelty to animals is one of my pet peeves. Plus, my back of the napkin figures show that renting the rig to tow the car will be about the price of the gas to drive it 3000 miles.

But thanks everyone for the advice! Keep it coming. Anything to make the trip more enjoyable for cats and humans would be appreciated.

Most of the time the weather here isn't hot enough to need air conditioning, except for a very few weeks in the summer. My kids especially had a hard time getting to sleep. I had a brainstorm and wrapped one of those ice substitutes for coolers in a terry cloth bag and let them take it to bed with them. Maybe this would also be somehow helpful for the cats? The cooling units could possibly be refrozen at motels along the way.

N.B. - Don't overfill the soda bottles before freezing; it gets messy. Water expands when it freezes, donchaknow.

I'll also add my voice to the PNW "I'm cold" subthread.

http://www.kooleraire.com/index.htm

Kooleraire

I've had locals tell me to just stick the cats in the car and quit complaining because hay, we can always get new cats, right?

You've also had a local tell you that cracking the windows wouldn't be good enough. Georgian =/= uncaring about animals.

Thanks for the link Steve, C. I'll check that out.

Our lawn service accidentally disconected the wire from the ground. We had a power surge after a storm, and our washer and dryer both lit up like Christmas trees and died.

The power surge also killed everything with a "brain," except the computer, TV and DVD player -- they were on a surge protector. (The refrigerators were old enough that it didn't bother them.)

It cost about $2K to repair or replace the appliances, and we had the electrician install a whole house surge protector. (It goes between the breaker box and the incoming wire.)

One night last week, at 12:30pm, I awakened to what sounded like a bomb going off -- lightning took out the transformer behind the house next door. Much to my surprise, when we got the power back, the LEDs on the surge protector were still glowing green...I thought it might have had to sacrifice itself to save the rest of the house.

I'm now back in Hamilton, where the heat hit 32 celcius, 42 with the humidex. I think I prefer the cold. But we did get beautiful thunder and lightening storms. Watched safely from the front porch.

When I was a kid, my mom and sisters and I were standing on our porch one day to watch a thunderstorm when lightning struck the tree directly across the street from our house - a distance of maybe 50 feet.

The craziest thing about the experience, other than the ozone tang and seeing spots for a hour afterwards, was the way the air had seemed to... bunch up a split second before the bolt struck. Like it was tensing for a blow.

So freaky.

I'm mostly concerned about our girl cat. She's skinny and high strung at the best of times. Our boy cat is a big ol lunk who'll just chill out in his cage and sleep.

A cat panting is a bad sign. Also, like dogs, they don't sweat. I have had some luck cooling cats down by soaking them down*, but you can rest assured this will not make you popular if you have to do it. Even with a driver in the car and the air conditioning on, freezer blocks/frozen bottles might be a good plan.

*In fact, I had one who would go and lie down under the attic fan after I did this, although she would explain at length that I was going to burn in hell for what I'd done as she reclined in the airstream.

Besides the windows cracked for air circulation, friend spliced some wire to lengthen the "outdoor" end of an indoor/outdoor thermometer, and strung it from the cab of the uhaul to the towed car-with-cats. Every time the temp in the car got to 100, they'd find a place with shade to pull over and cool the car. Cats arrived healthy.

When a cat pants, it's unusual so it's something to be noted. Cats can pant because of stress or because of heat. If you know one of your cats is easily stressed, you can talk to your vet ahead of time to get a sedative pill for her. The old standard is "Ace", or acepromazine. I've had decent luck using chlorpheniramine maleate (aka Chlor-Trimeton), which is an over-the-counter antihistamine with sedative properties. Other vets like to use benadryl for this reason. The basic principle is to (1)sedate or tranquilize the nervous animal and (2) prevent motion sickness -- and yes, cats can get motion sickness.

Make sure they get plenty of water to drink along the way. This will help keep them cool, and will help keep them from getting urinary tract infections (females) or blockage (males). Anything you can do to prevent a trip to the emergency vet on the night after you arrive in a new town is good. ;-)

They will not be happy campers until well after you've gotten to the new house, as cats are very territorial creatures and don't deal well with the necessities of moving. My suggestion is to put them in a small room with no holes for them to disappear into, along with food, water, litter box and a hiding box with at least one semi-used towel. By "semi-used" I mean it's a towel you used on yourself a few times, so it has your smell on it. It's a reassuring smell for cats, and indicates that this is still your territory. Cats like to hide when they're upset, as you may have noticed, and having an extra box to hide in may be just what the doctor prescribed. ;-)

Catnip, if they like it, will also be helpful. Tuna -- if they like it -- will be very gratefully consumed, once they get over being mad at you.

