Friday 4th October: We stopped in Campsite terme/olimia which was basically a holiday park with a few spaces for motorhomes. It was absolutely huge and had the biggest water park we’ve ever seen on a campsite. You could only imagine how heaving this place would be in the summer; it was closed at the moment due to being off season. We went and did some laundry and let the little ones play on the park which was right next to our pitch. We try and park as close as we can to the parks on a campsite so that it’s easy for our little girl to get to and so that we can see her if she wants to go and play; we usually go with her but don’t mind letting her go alone if it’s right next to our pitch.
Unfortunately the dryers didn’t dry our clothes fully and so we had to hang them up throughout the motorhome on makeshift lines we created with the use of string. Dryers always seem to be touch and go in campsites. The washing machines are fine (it would be a pretty shit washing machine if it couldn’t wash clothes wouldn’t it) but the dryers not so much as it depended on how much drying time it gave you and the dryers themselves I guess- it really does vary from each campsite and each dryer. For example some dryers take an hour to dry our clothes whereas others can take less than half of that and we always roughly have the same amount of clothing so that variable doesn’t make any difference to us.
The following day, checkout wasn’t until 1pm again. They‘re very generous in Slovenia and no one seemed to really care what time you left so we had plenty of time to sort ourselves out in the morning and let the little ones have another play whilst we tried to dry our clothes yet again.
We were playing on the park when we heard the strangest sound coming from across the road where the water park entrance was situated. It sounded as though it was either some strange little bird or a cat of some sort but we couldn’t see anything and could only guess at where it might have been coming from. My husband went off to dry the clothes whilst I stayed and played with the little ones when I randomly started imitating the repetitive noise we heard in order to humour our little ones. And then that’s when we saw it! A little kitten was just near the car that had not long drove in- it must have come from underneath it as the owners of the car were looking underneath when they pulled up. I just thought that there was something wrong with the car itself or something and didn’t put the two together until now. It was tiny and kept miaowing over and over again, creeping ever so closer at the same time.
I’ll be honest and say I was a bit wary because of what I had read and been told by our nurse about cats in foreign countries; a lot of them carry diseases such as rabies that can be transferred if scratched. I had scared myself when reading up on rabies as it is an incurable disease but you can have jabs to protect you against it. However, we decided to risk it and stay away from wild animals such as cats (our nurses advice) and not get the jabs when we saw how much they cost per person and considering you had to have 3 injections each! Besides, we wouldn’t have had enough time anyway to finish the course by time we had found out about them.
I held our little girl back and told her not to go near it- in hindsight it would probably have been fine. We had rubbing alcohol with us anyway just in case but I let my fear get the better of me and plus as a mummy the first thing you do is try to protect your little ones. The kitten must have picked up on my fear and turned away and headed out of the campsite. The receptionists then came running out and tried to catch the poor little kitten. They chased it into the hedge where it sat in the middle tucked away under the branches, still miaowing its head off. The male receptionist then got a huge stick and tried to poke it out whilst the female tried to grab it from the other side. The kitten however, crawled it’s way along the length of the hedge but stayed in the middle weaving its way under branches and leaves. I felt so sorry for it and also guilty for not trying to rescue it myself when I probably had a chance to and so I started imitating it again. It was working and it tried to make its way towards me but then the man would come along again and poke it or try and grab it and so it would retreat and crawl along further. I told them they would be better off if they left it alone and see if it would come out of its own accord but they just shrugged at me and carried on. The sound of its miaowing and frightened little face was pulling on my heartstrings and I just wanted to scream at them to leave it alone but I knew they were only trying to do what they thought was best; to get it and and keep it safe. After many attempts it eventually got to the end of the hedge where it dashed off back across the road with the two receptionists running after it. It was a fast little kitten, I have to say! The woman made a dive for it but stumbled over the little wall and the kitten escaped her clutches, ducking underneath the staff gates that lead to the water park. And so they gave up and went back to their work.
We sat there and wondered what to do when my husband came back. I explained to him what had happened when again we could hear the kitten and saw it come out and start walking along the edge of the campsite. I decided to go over and see if I could help it to come out- it was obviously scared and I wasn’t quite sure who’s kitten it was but something stirred within me and I just knew I had to help it. The kitten darted back underneath the gates but sat just behind them so I could see it every now and again when it would poke its head out from underneath the bins that was housed behind the fence. I sat away from it on a kerb near a little roundabout thing and just imitated its sound which I think it may have found comforting because it stayed near the gates and just watched me, miaowing along with me. I must have sat there for a long while, watching it licking its paws every now and again as though irritated by something when I decided to change tactics. I went and got some milk in a bowl and pushed it underneath the gates. I didn’t know when it was last fed and thought that maybe the least I could do was let it have a drink. It ran underneath the bins as I did this. I retreated and just sat watching when eventually it came out again. It was obviously wary of the bowl and its contents and just stood by it for a long time until curiosity got the better of it and it peered its head over the bowl and gave it a lick, and then another and another and so on. My little girl was with me by this point and even though I told her to be quiet and still she must have shifted slightly because the kitten dashed back under the bins again. I could see its little legs totter over to the over side where there were piles of wood stacked on top of one another and bits of pipe and other building type materials. It looked dangerous and I didn’t like it one bit.
I was worried it would hurt itself but I didn’t know what else to do. I took the bowl after a while and left it alone for a bit. My husband was sat with our son and was wondering how much longer I’d keep trying. I wanted to help it so much but I wasn’t sure how. Again, I went back and just tried to continue with what I was doing before. It came out just enough for me to probably reach it but saw my little girl and for some bizarre reason ran back the way it had come. My little girl was fidgety though and so I told her to stay ever so still if she wanted to help because the kitten was obviously very frightened and didn’t know who we were. She was very cute and just wanted to help bless her.
