In early June we loaded up the camper van for a trial run with the new cats, Sabik and Jinx.  We spent about nine days in the Eastern Sierra between Sonora Pass and Rock Creek Lake, relocating to a new wild camping spot every couple of days. We did some hiking — a short one to Emma Lake in Hoover Wilderness, a hard climb up Crater Mountain in the Mono Craters area and a day-long hike through Little Lakes Valley above Rock Creek Lake in John Muir Wilderness.  Oh and Darlene finally got her “pie in the sky” at Rock Creek Lodge.  We also visited the Travertine Hot Springs near Bridgeport and took a dip in the Shepherd hot spring tub (one of the Whitmore Hot Springs near Mammoth).  We checked in on the eagles nest we found in Owens Gorge some years ago and found it now abandoned.  And I set out on what was supposed to be a reasonable mountain bike ride to the lookout tower on Bald Mountain on the Long Valley Caldera from our campsite near Smokey Bear Flats but turned into a 36-mile journey avoiding unexpected private property lines and slogging along miles of nasty loose and sandy roads.

The real focus of the trip was acclimating the cats to camping in the wild and they took to it pretty well except for Jinx’s scary first time getting freaked out and not understanding how to get back to the safety of the van.  (He is such a skittish cat.)  We have radio-tracking collars on them so we can locate them if they wander but the real trouble is they get to having too much fun hunting for critters, climbing rocks or dashing through the brush that we can’t get them to come back in the van when we want to close up in the evening.  We can’t even get close enough to pick them up when they don’t want to come in.  We’ve been trying treats and toys and both attractive noises and scary noises but this is clearly going to take more work and training.  We really need to get them to the point of coming when called (like with Pan and Hera), or at least not treating it like a game of “keep away”.

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