Good luck with your move!

We're planning on putting some towels and t-shirts with our smell on them into their carriers, along with water and cooler packs.

R. M. 44: I've heard that if Gatorade™ tastes good, you need it. In other words, if you're NOT in need, it's kind of disgusting. Self-limiting medication not being the worst thing in the world, I think that's a good thing. Perhaps switchel works the same way?

Janni: How about water with one packet of TrueLemon®? In a quart of water? I find that enormously increases the drinkability...am I cutting its hydrating ability?

I wondered if that was affecting my perceptions at the time. I guess I'll have to make up a small batch of switchel the next time I expect to be in need of such a beverage, and try it.

Funny, I never noticed the "it tastes bad unless you need it," properties of Gatorade, probably because I almost never had it unless I was in a needful situation. This explains why for years I thought it was pretty good and didn't get what people were complaining about. Recently when I've had it and not been in need, I thought they must have changed the formula, because yuck. I hadn't noticed it as a pattern until it was pointed out here.

And I'm not Janni, but I think that plain water you don't drink is less hydrating than adulterated water you do drink. If a TrueLemon packet is the size I'm thinking of (about the size of a fast food ketchup pack, yes?) then I can't imagine there would be any harm in it.

Keith, have you considered putting both cats together in a larger carrier? That way they'll have company and you won't have to worry about keeping two sets of water/food/cooling going at the same time. I was going to suggest the sedative but you've already addressed that.

Best suggestion is start now with getting the cats used to being in the car. Put them in the car and drive them around and gradually increase the time; that way when you take off on your long distance trip, they're not being exposed to something brand new and you would have time to adjust how you make them comfortable.

When travelling with our cats we put a white sheet loosely over the cages to cut down the direct sunlight and to reduce sensory input from outside (big scary moving vehicles nearby, for example). One did start panting once when we were in start-stop traffic in hot (for the UK) weather (no, we don't have air conditioning in the car) and it was difficult to work out how much was stress, how much was heat (thery're usually okay in the car). As soon as practical I pulled over for a while, reassured them, let them out the carriers (windows closed, of course) and offered a drink and the litter tray.

Figure for longer-than-usual rest breaks to give them the chance to calm down enough to drink etc.

I'll second Ginger's suggestions for after arrival. Allow at least two hiding boxes if they don't like to cuddle up together.

I used to give frozen peas and other iced veggies to our pet rodents during hot spells. They chewed them down like ice cream.

I hate vinegar. There's something about the flavor of acetic acid that I just can't stand. I had a chance to sample hors d'oeurves made with Expen$ive 100-Year-Old Balsamic Vinegar once, and... they tasted like vinegar.

My usual substitute for vinegar in recipes that call for it is lemon juice, occasionally apple juice for a smoother flavor. Would this work for a homemade electrolyte-replacement drink, or is there some special virtue about the vinegar that lemon juice isn't going to duplicate?

That's the plan. And I like the idea of driving them around a bit to get them used to the car. We're taking a shorter road trip to see my folks next weekend, so that might be a good test drive.

Hunh?

• 1 large cat carrier they can share
• ice bottles/freezer packs wrapped in towels to keep them cool
• dry towels for comfort/absorption
• human-scented cloths for psychological comfort
• optional sunshade/sheet for blocking out large objects
• water and water dishes for breaks
• frozen pees as a snack
• litter box

Have I left anything out?

You sure about that one? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

This is very much a ymmv thing... if you're one of those oddities who won't drink plain water and guzzles tea by the gallon, drink the damn tea. Liquid in is more important. If you will drink water, by all means, drink water.

My usual substitute for vinegar in recipes that call for it is lemon juice, occasionally apple juice for a smoother flavor. Would this work for a homemade electrolyte-replacement drink, or is there some special virtue about the vinegar that lemon juice isn't going to duplicate?

I can't think of anything that would *require* the vinegar, and the recipe posted up-thread has cut up lemon wedges as well as vinegar. I can't see how more lemon would hurt. And most citrus fruit is a decent electrolyte source, so it's never a horrid idea in hot weather.

Matter of fact, I've been doing the prep for limeade concentrate while I read this thread. WI isn't as hot as the East Coast has been, but it's hot enough. I do a variant on Theresa's concentrate with less alcohol for zest extraction. Means we drink even more limeade than we would otherwise. Since we get around mostly by bike, lemonade and limeade are much loved in this household.

I'd not put them in one carrier, no matter how friendly they are to one another, as they're likely to be a bit snippy and might well fight under such stressful conditions.