We tried at this for what must have been a couple of hours- people would come and go and look at me as though I was mad because I was sat miaowing at a fence (they couldn’t see the kitten) but I didn’t care. I moved back even further and continued with my sound but this time turned my gaze away as this seemed to help because it had come out a few times before with me doing this. Again, it worked but this time I kept it up until it I could make sure it was out far enough for me to try and pick it up. My intention was for it to come towards me so I could earn its trust and hope that it would let me pick it up- I had zipped my fleece up just in case it decided to try and claw me. However, it decided to walk around the other way to where I was sitting! I got up slowly and tried my hardest to walk around the other side as quietly as I could but also at a decent pace so it didn’t venture too far from me. Unfortunately my plan didn’t work. It saw me as I rounded the corner and made a run for it. Me, in my panicked state of thinking I would never have a chance like this again decided to run after it but it was super fast. I managed to chase it underneath a chair and made a mad dive for it myself but it escaped and tried to run back towards the safety of the gates. I managed to trap it in a corner where it hid underneath a crate and then tried to pick it up as gently as I could but it hissed at me (as it rightly should) and being frightened (I’m not a big fan of cats anyway- kittens however, are cute) I recoiled from it. The kitten seized this moment to crawl through one of the holes in the crate and duck back underneath the fence to where it must of felt relatively safe. Again, in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have chased the poor kitten. I mean, what did I expect it to do- of course it was going to run from me. It was too late though and I had frightened the poor thing even further.
I was defeated! I knew I would never get this chance again and that I had lost this little kittens trust and so I decided to leave it alone. I went to reception to get the key for the electric box to unhook our cable so we could leave and decided to ask the woman at the desk where the kitten had come from and whose it was. Well, the story she told me wounded me even more and I really didn’t want to leave it.
THE STORY: the poor little defenceless kitten had crawled underneath the woman’s car and she couldn’t get it out. The woman then decided she had no choice but to drive to work with it underneath her car!! Where she had hoped to try and remove it. However, it hadn’t come out and she didn’t know whose kitten it belonged to as she had no pets of her own and neither did anyone else on her street. I was broken. This tiny little kitten had lost its family and was obviously so scared because it had no idea where it was. It was in a strange place with strange people and had no idea how to find its way back. I didn’t know what to do. My husband, bless him said we could stay if I wanted and keep trying but we both felt like I had tried my hardest already. It was so frightened and we both knew it wouldn’t come to me any time soon and besides that there was only so much I could do on this side of the fence seeing as I couldn’t enter the area in which it had taken sanctuary.
As a mother, I felt deeply saddened by this and could only imagine how this poor little kitten must be feeling. I imagined how my own children and myself would feel if they had gotten lost and neither one had any idea where they were or how to even get back. I honestly felt so traumatised and helpless as we left that campsite, which took us a while as I just couldn’t bear to leave and was torn in two as to what we should do. My little girl was deeply saddened too as she heard me tell the story and I could see her little brain going through the same thoughts as myself as she imagined herself being lost from her family and not being able to find her way back. The emotions were just written plain as day across her face. I wanted to cry. It was a sad drive as we made our way across the border and I couldn’t shake the morning away for a very long time.
The campsite we had just driven from wasn’t too far from the Croatian border and so we decided to go into Croatia this side of Christmas instead seeing as we were here now, plus the route made more sense; this way we wouldn’t have to come too far back on ourselves. We got stopped at the border (our first time being stopped at one) where they checked our passports before driving through. We headed towards Zagreb; Croatia’s capital. My husband had found a lake he wanted to stop at and so we drove towards that hoping to camp there for the night.
Yet again, we had forgotten to take any money out as the currency had changed from Euros to Kuna and so we were stuck at the entrance to a car park when a lovely taxi driver got out of his car to help us. He told us where to go and swapped some Euro notes for us before getting back in his car and directing us himself to the right place for the night. It was so cheap I actually had to check half a dozen times with my husband that what I had heard was actually correct. We could stay here, by the lake, for a maximum of 5days (without leaving) for €10! I was gobsmacked. We didn’t want to stay there for that long as our motorhome didn’t fair well without electric hook up because our gas failed to power our fridge well enough for it to stay cold BUT it was amazing that you could!
We drove around the entire lake near enough before settling on a place that seemed quiet and relatively safe. We then ventured out and went to the park before going for a walk around the lake with our little girl on her bike. There were a lot of people on skates too! I hadn’t been on skates in years and used to frequent our local skating rink “Rollerworld” nearly every week but then skating sort of phased out and the stores stopped selling them so I was amazed to see how popular it was here. It was lovely to reminisce as we walked along watching our little girl peddle along. The lake was huge though and it grew very dark before we were even half way around it! Both of our little ones grew tired soon enough and so we took it in turns pushing our son who was in his pushchair crying his head off and pushing our daughter on her bike who was too tired to peddle any longer. It seemed like it was never going to end as we walked on and on. Finally we could see our motorhome and we hurried towards it as fast as we could so the little ones could rest easy and we could get them into their beds. However, the restaurant behind us was holding a wedding and people were singing and shouting up and down the street setting off firecrackers and all sorts. It was far too noisy and we knew our little ones wouldn’t settle here for the night; it was bound to go on until early hours of the morning. It was a wedding after all so who could blame them. We decided we best move on though and find another part of the lake that would hopefully be a bit quieter. Luckily, because we had driven around the whole lake near enough, we knew just where to go and so we drove round and parked up so we could get a peaceful nights rest.
K.E.E.N Explorers 