I did not sleep last night so was up well before my alarm to have breakfast. It was another lovely day, blue sky with a few small clouds. We set off just before 9.30 am heading for the Blind Cat Rescue and Sanctuary, St. Pauls, NC, it is a couple of hours or so to the south. Because we were taking the direct route, the road only had one lane in each direction. At times it was slow going as we met some indifferent driving to say the least! We did get on to better roads towards the end of the journey so progress improved, lol! We stopped in Goldsboro so I could get a coffee at a Starbucks. We decided to carry on and go to a Walmarts at Fayetteville NC.
We had to take quite a detour from our route to find the Walmarts but it was worth it as it stocked many items I had not found in other stores.
We also purchased some of the cleaning supplies that were on the BCR wish list. We then carried on to the BCR and arrived about 1.20 pm, it was very warm by this time!
We visited all seven of the rooms and it is an impressive setup. Each room has a covered outdoor extension with a garage roller door on the end for the bad weather. A door with a small cat flap separates the two areas so the cats have easy egress in either direction.
In the first house there are three rooms, one with blind cats, one for the FIV cats and the third for the FeLV cats, the cats in these rooms are sighted. Most of the cats seemed to enjoy the attention, although there were some shy ones. 
We then crossed over to the second house to visit the four rooms there. In one of the rooms I found a gorgeous Russian Blue, her name is Polly, she reminded so much of my guys back home! She was very affectionate and I spent quite a bit of time with her.
While sitting outside in one house it was interesting to see some of the cats in the next door house come over to the separating fence to find out what was going on. They obviously enjoy human interaction! 
Some of the rooms have cat wheels and not all the cats use the wheels but we saw a few in action. 
The funniest cat on a wheel was Candy, she had such a serious, concentrated look on her face and a very determined walk. She stayed on the wheel for some time. Earlier, when I was sitting outside, Candy had jumped on my lap and basically taken me over. I could not move for a long time, lol!! 
In the same room as Candy, there was a gorgeous long haired tuxedo who had just returned from a visit to the vet.
She was very feisty and climbed to the top of a three step cat tree, she looked as if she was going to jump off before finally launching herself over the edge and scrambling down to the floor!!
There are a few calicos, muted calicos, tuxedos and many black cats, there are also some cats with unusual colouring.
Each room contains no more than twelve cats, this is due to a law in NC to this effect, also each cat must have at least 5 sq feet of space.
There were so many wonderful cats there and they seem to do really well. Some of the blind cats still have their eyes and it was difficult to comprehend that they could not see, many others have had their eyes removed. It is noticeable that eye removal has quite an effect on the shape of the cat's face, it makes the face much more triangular shaped and much more pointed from the ears to the mouth.
Allanah chatted to us a couple of times and then came to tell us it was nearly closing time. We made out farewells after a wonderful afternoon, I would love to come back again I am sure Terri will!
So we set off for home and decided we would go back to Goldsboro to eat rather than eat in Fayetteville, this turned out to be a very wise decision as later events turned out.
We made good progress and as we neared Goldsboro we could see the dark clouds building up behind us to the south and west. Over to the north and east the lovely blue sky with a few fluffy white clouds was gradually receding!!
We drove through the Berkeley Mall area and decided to eat at the Panera Bread Shop. We ordered different flatbread products and both of us finished with a bear claw and coffee for the trip home, well at least that was the plan, lol!
We got into the car and when Terri turned the key, nothing happened! She replaced a fuse as this had worked as a solution when this had happened a few times previously. However, this time it did not work, nothing worked, lol!. While this was going on we had drunk our coffee and eaten our bear claws, I told Terri the shop was open until 10 pm!!
Steve had contacted Terri earlier to see when we were leaving and she had explained the situation. He asked some questions and made some suggestions but they did help, so he said he would come and collect us. We were just under an hour's drive from home, not pleasant in the rain! Poor Terri was so frustrated, it was dark, very wet and the darn car would not start!!
We went and sat outside the shop and finally the rain arrived. We then went back to sit in the car, I thought about putting the window down, duh, no power!! It was very muggy and the rain got really heavy as heavy as I have seen, but Terri kept telling me "You haven't seen anything yet!", lol!! The sky then lit up with lightening but I got the same response from Terri, lol! I looked at the weather app and there were warnings for our area about the approaching storm with very heavy rain from early Friday morning, it did not mention the heavy rain we were receiving, lol!
Steve arrived and started working under the hood in the pouring rain! After checking a few things he took the battery out and drove to a place along the way to get it checked. A new battery would be the simplest outcome, if the fault is somewhere else then that means it has to be found and that can take time. It is a holiday weekend and we are off to Pigeon Forge on Wednesday!
Steve came back and told us that the battery was checked out OK so we transferred all our belongings to his truck. Terri went and explained the situation to the manager of Panera Bread and we set off for the very wet trip back home. On the way home Terri rang her son, Chris, and he agreed to drive through to Goldsboro and trailer the car back home tomorrow.
We made a detour on the way home to drop the car keys off to Chris. While we were there he made a call to a friend who agreed to have a look at the vehicle to try and work out the issue. Young Aiden had stayed up so we played with him for a bit as well as chatted and eventually arrived home exhausted about 10.45 pm, phew what a day!
I needed my cup of tea and it was followed by a nice shower then to bed where I found my new room mate, Matty, packed up in my suitcase and already to go, lol!!
*********Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of Janet's adventures in America!. Did Terri's car get washed away? Did her car arrive home safely? Has the problem been found?
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