I'd invest in a Feliway (or perhaps Felifriend) spray: these are cat hormones, which help a cat feel relaxed, and so minimise stress, and reactions to it. They work with a cat which soils inappropriately, too.

I've seen a vet dose a highly-stressed cat with diazepam. Don't know the dose or the side effects, but it's worth considering if you have access to the drug.

I'd drape the carriers with wet cloths to keep the cats inside cool (and then they do at least get the satisfaction of watching you get wet and chafed: cats love revenge), while makign sure I didn't block the air circulation.

And yes, I'd definitely drive the cats so you can judge how they're reacting. This gives you the chance to listen for several hours to the beautiful songs that they will sing you (trust me, I know this game: I have three Siameses, all rescues, all disturbed, and a very confused Ragdoll who tries to keep up). Have a spare cat carrier and plenty of spare clean towels to hand in case of accidents, try to find those little drinking bowls that clip onto the wire of the carriers so that they can still get some hydration, and remember to breathe deeply, too.

Good luck.

Recently I tried a Orange-Coffee cordial. While the recipe is simple to execute, the steeping time is long (about a month and a half).

It does allow one to experience being caffeinated and blitzed at the same time.

When moved from TN to OR in June a few years back I did it with two cats and a large dog. Flying was right out.

The dog was a trouper. He rode in his crate, got in and out at stops easily, generally thought it was a grand adventure. Well, he's a Golden, they think everything is a grand adventure.

I'd planned on giving the cats a mild sedative for travel. On my vet's advice I gave them both a dose a couple of nights before the drive started so we were within easy reach of the prescribing vet in the event of a problem. Both tolerated it well, or so it appeared.

Morning of trip, go to administer pills. Fend off spirited attempts at disembowelment, nearly lose a finger. Desist, decide cat REALLY does not want pill. Decide not to dose either cat as one drugged up cat, one agitated undrugged cat is potentially hazardous to all involved.

Install dog's crate in van, install dog. Install cats in carrier. Take to van. Set up wire show crate gotten from Freecycle as follows: ratty familiar blanket I will trash at end of trip on floor of crate. Low plastic rectangular container with cat litter. Water bottles, food dishes. The triumph of the trip- top half (or hood) of covered litter box set in back of crate, creating both a hidey hole and a place to be up. Drape another familiar ratty blanket on top of crate.

Install cats in new travelling home. Drove for 5.5 days. Spent one very long evening in Missouri taking turns at sitting in van with cats because moving crate into hotel room contraindicated by HUGE thunderstorm.

There are good resources out there for finding pet friendly places to stay. With a book on travelling with pets and a book similar to this one (http://rvbookstore.com/shop/detail.aspx?m=2&p=319) and a cell phone we did just fine.

Actually, it does make a difference in the flavor, if you need the stuff. I've noticed it with minerally spring water: if I need the hydration, it tastes wonderful, and if I don't, it's just 'eh'. That was with the same brand, both ways.

Thanks to everyone! I think we've got a pretty solid plan worked out.

At this point we were having pigeon problems in our palm tree. I drove home that afternoon with visions of fried squab all over our lawn.

Jim: I've heard that lightning-struck people often get a nasty delayed response, where nerves that were subtly damaged by the current start dying off over the next couple of years. Do you know anything about that?

As I've noted before, we get lots of thunderstorms here in VA, and they include lots of lightning. Fortunately, there are also lots of hills and trees around. I have had the power blink out a few times, but no long outages.

And I usually do carry a water bottle in my backpack. We've had a few "excessive heat warnings" down here, too.

In the non-feline portion of the thread, I habitually dilute lemonade into lemony-flavored water and I have a friend who waters his soda.

And just for fun— lightning and fireworks! (The fireworks show got... well... moved up a bit. And it stopped almost exactly a minute before the rain started.)

Notes for future reference:

1) It is okay to stash the travel-size litter box under the driver's seat, but it is NOT OKAY to let cat out of the crate in the car to use it.

2) When the cat gets up under the driver's seat and refuses to budge, the only thing to be done is resume driving until you reach destination for the night.

3) "Do you have any welder's gloves?!" is an appropriate greeting between netfriends in certain parts of Idaho.

4) The cat will, eventually, figure out that you aren't going to the vet, and will settle into the routine of dozing in the crate all day and exploring motel bathrooms at night.

5) Motel beds are easily disassembled when the cat escapes from the motel bathroom and hides under them.

6) Always clean the litter box before stowing under the driver's seat, especially in warm weather.

No, but I do know that people who've been struck by lightning have a greater than normal chance of developing cataracts later on. Ruptured ear drums at the time of the event are common. Plus, PTSD is not unknown, with its whole panoply of associated symptoms.

In the immediate first aid line, if the person is pulseless/not breathing, start and continue CPR. Otherwise, treat for burns and treat for shock. Transport to an ER as soon as possible.

Here's another photo of the typical lightning-struck skin burn.

The closest I've come to heatstroke was last August when I got caught in the crowds for the Samba Festival Parade in Tokyo. No, I'm not kidding. The heat and humidity were awful, the people were 18 deep on the sidewalks and I couldn't find a way out. Whichever way I went, there were people and parade. McDonald's saved my life, perhaps literally, by appearing magically before me with cold drinks and air conditioning. I had hit the confused and disoriented stage sometime before that.

MKK--also damn cold in the PNW

It was high summer, and the camp was rented to another group for the week, but there were also kids doing the kids' camp thing. So he was out during a massive thunderstorm, digging a trench because a peculiarity of the ground had led to a large flow of water THROUGH one of the kids' cabins, and he wanted to keep the kids from being washed down the mountain, go figure.

By "down the mountain" I mean the nearest town was an hour's drive down windy uneven muddy country roads away.

Anyway, he got struck by lightning. At this point in his story I told him "Well, Thor was either saying "FUCK YOU" or "YOU'RE MINE!!!" Since he was telling the tale, though, I figured I knew which.

Know who the group was who'd rented the camp for the week? A convention of burn specialists. I told him "yeah, looks like you belong to Thor."

That person certainly wasn't Loki.

Jim was absolutely right... If you can hear ANY ANY ANY rumble of thunder you are in range of being hit by lightning.

The record verified range of a fatal lightning strike is FIFTY miles plus or minus. A man was killed while riding his bike (*** Remember what Jim said about rubber tires? ***) in Colorado, by a strike that originated 50 miles away in the Rocky Mountains. There were no storm clouds in sight when the strike happened.

Of course that is extreme and incredibly rare, but many strikes from lightning strokes completely out of audible range have been recorded.

Oh ... and this place looks incredibly cool.

A hydrated Scout is a happy scout.
A dehydrated Scout is a dead scout.
And dead Scouts have no fun.

And then there was the time I took two 9mo kittens -- littermates -- into the vet to be neutered, in one carrier. When I arrived to pick them up -- again with one carrier -- they were howling and agitated. I had to borrow a carrier from the vet to get them home. They were howling and agitated for THREE DAYS. Note to self: no ketamine for the Turkish Angoras, ever again.

This was the same cat who adored tomatoes. She'd steal the tomato slice out of your sandwich if you left it unattended, and we didn't dare leave a fresh tomato sitting on the kitchen counter overnight -- the next morning, its well-gnawed remains would be on the floor. I occasionally gave her half of a cherry tomato as a special treat. She also liked white grapes, peaches, and apples, but not citrus or pineapple.

Re traveling cats: Definitely separate carriers, and you may find that the positioning of the carrier also makes a difference. When we were moving my cats from Nashville to Houston, we discovered that Mina would yowl constantly if she couldn't see out the window, while Genevieve would yowl if she could. We arranged them accordingly, and things were blessedly quiet.

That falls under the "avoid streams" clause. Because lightning does indeed flow along the ground. If rain (or other) water is going into the cave, the lightning will too. Otherwise, just as I said, get well back from the entrance. The charge will flow past the mouth of the cave.

Here is the recipe for switchel Rikibeth recommended:

brown sugar 1/2 to 3/4 cup, packed
powdered ginger, 1 tsp
Cider vinegar, 1/2 cup homemade

Dissolve brown sugar and ginger in vinegar by shaking or stirring. Add 1 quart cold water, mix, and serve.

From the Little House Cookbook

I used to have a cat named Murphy, who loved lettuce. You'd be shredding lettuce for your tacos, whatever, turn your back, and Murph had stolen the lettuce head.

Love, C.

† ... as evidenced by trying to steal.

Indeed, cats can eat veggies, and if you're feeding them "from scratch" rather than commercial food, they'll need some. If you feed them nothing but meat, they'll get deficiency diseases! (A hunting cat will pick up predigested plant matter from the guts of their herbivorous prey.)

I'd assume that wild felines also know what plants they can eat safely in their natural environment. Domestic cats generally don't (what natural environment? ;-) ), but if they see you eating something, they'll assume it's edible, and if they aren't stuffed with kibble, they'll be happy to try some. (Watch out for chocolate, onions and garlic, which damage their livers.)

...but I still think frozen peas is pushing it, if only because they're likely to have trouble chewing them, and might swallow them whole (and still frozen).

"It's starting to rain."

"They're starting to bite. Another 10 minutes."

But once, as we were still out on the lake and the sky grew darker and more ominous and distant rumbles could be heard, we noticed that my aunt's hair, which she wore long and unconfined, was standing on end. She resembled a dandelion clock or the stereotype of a person touching a Van de Graaf generator.

We headed back to shore pretty fast.

I believe someone upthread posted a breakdown of common ways to die at the Grand Canyon, and overhydration was one of them.

*I've been seriously dehydrated, as in renal shutdown (stopped making urine); it took 5 liters of IV fluids before I restarted the kidneys again. I ended up getting a total of 6 liters in about 18 hours, and most of it was in the first 6 hours.

I worked at a Scout camp for four years. One notable feature was "punch on the porch," your typical bug juice in large dispensers 24/7. This was the result of some very good thinking on the part of the director, who noted a distressing number of dehydration cases in his early years. His thinking was that eleven-year-olds who have to be forced to drink plain water (really good water, btw) will drink tons of sugar-laced concotions, so he started ordering in 100-pound containers of punch mix. End result? Dehydration cases plunged.

As did the insurance rates once we instituted a "no running in camp" rule. Though we still had a couple of injuries that were due to sheer stupidity, we had fewer of the "trip and fall on granite" variety.

Bruce Cohen, #35, no glass in the sand?

Keith, #55, I would definitely drive the car separately with the cats. It will probably be a bit more gas than towing it, but it's a lot safer for the cats.

Xopher, #80, when people hit their 40s or 50s, they can have trouble drinking water without something in it. It's encouraged to put something like lemon in water for the elderly because the older you get, the less you recognize thirst.

Nancy C. Mittens, #125, that recipe may taste good, but it doesn't actually have electrolytes in it, which is what you need if you're really dehydrated.

(Anyone who actually knows Middle English, feel free to rework it.)

Wild cats also eat vegetation. I did some bibliographical research on the natural history of snow leopards (Uncia uncia) recently. Turns out they deliberately eat certain plants. No info. yet on why they choose the ones they do, but it's a significant part of their diet: 10% to 38% of droppings contained vegetable matter.

I grow fresh tomatoes, and several years ago I kept finding the ones I picked and left on the counter...chewed. Or clawed. Or something. They had claw marks and some of the skin was removed, and then vigorously scrubbed with something rough.

Then I caught my oldest cat, an orange tom named Alex, climbing up on the counter and wrapping himself around a fresh tomato. Hanging onto it with both front feet (hence the claw marks), he bit it until the skin came off, then washed and washed and washed it. Never realized some cats would like veggies, but then, he also ate broccoli (steamed, w/o cheese) so I should have known better...

(You probably know all this, but ...)

Firstly, our medicines come in dosages calculated for an adult human being, typically weighing somewhere between 50 and 150 kilograms. We have a technical term for a cat that weighs between 50 and 150 kilograms; we call it a Cougar. Domestic cats are typically in the range of 5-10% of human body weight, so feeding Tiddles a human-sized dose of just about anything is going to give him an overdose. (The consequences may not be fatal but they're unlikely to be pleasant.)

Secondly, even mammals may respond very differently to drugs than human beings. Rats are all but immune to alcohol -- to get a rat even mildly tipsy takes the alcohol equivalent of thirty or forty pints of strong ale (adjusted to their body weight, of course). Cats respond to opiates as if they're a strong stimulant. Chocolate is poisonous to dogs and cats (and many other mammals), although they may like the taste. Cats break down aspirin far more slowly than humans, and aspirin poisoning can kill them (it should only ever be used under veterinary supervision -- tiny doses, 48-72 hours apart). And so on.

Upshot: always check with your vet before giving medicine to your pets. Otherwise you might make them extremely ill, or kill them.

The late lamented Ares loved frozen peas. He did, as Dave Harmon suggests at #132, swallow them whole and still frozen, but it never appeared to bother him.

All this talk about lightning makes me wonder if the Pennsic stave church has a lightning rod. Barring the occasional flagpole it's easily the tallest thing on the Serengeti (the broad, flat field a lot of people camp on). I'm pretty sure the Little House on the Flatbed doesn't have one, but it's not as dramatically taller than everything around it.

Me, I camp down by the lake. The trees'll get it before I do.

Ooh, thanks!

And thanks for the effort, Rikibeth, especially since it turned out to be more trouble than you expected.

(Sent after/during? a sneezing fit in drought-ridden AZ.)

As far as cats and veggies go, that cat's brother had been very fond of tomatoes, as well as just about anything that didn't eat him first.

We now keep a pot of cat grass growing in the breakfast room window.

Photographic evidence of one cat eating delicious lettuce.

As for heatstroke and other heat illness: I know people get it, I know it's serious, but I can't actually say I know anybody who has had it. Severe sunburn, yes--people tend to underestimate the intensity of the sunlight at 58 degrees north.

Lovely picture of your cat, and so nice to know mine are not the only ones.

The funniest thing about the video of mine is that, by chance, there's an open bag of cat food just in front of the vegetable rack - so there's this cat, ignoring the cat food and munching the veggies!

I've got my Plumb's Veterinary Drug Handbook, Sixth Edition (2008) in front of me:

Contraindications: hypersensitivity to benzodiazepines, cats exposed to chlorpyrifos, significant liver disease (especially in cats).

Adverse effects: Cats may exhibit changes in behavior (irritability, depression, aberrant behavior) after receiving diazepam. There have been reports of cats developing liver failure after receiving oral diazepam (not dose dependent) for several days. Clinical signs (anorexia, lethargy, increased AST/ALT, hyperbilirubinemia) have been reported to occur 5-11 days after beginning oral therapy. Cats that recieve diazepam should have baseline liver function tests. These should be repeated and the drug discontinued if emesis, lethargy, inappetence or ataxia develops.

Wedgewood Pharmacy online (here) notes that diazepam can cause liver failure: "Liver failure is a rare but serious side effect that can occur in cats after recieving oral diazepam for several days. Affected cats do not have a prior history of liver disease or elevated enzymes. The cause of this hepatic toxicity is not known at this time."

I've used it in cats, in private practice. It has its uses, particularly in sick cats with inappetence, for anxiety, seizure disorders, and so on. This liver failure is a rare adverse effect, but it should be considered when using it.

It's not what I suggested above for control of anxiety in traveling cats.

Or if you're in that situation and don't want to get hit by lightning, just hold up your 1-iron. Even God can't hit a 1-iron.

And there's a Boy Scout camp, probably currently in use, in the middle of the severe thunderstorm warning right now.

It's getting scary, the volume of rain we have received is approaching what we got in 1993. Flush!

And I just saw some lightning off to the northwest.

sounds like bits o'hail too, and lots of thunder and lightning. I'm off the power though (we have a wireless router that pretty much serves the whole house now).

And the spinny bits worked themselves off the weather map so it's just severe thunderstorms. Yaay.

He also didn't bother me with the stuff I had to do to keep him going, like occasional sub-q hydration and everyday pills.

My very first boy cat had to be euthanized at about 10 or 11 because he got kidney disease and turned into an evil biting, snarling, shitting, pissing, nasty animal at the vet. It wouldn't have been fair to him or my vet's staff, who I love dearly.

My cat will eat lots of people food. She's interested in anything I eat, but especially likes Cheerios-- she chases them and pounces if I fling one on the floor for her-- Ritz Bits sandwiches with cheez, and chives. No interest in cat grass-- I guess the poisonous part of chives makes them delicious.

On a really bad move once their gums turned bright red, which is a DANGER hyperthermia sign. We stopped travelling after 11am after that. :-(

We finally found that our generator had been miswired, such that it could not run the Air Conditioner while going down the road. When we got that fixed, we could keep the RV comfortable for us and cats, and didn't have the same problem.

Kitties were about 9 or 10 years old at the time.

One of these cats came to me as a kitten at an SCA event, and when I had to take her home, in my non-AC car, she was suffering from the heat. I kept her damp by wetting my hand and petting her, and having her on a damp towel, in an improvised picnic-basket cat carrier belted into the passenger seat. She has been much more 'into' water than most cats ever since then, routinely sticking her head under the faucet and coming to jump on me with wet feet and shoulders.

She is also our Foot Drinker cat, eg, the one who makes it so we have to keep the water dish on a giant cafeteria tray. It's the only way to contain the water for Mrs SplishySplash.

Re, tornadoes, here is an excellent page on preparing for and dealing with them: http://www.disastercenter.com/guide/tornado.html

The short version:

A Tornado Watch means that favorable conditions exist for the formation of tornadoes. A Tornado Warning means that one has been sighted, or is expected within the next 30-60 minutes.

Have a plan; know what you're going to do in case of a Tornado Warning, and drill it.

Get a NOAA weather radio with tone-alert feature. Use it.

Prepare a disaster kit.

The safest place to be is a small, interior room away from windows, as low in your house as you can get. (Underground by preference.) No corner is safer than any other corner.

If you're in a mobile home or car, get into the nearest sturdy building.

Having lived in Tornado Alley all my life, and having a fondness for Planning Ahead, I'm always surprised by people who don't know this sort of thing, or who waste time running around opening windows when they should be heading for the closet under the stairs, or the basement.

Kedgie must arrange the water in the bowl first, or perhaps strain it with her claws, but then she drinks like a regular cat.

My previous water-playing cat was also the Veggie Hound; I could not leave out bok choy or bean sprouts, and I had to eat my canteloup while standing. Rcat was a mellow fellow who hissed only at the vacuum cleaner, and he was my only blue-eyed cat.

Sophie drinks backwards: somehow almost all the water ends up flying away from her, and only a little makes it onto her tongue and into her mouth. Spectacularly messy, and makes it a rather drawn-out process. I guess mama cat never got round to teaching her how.

Diatryma, #169, I hope the surge passes with as little damage as possible. I just had a quarter of a baby watermelon and the cats insisted on some, but when I gave them a bit, they looked at me as if I'd lied.

I saw on the weather page that your area went from 100F last Monday to a frost warning Thursday night.

I just want to say, for the record, that even for Northern New England that's crazy.

:-D

I have also got to say that seeing a tornado warning the other day on the NOAA watch/warning map, for places in Vermont and/or upstate New York, was a definite first.

Our cats reject bowls of water; they prefer mugs - probably because that's what humans use. One of them paws at the mug, making the water move, and staring intently as she does so - I presume so she can see the exact level for drinking. When she doesn't do this, she often ends up sneezing and shaking water out of her nose, having stuck her face too far into the water.

Lens accommodation is what you see (or not) when you switch from reading up close (or needlepoint, or other close work) to looking across the room at the television. It's why your eyes get tired after you've driven a long time. As you get older, the lens is less elastic and the accommodation slows down.

Cat lenses are very large, in comparison to the size of the total eye; this gives them the ability to gather in lots of light. The trade-off is their lenses don't change shape very well, whereas ours do. Thus they have difficulty focusing on very close objects, and must dip their noses into the water before drinking. ;-)

She always wants to smell and/or lick whatever I'm eating, but she only actually eats fish, chicken, or beef, and maybe some cheeses. Marilee @#175 pretty well described her reaction to other foods. I don't give her too much of any human food, as she's already plenty fat enough. I've had enough trouble finding a "diet" kibble she won't turn up her nose at.

Shiva likes to drink from my bathroom's sink faucet, but he has an elaborate ritual before he'll get up there and drink. He's also started grabbing Spirit with his gums (his teeth were taken out last month) and he can hold her tightly enough that she can't get away!

High protein, high taurine..complete nutrition in one mouse (fed grains/grasses)..what's not to like?

That unfortunately reminds me of the scene from David Lynch's Dune where the Beast Rhaban puts a mouse inside a glass cylinder then presses the top down until all the juices come out at the bottom and into his mouth. Yuch. I guess I should have expected no less from the actor who played Bluto in Altman's Popeye. ("He's large!")

When my youngest cat (now 9) went into renal failure (Urinary Infection) and recovered after an expensive stay at the emergency vet's (not expected to live as much as a year - that was over 1.5 years ago), and was sent home with supplies, Lactated Ringer's (LR) was what they sent, explaining about the stinging. My regular vet doesn't have that on hand, so I bought a bag of Normal Saline. Once. She really really didn't like it. Since with the LR she accepted it while not being exactly joyful, I went back to that. She now gets the subcutaneous fluids every 6 days, and I'm thinking about taking her to the local vet teaching hospital and asking about kidney stone removal, something they're known for.

My oldest cat (19), diagnosed with kidney disease 2.5 years ago was doing fine on the kidney diet until she started showing signs of getting worse about 10 months ago. She now gets SQ fluids every other day. Again with the LR, which my vet now orders by the case on my behalf. The expensive part is the tubing sets.

Our third cat, however, did not respond at all to the IV treatment when her kidneys began failing; she went from relatively healthy to unable to move at all in less than a week despite our best efforts to help her.

One of our cats now is what we call a "lounging eater". She plops down by the food dish or water bowl and either drags her food to her with a paw or dips her head over the bowl and drinks.

David Harmon @ 181
"She always wants to smell and/or lick whatever I'm eating" My "greens loving" cat won't leave me alone when I'm eating an apple, but although she'll occasionally lick the core if I give it to her, mostly she just takes one sniff then ignores it!

186 ::: Graydon @ 186
"the water bowl is for ritually drowning foodstuffs as the mood strikes her" For one of our cats, it's her favourite toy which regularly gets "drowned". Another reason why I can't leave my bedtime mug of tea on the top of the bedside locker...

VCarlson @ 188
We have seven water sources (mugs and one jug) around the house for the cats at present. Which ones are favourites varies from week to week. After two bouts of ideopathic cystitis, the second of which I successfully treated in under 24 hours by encouraging LOTS of drinking (from a hand-held teaspoon), we make sure that wherever the cats are when they remember they want a drink, they can get one.

See: "http://www.hagen.com/usa/cats/addinfo/catit_fountain.html"
My sister-in-law's cats like that one.

Or look on Amazon - put in "cat drinking fountain" and lots come up!

VCarlson @ 187
Sympathies for your kidney-failure cat. Hope the fluids help for a good while

Have the Chiurgeons informed them in no uncertain terms that the possible legal ramifications of not meeting basic needs like "hydration at a large summer outdoor event" way outweigh possible cootie lawsuits, and above and beyond that, it's basic human decency?

Christ on a crutch - Pennsic without water trucks, etc. is just bloody damn stupid. hell, it's probably impossible. Nice of them to make this decision, what, a month, month and a half before the War?

This is going to end well. Swarms of people in armor on the fields in the mid day summer sun.

This is going to end in deaths from heat stroke, and the massed Chiurgeonate of the East, Mid, and Aethelmarc (not to mention the western and southern kingdoms) walking off the field in disgust. This is lunacy - is someone trying to kill off all summer events, or something?

Lord Richard Michael Cameron, formerly of Aethelmarc, formerly of House Raven's Nest.

Oh dear.

I don't fight and neither does Liam, but I have a couple of friends who do. At least most of them have a few remaining brain cells and will make arrangements.

I imagine, though, that waterbearing will happen much like it always does, just without official sanction; there are a lot of people who do it every year. But we'll probably end up with more heat cases than usual. Makes me oh so very glad I'm not a chiurgeon.

Five weeks and three days till landgrab on the 26th of July.

Yeah, entirely idiotic. All we can do is hope the usual folks get together and say "screw this, we're doing it anyway".

the massed Chiurgeonate of the East, Mid, and Aethelmarc (not to mention the western and southern kingdoms) walking off the field in disgust.

Last year (or was it the year before?) there was some sort of kerfuffle over the chiurgeonate*, and War ended up with EMS folks from Portersville taking over. So they can't walk off the field, because they're not on it, at least at Pennsic.

Me, I go to War for the classes and some shopping, and things like this make me very happy about that.

* Not entirely unjustified: things like MDs having to take orders from folks with Red Cross CPR cards because the MD was a more junior chiurgeon.

Also, I take hydrochlorothiazide and lisinopril as a prescription for blood pressure, and I feel it has some influence on the way my body hydrates and the way it tolerates heat. How should I deal with that?

When you sweat you lose electrolytes, too, and electrolytes (sodium, potassium, calcium, bicarbonate) in general are a really vital part of your body chemistry. Flushing out the electrolytes can give you water intoxication and (perhaps) some serious consequences. You definitely need to replace what you lose.

I recommend salty snacks rather than things like salt pills (which can really rip your body chemistry).

Various medications affect the way bodies thermoregulate. Blood pressure medications are frequently mentioned in regard to hyperthermia. Check with your doctor for your specific meds, and your specific situation.

Stay safe.

This storm delivered 4,000 lightning strikes over 2/3 of the state of Indiana in just fifteen minutes.

Lightning safety should be practiced by all people during thunderstorms. Preparedness includes: get indoors or in a car; avoid water and all metal objects; get off the high ground; avoid solitary trees; stay off the telephone. If caught outdoors during nearby lightning, adopt the Lightning Safety Position (LSP). LSP means staying away from other people, taking off all metal objects, crouching with feet together, head bowed, and placing hands on ears to reduce acoustic shock.

Build your own lightning detector

It's called the 30/30 rule, and it's quite simple. If you see lightning, count to 30 as one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand (or your preferred method of counting seconds). If you hear thunder before you reach 30 seconds, suspend your outdoor event and have everyone take shelter for 30 minutes. The 30 minute counter resets every time there's another lightning strike within six miles. (Every 5 seconds between lightning and thunder puts you about a mile away, so 30 seconds is about 6 miles.)

This rule of thumb brought to you by the SCCA, whose members like to play outside with their cars during summer thunderstorm season. On the bright side, we always have lots of Faraday cages available to shelter in.